He guided her over to an old tree stump and she sat down, unable to talk. In the flickering light of the two lanterns, he looked concerned. Worried, even. “Are you quite al right?”
“Not real y.” Chloe looked down at her ripped gown, col apsed in the middle like a popover that didn’t pop. The tips of her boots pointed in at each other. She clasped her hands between her knees and squeezed her fingers against her knuckles as if that would stop the tears. She and Henry shouldn’t be here together unchaperoned in the dark, but nobody else seemed to be playing by the rules, why should she?
“Wel , for one thing, I’m a little homesick. Today is—” She bit her lip and looked up at the stars. Red, white, and blue stars.
“Your Independence Day.”
Another chunk of hair fel from her updo. “Ha!
Henry gathered stones into a circle and marked the beginnings of a fire. “I disagree.”
“Please.” Chloe stood up and picked up sticks for the fire. “I’m in a gown I didn’t even put on myself, chasing around some guy I thought I knew, thinking he’s going to be my happy ending and solve al my problems. When am I going to learn?” She tossed the sticks into the stone circle.
He lit a fal en branch with the flame from Chloe’s lantern. The dry branch sputtered and sparked. “I think you’re quite independent. Here you are halfway around the world. On your own. In another culture—and navigating another time real y.” With the flame on the stick, he lit the fire in the stone circle and flames danced up al at once. “Al this during a national holiday that marks your country’s break from ours. It’s got to be difficult.”
“It’s not difficult.” She poked at the fire with a stick. The aroma of a campfire brought back memories of al those summers at camp out on the East Coast. She lifted her stick from the fire and watched a flame flicker around the end of it. “I never liked hot dogs. Or basebal . I liked my grandmother’s crumpets. She was from England, you know. I liked the song ‘God Save the Queen.’ As for fireworks—wel —”
Henry tossed a smal log into the fire and it crackled and snapped.
“I love them. You can never have enough fireworks.”
“It must be a little conflicting to be an American and an Anglophile al at the same time. Is that why you’re here at the ice-house at this hour?”
Chloe’s legs turned to white soup. She stood up and leaned against the wooden doors of what she thought was a smokehouse. “Ice-house?”
Henry kicked mud on the fire to put it out. “Yes. Whatever are you doing here? I didn’t even get a chance to dance with you.”
The fire dwindled under clumps of mud. Chloe looked behind her at the hinged wooden doors. Her torn bal gown and muddied boots flashed in the last flickers of firelight. Sebastian might show up any minute. “This is the ice-house?”
“Yes. Yes. Now, why not go back to the bal ?”
Chloe stepped back from the wooden doors and picked up her lantern. Limestone blocks surrounded the wooden doors.
She caught her breath. “I thought this was a smokehouse.”
Henry lifted his lantern and splashed the ice-house doors with light. The doors shone a lacquered red that Chloe hadn’t noticed until now. He pul ed a ring of keys from his coat pocket, unlocked the doors, kicked them open, and a wave of cool, earthy air spil ed out and over Chloe. What was he doing with the ice-house keys, anyway?
“Come and see,” Henry said, his voice echoing.
She looked over her shoulder into the forest, but Henry’s words lured her in.
“Look, they built the inside with laced brickwork more than a foot thick.” He held the lantern up to the ceiling and Chloe could suddenly see him, years from now, decades even. He’d point out things like the friezes at the Parthenon or baguettes in a Parisian bakery window to his wife, somewhere in the fuzzy future.
As Chloe ventured into the domed, beehivelike cove, the sad smel of melting snow enveloped her.
Henry tipped his lantern toward great, huge blocks of ice covered in straw. A trickle of water went down a drain somewhere within. The cool floor penetrated her calfskin boots and her legs grew cold.
Henry nudged the wooden doors nearly closed. “You would think they’d have used the ice-house to keep their meat and fish, but they didn’t. They would cut ice from the ponds in the winter, cover it in straw, and then use it to make ice creams, cool drinks, and syl abubs during the summer. If a house could offer such luxuries during the summer, it raised the owner’s social status—”
And this little history lesson would’ve been interesting if Chloe weren’t wondering when Sebastian would show up. She pushed the wooden doors back open and Henry dropped his arm, his lantern fal ing to his side.
He cleared his throat. “Sorry to bore you—”
“No—no—you’re not boring me. Not at al ! It’s just—”
“Al ow me to escort you back to Bridesbridge.” He held the doors open for her, then locked them behind her and slipped the keys back in his greatcoat pocket. He untied his horse and walked him over to her. “Let me help you up on the horse.” He bent down and laced his fingers together, offering her a step up. The horse bent his head down, and his mane flopped into his eyes, as if he, too, agreed she should go back.
But Chloe didn’t step up. “No! I mean—no, thank you.” She curled her fingers around the lantern handle.
She thought she heard the sound of hooves in the distance. The fire barely glowed now. Henry bent to pick up his lantern and held it up to the dark forest. He heard a horse, too. He mounted his horse and looked down on Chloe. “You’re meeting Sebastian here, aren’t you?”
A breeze rippled around her. She looked into the orange-and-black embers of the fire. She had to think of Abigail and Wil iam.
