“Gathering greenery?” she said. “And engaging in a snowball fight?” She sounded shocked.

“No.” He nodded briskly and turned back to the door. “I did not think so. We will probably be back late for luncheon. You may wish to have the meal set back an hour.” If her mother would permit such a disruption of the household routine, that was.

He was at the door of the outer nursery-deserted this morning-when her voice stopped him. She had stepped out of Jeremy’s bedchamber and was closing the door behind her.

“Mr. Chambers,” she called, her formal words of address increasing his irritation, though he turned politely toward her, “do you want me to come?”

She looked different somehow, less serene, less sure of herself. There was an expression almost of longing in her eyes. She looked suddenly youthful, and he remembered that indeed she was little more than a girl.

She had been eighteen when they married, five years younger than he.

He swallowed his first impulse, which was to tell her that she might please herself.

“Yes,” he said abruptly. And it was true. He was as irrationally head-over-ears in love with her as he had been when he first set eyes on her. If she still despised him for his origins and his willingness to have his father purchase her for her birth and rank, well, so be it. But he had come here to see if something could be made of his marriage before their separation had continued for so long that it would be virtually irreversible.

“Very well,” she said, her cool, reserved self again. “I will go and change. You need not wait for me.”

Had he imagined that look of longing? Was she coming merely because he had asked? Merely because she owed him obedience? Would she be miserable outside in the snow and the cold? Would she spoil the outing for everyone else?

“We will wait outside for you,” he said.

It was still snowing. Thick white flakes fluttered down from a heavy gray sky. The steps outside the front doors had been swept recently, but there was a thin film of snow on them again. Elizabeth stepped out onto the top step and felt as if she were walking into an alien, enchanted world.

Snow had always meant being housebound. Snow was something one could slip and break a leg on. Worse, snow was something that had to be waded through with an accompanying loss of dignity, especially if one skidded inelegantly. Walking out into the snow, making slides of it, sledding over it, building snowmen with it, clearing it from a frozen pond or lake in order to make a skating surface, were all activities designed for the lower classes, who had no dignity to lose. Fighting with snowballs was simply beyond imagination, even for children.

There were times when she was a child that Elizabeth had guiltily wished she had been born into the lower classes.

They were out there on the great white expanse that was the south lawn-all the children, most of the cousins who were in Elizabeth’s own age group, her brother Bertie, Annabelle, and Mr. Chambers. The children were dashing about and screeching as they chased one another. The ladies were laughing; the men were whooping as they tried sliding on snow that was too deep, and kept coming to grief. They were all very obviously enjoying themselves.

Even Aunt Amelia and Uncle Horace were outside, standing in the snow on the terrace, watching the activities and laughing.

It was a scene so alien to Elizabeth’s experience, so full of wild, uninhibited joy that she felt overwhelmed by it. Could she ever give herself up to such sheer fun? She had been brought up to think that having fun and lacking ladylike dignity were synonymous terms. She almost turned and hurried back inside before anyone saw her. But Mr.

Chambers must have been watching for her. He came wading toward her, his eyes bright with animation, his face already flushed from the cold and exertion. He looked incredibly virile and handsome.

“Take my hand,” he said when he reached the bottom step.

She set her hand in his outstretched one and remembered with almost painful intensity her first enchanted sight of him when he had come to offer her marriage. He would be her escape, she had thought naively then, from her dull, restricted life into a world where warmth and love and laughter would transform her. She had already met his father and had liked him immensely, despite-or perhaps because of-those qualities her mother had despised as vulgar. Absurdly, she had wanted him as her father. The son was so very handsome, and younger than she had expected.

It had not taken her long, though, to realize that his very correct, unsmiling demeanor hid scorn for her for allowing herself to be bought.

But this morning she would not think of that. He had chosen to come to Wyldwood for Christmas, and he had come to the nursery this morning with the express purpose of inviting her out here.

He released her hand as soon as she was safely down the steps, set two fingers to his lips, and let out a piercing whistle. Elizabeth looked at him in astonishment, as did everyone else.

It was easy to believe over the next couple of minutes that he was a successful businessman, accustomed to organizing and commanding. He announced that the snowball fight was about to begin and soon had everyone divided into two teams of roughly equal numbers and firepower.

Elizabeth would gladly have stood watching with her aunt and uncle, but she was given no choice. She was named to a team and waded gingerly out onto the lawn to join her teammates. Annabelle caught her by the hand and squeezed it.

“Lizzie,” she said, “I am so glad you have come to enjoy the snow. But however did you escape from Mama-in-law?” She laughed and slapped one mittened hand over her mouth. “Forget I said that. Oh, goodness, I have to face both Bertie and Charles on the other team.”

The snow was soft beneath Elizabeth’s feet and not as slippery as she had expected it to be. It reached almost to the top of her boots.

“It sparkles,” she said, “even though the sun is not shining, as if someone has sprinkled the surface with thousands of miniature sequins.

How beautiful it is.”

But she was not given long to admire her first real experience of snow.

The two teams were facing each other across a neutral expanse of it, and Mr. Chambers whistled again, the signal for the snowball fight to begin.

Most of the players, it soon became obvious to Elizabeth, had armed themselves in advance. Snowballs zoomed through the air, and squeals and shouts and laughter revealed that many of them had found their mark.

Elizabeth shied away from all the vigorous action, uncertain what to do herself. She felt the beginnings of misery in the midst of such bubbling animation. She had never been allowed to play and enjoy herself-she did not know how. She was a lady.

And then a snowball collided with her chin and dripped down inside the collar of her cloak before she could brush it away. Another struck her on the shoulder. She could think only of her discomfort, of getting back indoors, where it was warm and quiet and dry and sane and all was familiar to her.

“The best defense is invariably offense,” her husband advised from close beside her, and he struck Peregrine, her chief tormentor, on the nose with a large, wet snowball.

Elizabeth laughed and felt suddenly, unexpectedly exhilarated. She stooped to gather a handful of snow, formed it into a ball, and hurled it, also at Peregrine, who was still sputtering and trying to clean off his face. It struck him in the chest, and Elizabeth laughed with delight, even as another snowball from an unidentified assailant shattered against her shoulder.

After that she forgot about discomfort and cold and dignity and hurled snowballs as fast as she could mold them at any foe within her range.

Soon, without even realizing it, she was helpless with laughter. She was also liberally caked with snow from head to foot. But several minutes passed before she spared a moment to slap ineffectually at her cloak with snow-clogged mittens.

By the time the fight was losing momentum, the children having discovered an even more amusing activity. They had captured Mr.

Chambers, two of them hanging off each arm, one off each leg, while a few others pushed and shoved. With a ferocious roar he went down on his back.

“Bury Uncle Edwin!” Charles shrieked over and over again, and the other children took up the cry until it became a chant.

They proceeded to heap snow over him until only his shoulders and head were visible-and his hat, which had tipped to a rakish angle.

“Poor Mr. Chambers,” Aunt Amelia remarked.

“He is a jolly good sport, I must say,” Uncle Horace commented. “You would not catch me letting them do that to me.”

Elizabeth stood and watched while the other adults and young people slapped themselves and one another relatively free of snow and recovered their breath. Mr. Chambers was laughing good-naturedly and putting up only enough of a struggle to amuse the children. She felt as if she were gazing at a stranger. Where was the cold, humorless, dour man she had married? By some instinct, the children had picked out the very adult who would indulge them and play with them and allow himself to be played with. How had they known?

For the first time Elizabeth could see her husband as the son of that hearty, jolly man who had arranged the marriage with her own parents and insisted upon having a private word with her in order to assure himself that she was not being coerced into anything against her will. Her husband, it seemed, possessed the same generous, fun-loving nature, though he had never displayed it for her benefit.

She felt plunged into sudden depression again. He had not wanted to marry her, of course. He disliked her. He very probably despised her.