Falling from Grace - Bridgerton

Prologue

"The air is blue and keen and cold,"

Her voice, one of an angel

"With snow the roads and fields are white,"

The words from her soft lips falling onto his skin

"But here the forest's clothed with light"

Her body molded into his, the chill of the cold, fighting a battle through tired hearts.

"And in a shining sheath enrolled."

Her eyes like pools of dreams upon him, for he had never seen such beauty in all his life

"Each branch, each twig, each blade of grass,"

For she had brought beauty into his life of which he had never known

"Seems clad miraculously with glass"

He wanted to touch every inch of her, he needed to. He had to know it wasn't a fantasy that he wouldn't wake up to frostbiting at his lips instead of hers.

"Above the ice-bound streamlet bends"

But he had lived through this dream before and her voice began to fade as his vision became hazy. Coldness crept up onto him as her lush skin not longed melted into his like wax.

He stumbled out into the melting snow to hear, the pounding of horses and a parasol being opened. Her lips found the man that was not him, her hands touched the man that was not him, and he understood that she did not return his love but merely broke it into pieces.

"Each frozen fern with crystal ends."

Days and days went on and winter faded into a lonely summer, a summer without the grand house, without the girl who refused to wear shoes, without the boy who was excellent at polo.

And without lavender clouds.

Poem: Crystal Forest, by William Sharp