Read Online The Duke of Snow and Apples by Elizabeth Vail - Free Book Online

With only two strides, he nearly overtook her, and she had to quicken her pace to match his.
    “What have you learned so far?” she asked. “Interests? Secrets? Preferences?”
    “Favorite colors,” he said.
    “That’s an excellent start,” Charlotte said. “Wearing a gown that suits a bachelor’s taste, or even a simple, elegant accessory that catches their eye can give me the advantage I need. What does Mr. Oswald prefer?”
    Frederick looked at her sideways, eyes narrowing. “He’s your first choice?”
    “He’s the most reasonable choice. Ambition is all well and good, but I shouldn’t let an acceptable match get away because I’m too busy chasing an exemplary one, like Lord Elban. Then I might end up with no match at all.”
    “Ah, you’re being reasonable.”
    “Yes.” She slid Frederick a curious glance. Was that sarcasm?
    “You’re very fortunate then.” He stopped as they reached the top of the hill and faced her directly. “They both have the same favorite color. Red.”
    “ Both of them?” The notion struck her as a little too convenient. She brushed past him to examine the ruins, composed of a few crumbling walls and broken columns of pale pink stone draped with now-dead garlands of ivy. “You’re sure?”
    Frederick nodded. “With Mr. Oswald, the color reminds him of roses.”
    “That sounds like him.”
    “And I heard from a lower housemaid who heard it from a groom who overheard Lord Elban telling his valet how he’s planning on re-holstering his curricle in crimson, because the shade pleased him so much.”
    “Oh.” Charlotte turned away to hide the spasm of frustration that crossed her face. Red. It had to be red . She turned and sat down on a half-built wall. “I have a lovely…pink gown that should be just the thing.”
    “ Pink ?” Frederick squawked.
    “Pink is derived from red,” Charlotte explained. “It’s a perfectly acceptable color.”
    The footman spluttered. “Pink is not red.”
    “There isn’t an enormous difference.”
    “Really? Because I would think far differently of Viscount Elban if he decided to upholster his curricle in pink .”
    “Ha! True enough!” She pursed her lips, feigning disappointment. “I didn’t bring anything in red.” She met his spark-bright eyes and thought she saw a flash of greenish-yellow light. She felt the oddest sense of confusion coming from him. Confusion? Where did that conclusion come from? A moment later, the color vanished. Charlotte blinked. Must have been a trick of the sunlight. “What is the matter, Frederick?”
    “Nothing, miss.” His gaze dropped, hiding his eyes behind his lashes.
    “Not nothing . You were pink a moment ago, and now you are red .” She smacked him playfully. “There is a difference between pink and red, you know.”
    That coaxed a grin out of him, a flash of white teeth that set Charlotte’s nerves humming. When he looked at her with those eyes and smiled at her with that boyish shyness it was deceptively easy to forget conversation with him was discouraged.
    Unsettled, she turned her attention to the heaps of crumbled masonry around them. “I don’t remember these ruins. They look ancient.”
    “This was built in an earlier time,” Frederick intoned. He set the picnic basket down in the middle of a room surrounded by four crumbling walls, which shielded them, somewhat, from the wind. “A barbaric, primitive era, when our ancestors thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be lovely to build a new outbuilding, quit halfway through, and tell everyone we did it on purpose?’”
    Charlotte lifted her head to catch the tail end of Frederick’s smile before he tucked it away and focused on removing a salamander-bottle from the picnic basket. Slowly, the foolish truth of the ruins caught up to her. “Ancient indeed. Five years?”
    Frederick shook his head. He gave the bottle a jolt, set it on the ground, and removed the lid. The heady warmth of a campfire emerged, as the wakened fire