“Freddie, listen to me. You can’t fall asleep.”
The yawn could not have been stopped if I’d tried. “Of course I can.” He could be so overbearing sometimes. “I’m really tired, Cranwell.” I let my head drop back down. It was so heavy.
Cranwell grabbed me by both shoulders. “Freddie. You must not fall asleep.”
“But I’m so tired.”
He took off his gloves and cupped my face. “Freddie, you’re freezing.”
It was true, I was cold. I had been shivering for at least an hour, but his coat was so big, I had managed to hide it. “I know. And Cranwell, I’m so tired.”
“Freddie, come over here to my side.”
“Not enough room.” My lips and my cheeks were so cold it was hard to form words.
“Freddie, move it!”
He must have been mad at me, because I’d never heard Cranwell yell before. But he was yelling then. At me.
The difficulty in unfolding my legs and pushing myself across that short distance between the seats is indescribable.
By the time I reached him, I was crying.
He must have seen a reflection from my tears because he quickly wiped them away. “Shhh. Don’t cry.”
“… mad at me.”
“No, Freddie. I’m not.”
“… yelled.”
“I didn’t mean to, I’m sorry. I was worried about you.”
“… cold.”
He unbuttoned the coat around me and then pulled me against himself, stretching the sides of the coat as far around him as they would reach and clamping them to his sides with his arms. We were chest to chest and my head was pressed against his shoulder.
“I know you’re cold. You’ll be warm again in a minute. Just don’t cry anymore. It will make you colder.”
“… not mad…”
He pressed my head against his shoulder with his chin. “No. Freddie, I love you.” His arms tightened around me.
“… can’t breathe…” It took me an enormous effort to get those words out.
He loosened his hold, but not by much. “Let’s sing. What do you want to sing?”
“… bright, coppered kettles…”
He groaned. “Sound of Music? Freddie.” He sounded disappointed in me, but he joined me anyway. By the time we were done, I felt marginally warmer.
“No more Julie Andrews. Something else.” He didn’t sound like he was joking.
A song popped into my head. It wasn’t one that I wanted to sing, but the longer I refused to sing it, the louder it echoed in my thoughts.
He shook me. “Freddie!”
“… Jesus loves me…”
He finished the line, “… this I know…”
“For the Bible tells me so.” By alternating the lines and joining in on the chorus we finished the song, albeit slowly and with not a lot of rhythm.
“‘Jesus Loves Me?’ I knew you believed. You just had to stop trying to convince yourself you didn’t.”
My lips had thawed enough to smile against his scratchy sweater. To this point, my head had rested against his shoulder, nose first. Now I had the energy to turn it and nestle it into the dip of his collarbone.
He laid his cheek against my head. “Someone will come soon.”
My eyes closed again. His scent was intoxicating: wool mixed with soap and aftershave and a hint of mint in his breathe. I felt my head begin to spin.
He shook me slightly and my eyes flew open. “Freddie, who’s your favorite author?”
I smiled to myself. “… trick question…”
He laughed. And with my head against him, I could hear it start deep inside his chest. “No, seriously.”
“… Jane Austen…”
“Movie?”
But I wasn’t finished. I shook my head. “And Byatt.”
“A. S. Byatt?”
I nodded.
“Good, Freddie. Movie?”
“Sense and Sensibility.”
He groaned. “You’re a romantic too. I never would have guessed it. And I suppose you thought Willoughby was handsome.”
No. I shook my head. “Colonel.”
“Colonel? You liked the colonel?” He bent his head to whisper in my ear. “Maybe there’s hope then for an older man.” I could have sworn he kissed my ear.
“Color? No, wait. Let me guess: blue.”
Yes.
“And a good choice with the color of your eyes. Food?”
“Chocolate.”
“A woman after my own heart.”
He babbled something else, but I don’t remember what it was. I started getting cold again, and this time I couldn’t keep myself from shuddering. It came from deep within me.
It seems to me that Cranwell shook me, yelled at me, and threatened me. I think at one point he even swore he loved me, but I had no strength left to respond. I watched in a stupor as lights flashed blue against the windshield.
And then I was being lifted into a different car. A police car. We streaked through the silent, frigid night, screeching to a halt in front of a hospital. I was bundled inside to a room, was told to undress while hot water was being prepared.
“What are you doing?”
It took a full minute for my lips to thaw enough to answer Cranwell’s question. “They told me to undress.”
“Why?”
“Hot water.”
“Of all the medieval-!” He tugged my coat back on and then lifted me into his arms. “We’re leaving. Nobody in their right mind asks a hypothermia patient in your condition to undress themselves and then hop into a bath.” He stalked down the hallways muttering about the ineptitude of the staff, then talked the receptionist on duty into calling a cab for us by barking ‘Taxi!’ at her. I must have fallen asleep on the way to the hotel.
When I woke, I was on a bed in a room ablaze with light. Cranwell was working to pull my boots off. I moaned as he pulled them from my frost-swollen feet.
He unbuttoned his coat, which I was still wearing, and deftly worked it from my arms. And he unwound the scarf from my head and pushed my hair away from my eyes. His face loomed in front of mine, and he searched my eyes. “Freddie, stay with me.”
My sweater was being pulled over my head before I could protest. Then he stood me up. Leaning my body against his and holding me around the waist, he worked my pants down to my ankles. I was reduced to my bra and panties, and all I could do was watch him.
He pulled a corner of the duvet and the sheets from the bed, and then he placed me there and covered me with them.
My shivering was uncontrollable.
After a moment, he climbed into bed behind me, and pulled me toward him. “Heaven help me.” It sounded like a prayer the way he breathed it into my hair.
Cranwell folded my arms across my chest and then crossed them with his own, fitting his hands over mine. He molded his legs to mine and somehow managed to clamp my feet between his own. Against my icy body, he felt like a furnace.
My last thought before succumbing to sleep was, “Thank goodness I didn’t wear my holey underwear.”
When I first stirred, light was streaming through a window directly onto my face. I wrinkled my nose at it, and I did what I always do in the morning. I stretched. At least I tried to, but my arms were bound to my chest and my feet were being held in captivity. I tried to turn my head, but even my hair had been pulled taut.
While I was making exploratory movements, something moved behind me.
Fighting against panic, I smothered a scream.
“Freddie?”
“Cranwell?”
“Thank you, God.” He rolled up on an elbow, releasing my hair, and leaned over me. His other hand he fit around my neck, leaving his thumb free to caress my cheek. “How are you doing?”
Blinking, I suddenly remembered the previous night. I felt tears well up. “You saved my life, didn’t you?”
Those magnificent brown eyes clouded for a moment, and then a corner of his mouth turned up. “Just call me your knight in shining armor.”
Turning toward him, I wrapped my arms around his waist and hugged him. “Thank you, Cranwell.”
His hand around my neck pressed my head toward his, and he planted a kiss on my forehead.
I realized then what I wasn’t wearing. But before I had a chance to feel awkward, he had reached around and unclasped my arms. And then he pulled up the duvet and tucked it under my chin. “Don’t move. I’ll have breakfast sent up.” He gathered my hair with his hand and smoothed it over my pillow before turning away from me to pick up a telephone from the nightstand.
As he ordered, I closed my eyes and luxuriated in the warmth of the sun and the duvet. I fell back asleep.
The valet’s knock woke me. As I stretched beneath the sheets, Cranwell answered it and then brought the tray to the bed. He was fully clothed in the rust-colored turtleneck and moleskin jeans he’d worn the day before, and he smelled as if he’d just taken a shower. He set the tray between us and then punched his pillow down between his back and the wall. “Bon appétit.”
As I began to sit up, I remembered that I was only wearing a bra. I caught up the duvet just in time.
Cranwell jumped up and went into the bathroom. He returned with a hotel bathrobe, handing it to me before turning his back so I could put it on.
After, he offered me a cup of tea, but I was in the process of trying to push up the sleeves of the robe. They kept falling. He set the tea down in order to help me turn up the sleeves.
“They didn’t have coffee?”
“Last night, the doctor told me tea.”
“What doctor?”
“The one I called in L.A.”
“L.A.?”
“The one I interviewed when I had to research hypothermia for a book I was writing. That’s when I found out that too much movement or too rapid reheating could kill a victim of hypothermia.”
He hadn’t been kidding when he’d called himself a knight in shining armor. “But I don’t like tea.”
“It doesn’t matter if you like it. Think of it as medicine.”
I took the cup from his hand and plunked four cubes of sugar into it. At least he let me have the pains au chocolat. I was ravenous. And since he refused to let me have coffee, I drained the pot of tea.
As I finished it off, he perched his glasses on his nose and took up the newspaper the hotel had sent up with the tray. He passed it toward me. “Section?”
Declining, I shook my head. “I think I’ll take a shower.” I threw back the duvet and walked toward the bathroom.
“Take a bath.”
So now it was okay to bathe? “But I don’t like baths. By the time the tub fills up and you can actually enjoy it, the water starts to get cold.”
He looked at me sternly over the top of his glasses. “The doctor said bath.”
“How about I promise to stand underneath the shower for at least twenty minutes?”
“Bath.”
So, for the sake of Cranwell’s conscience, I took a bath. For a good long hour. Every time the water started to cool, I turned the faucet on and warmed it up.
And then I did the one thing I’d never done before in a bath: I closed my eyes.
It’s a good thing Cranwell knocked on the door, because I had started to doze.
Startling awake, I sunk into the water up to my chin.
He cracked open the door. “Freddie?”
“Yes?”
“I had some things brought for you. I’ll put them right by the door.” He slit the door open, set a stack of boxes on the floor, and pulled it shut.
It wasn’t until after he had gone that I realized I had been holding my breath.
Grabbing a towel, I pulled the plug on the tub and dried myself off. I approached the boxes with suspicion and delight. I didn’t know what Cranwell was up to, but the French wrapped purchases so elegantly that the stack of boxes looked just like Christmas.
The smallest, at the top, was pink and tied with a black ribbon, and I knew immediately what was in it. I slid the ribbon off the box and opened it to find some of the most luxurious lingerie in France: Aubade. The next three boxes were marked with the name of a designer so prestigious I’d only heard rumors of him. The first contained a pair of medium-blue leather pants. The second a gloriously soft and thick cashmere sweater to match. The last, a pair of blue leather wool-lined boots with stiletto heels, along with cashmere tights.
When I lifted the top of the last box, I couldn’t believe my eyes. I plunged my hands into the most extravagant fur I’d ever seen. I lifted it out by the shoulders and gaped. The floor-length fitted body was of silky black fur and the collar, cuffs, hood, hem, and opening were lined with an explosion of the fluffiest of sable in charcoal gray. It was beautiful. It was gorgeous.
For five long minutes, I argued with myself about whether or not to accept Cranwell’s gifts. I felt again the buttery-leather pants, the soft cashmere, and the silky fur. If Cranwell hadn’t tried anything romantic last night, I rationalized that he wasn’t going to. From this perspective, his gifts had no strings; there was nothing he was trying to buy from me; he was simply being friendly. Friendly at my income level usually meant a nice houseplant. Friendly at his level… was very nice indeed.
He knocked on the door again. “Freddie? You ready to go? The auto shop was supposed to have delivered the car by now.”
“I’m coming. Give me five minutes.” I was afraid to put the clothes on. I’d walked down rue Faubourg-St. Honoré in Paris many times, and I knew at a minimum what they must have cost.
After trying to use the hotel’s built-in hair dryer, I gave up: the air pressure was too low, and it was only distributing further the smell of cigarette smoke that permeated the room. I ran my fingers through my hair, gathered it in a hand, and tied it in the usual knot.
Makeup? I had none. I pinched my cheeks to make some color rise. It would have to do.
And I was left with having to put on my new clothes.
The pleasure was indescribable. I don’t know how Cranwell managed it, but everything fit perfectly. I could have done without the stiletto heels on the boots, but aside from those, I felt like at least $200,000.
When I placed my hand on the doorknob, I suddenly felt shy.
There was a soft knock on the door. “Freddie?”
Putting a hand up, I stroked the door above my head, knowing exactly, from experience, where his face would be. I caught myself smiling. I opened the door.
“Cranwell-” Whatever it was that I was going to say died on my lips. The way he was looking at me sent a tingle down my spine.
“Wow.” He bent at the waist, made some silly gesture as if he were doffing his hat, and then offered me his arm.
“I don’t know how to thank you.”
“Just give me your hand and tell me again that you didn’t freeze to death last night.”
He let me slip a fur-covered arm under his. “But-”
Cranwell covered my hand with his. “It was nothing. I’ve never known a woman to want to wear the same thing two days in a row. My car and my own stupidity put your life in danger. It’s the least I could do.”
He stopped on our way out the door to grab a piece of designer luggage. “I’ll carry this out for you.”
“It’s not mine.”
“It’s got your things in it, so I guess it is now.”
This I’ve learned in life: If you don’t believe in Santa Claus, he can’t bring you any presents.
I believe.
Cranwell’s car was waiting for us in front of the hotel. It didn’t look anything like the arctic coffin it had seemed the previous night.
A valet opened the door for me. Cranwell helped me in. It made me feel just like a model.
As we dashed through town, I noticed the clock on the Tour de l’Horloge. It looked as if it were already afternoon.
Cranwell must have read confusion on my face. “It’s about two o’clock. After what we went through last night, we needed the sleep.”
Involuntarily, I shivered. I never wanted to be that cold again.
We reached home about an hour later. Cranwell parked in front of the steps and then came around to help me out.
Not being used to the stilettos, I teetered on the first stair. Cranwell reached an arm around my waist to steady me and then decided the better of it and lifted me easily into his arms. He marched up the steps and set me carefully on my feet in the entrance hall.
“Sorry about those heels, but that’s all the designer carried this season.” He flashed me a grin and then jogged back down the stairs to park the car.
“Frédérique? Robert?” Sévérine’s call advertised her advance up the stairs from the kitchen. She burst into sight, followed, from a distance, by Lucy. “I was so scary.” She put a hand on my arm “You are well?”
“I’m fine. Didn’t Cranwell call you?”
“Oui. Robert called last night from the hotel. But he told me near to nothing. He was very occupied.”
“Preoccupied.” I could imagine.
For several minutes, I petted Lucy and listened to Sévérine chatter. I heard Cranwell crunch through the gravel across the drive and shuffle up the steps. The great oak door opened behind me.
Giving Lucy a final pat, I started toward the stairs. I thought I’d give the lovers a chance to be alone.
“Robert!” I heard Sévérine kiss Cranwell’s cheeks and begin to accost him with questions.
I picked my way up the first spiral of the staircase.
“Freddie?” His voice broke free from the conversation. “Are you okay?”
“Fine.”
After walking up another turn of the staircase, I sat down on a step in my fur coat to take off the boots. I just wasn’t a stiletto type of girl.
“I’ll bring up your bag when I come.”
“Thanks.” I was beginning to feel tired again, though I’d only been awake four hours. I trudged up the stairs to my room and hung my coat in the armoire before I collapsed on the bed. I was overcome by gratitude: I was alive. Every day I would live after that was a gift. I curled up on top of my duvet and marveled at this miracle. I allowed myself to drift off to sleep.
When I woke, the sun had set. I was surprised I hadn’t become cold, and then I realized I was snuggled underneath my duvet. I thought for a moment that I had done this in my sleep, but when I got up to walk to the bathroom, I saw my new suitcase on the floor beside the armoire.
Cranwell.
Again.