“Where are the servants to help you?” he asked.
Her brain scrambled for words. “I sent them away. Ahead. To cut the log for the Christmas fire.”
In case he came for her.
Her answer trembled between them. They would not be interrupted this time.
She looked up, her mouth dry.
“There you are!” Julia’s voice shattered the bright crystal air. She bustled through the trees, bouncing and breathless, pink-cheeked with cold. Her glance darted from Lucien to Aimée. “I couldn’t imagine what could drag you from the house so early.”
“Some of us were out earlier,” Tom Whitmore remarked beside her.
Julia tossed her head. “Country hours,” she said with scorn.
“You’re a country girl,” he pointed out. “Or you were before Town spoiled you.”
“Your mama asked me to collect decorations for the ballroom,” Aimée said before Julia could snap at him again. She held out the bunch of holly berries. “Aren’t they pretty?”
“I am not spoiled,” Julia declared. “Take it back.”
“Spoiled.” Tom nodded. “And bossy.”
Lucien narrowed his eyes.
“They grew up together,” Aimée explained in an undertone. “Tom and his sisters and Julia.”
He raised his brows. “Not you?”
“At first. When I first came.” The memory made her smile.
Despite being the only boy—or perhaps because of it—Tom had always been dragged into his sisters’ games to play the prince or highwayman. In return, he’d taught the girls to spit and to skip stones and to swim.
“And then?” Lucien inquired.
Lady Basing had caught the girls sneaking into the house one summer afternoon, hair wet, shifts bundled under their arms.
Aimée’s smile faded. She had been whipped and confined to her room for her bad influence on her younger cousin. And Julia and Tom’s childhood friendship had been quashed by chaperoned visits and calculated courtships and the success of Julia’s London season.
“And then . . .” Aimée shrugged. “We could not play together as children anymore.”
Julia stooped suddenly for a handful of snow and smashed it against Tom’s waistcoat.
“They seem to have no trouble taking up where they left off,” Lucien observed dryly.
She snuck a look at his face. He did not sound jealous.
“It is the woods,” she offered, to appease any pang he might be feeling. They had all strayed away from their customary roles and paths this morning, into the woods, into a dream, into a fairy tale. “We played here.”
Tom lobbed a snowball, spattering the bright blue of Julia’s pelisse with white. She shrieked and returned fire.
“Shall we leave them to make up for lost time?” Lucien inquired.
He looked at her, an indefinable glint in his green eyes, an expectant curve to his mouth.
Anticipation quickened Aimée’s heartbeat. She observed the snow battle now raging between Tom and Julia. Would her cousin even notice if they slipped away? Would she care?
That was the risk of the woods. Once you had left the accustomed paths behind, could you ever go back?