Words matter to the faerie—hold some power over her. Of that much Beatrix is certain. It’s how the faerie corrupted her wish, it’s why she can’t claim her soul outright. Why Beatrix has spent countless nights obsessing over the faerie’s own words to her.
You will live to regret this moment. And then you will keep on living.
April 11, 1820London, England
Beatrix perches on the edge of her bed. She pushes the white lace curtain aside and peers out her window. The stream of carriages has slowed. The last of the ladies wrapped in furs and the gentlemen in top hats and tailcoats hurry up the stairs, disappearing beneath the manor’s ivy-covered entrance.
On any other evening, this would be the most entertaining part of spending hours holed up in her room—watching the dinner guests come and go, wondering what their lives are like. Today, her heart sinks. None of them are Oliver.
His note from the Frost Fair said he would come today; she’s certain, even if the paper he wrote it on is long gone. But he didn’t set a time, only told her to leave a letter with her current whereabouts at the post office. Did she write his name properly? Had they lost it? Had the postmaster thrown it away? The day has almost turned to evening. Almost gone.
A knock sounds on Beatrix’s door. Too early for supper, but perhaps this is the only moment a servant can get away from the kitchen to bring her meal. She pulls the door open to find Oliver, dressed in a black tailcoat of his own.
“What are you doing here?” she hisses. He can’t be upstairs. Mrs. Winfield would fire her on the spot.
Oliver frowns. “Didn’t you read my note?”
Beatrix glances down the hall in both directions, making certain it is empty. She pulls Oliver into her room and locks the door behind him. “Yes, I read your note!”
That night, in the room at the inn, was only the beginning. After Oliver left, she spent the rest of the week practicing, squinting at the letters and copying them out, trying to make sense of them, until thelight failed and her eyes ached. She unfolded and refolded the page from the Thames until there was nothing left of it. And every night before she fell into bed, she sounded out each letter of Oliver’s note, trying to read his words. Until one night, she did. She read it hundreds of times, until she knew it by heart, seared the date into her memory. Until there was nothing left of his note, either.
Then she read any scrap of paper she could get her hands on: day-old newspapers, order receipts, grocery lists. She made a game of reading all the storefronts and signs in the streets, until she found a battered copy of the first volume ofPride and Prejudice.
Novels are by far her favorite, better than the newspapers or the stories in the magazines the ladies read. Novels hold entire worlds, entire lives for her to explore. She can get lost between the pages, and when she finds herself again, hours have passed her by.
Oliver beams at her. “You read my note.”
Her heart skips. “As I recall, it didn’t say anything about you showing up in my bedroom.”
“I showed up in the hallway,” he says with that same infuriating smirk he turned on her at the Globe. He flops onto her bed in a very ungentlemanly manner. “You’re the one who dragged me into your bedroom and locked the door.”
Her face flushes with heat. He’s impossible.
“What’s next?” he asks. “Learn another language? I think if I had all the time in the world, that’s what I would do. Or learn to play an instrument. Guitar. No, piano.”
“Why not both, while you’re at it?” she asks. “In fact, you could learn all the languages and all the instruments.”
“Good idea.”
She rolls her eyes. “You’d become an insufferable know-it-all.”
Oliver shakes his head. “I couldn’t know it all. Every day there would be something new to discover.”
Beatrix sinks down onto the bed next to him. Her leg brushes against his, but he doesn’t move away. “You’d get tired of it.”
“Maybe.” He shrugs. “But not for a very, very long time.”
“Then I suppose you’d better hope you have all the money in the world, too.”
Oliver shifts on the bed. He reaches underneath him and pulls out a book: a well-loved copy of the first volume ofFrankenstein. “I’d read all the greats, too.”
She takes the book from him. “Is this considered one of them?”
He nods. “Anything by Jane Austen is a classic, or Dickens or Poe or any of the Brontë sisters. I should make you a list. You can read them as they’re published.”
“I’d like that.”
“And if you get your hands on any first editions, hold on to them,” Oliver adds.
