Free Refuge by Kirsty Ferry

garden, and the yellow light from the ballroom spilled out onto the white landscape before her. Keeping close to the house, she edged her way around the building until she reached the servants’ entrance and peeped inside. There was laughter and chattering coming from the kitchen and from the room with the scrubbed wooden table where the staff congregated for meals. Genevieve padded quietly in and reached out to a peg which hung behind the door. She unhooked a heavy, velvet cloak and wrapped it around herself. She took a deep breath of the frosty night air and, draping the train of her skirt over her arm, she began to hurry down the pathway into the walled garden. She lost her footing once or twice on the icy pathways, and headed towards the summer house. Reaching the summer house, she pushed the door open and waited a moment until her eyes adjusted.
    The white, moonlit night filtered in through the leaded windows and highlighted a wrought iron picnic set, left in the summer house over the winter. An old chaise longue was there as well, the material frayed slightly at the sides and on the cushions. Genevieve knelt down by the fireplace and poked around until she found enough fuel to light the fire, then sat down on the chaise longue, folding herself inside the cloak and watching the flames lick the chimney. She would stay here as long as possible. And maybe go straight to Hartside afterwards. She sat back and imagined Will’s face if she turned up uninvited and demanded he left with her in front of the businessmen. Her mouth twisted slightly into a little smile. It would be cruel, but no less than he deserved. She became aware of the pencil from her dance card jangling against her wrist and she ripped the card off in disgust. She studied her wrist in the firelight. The bruises were starting to come through. The idiot; he hadn’t been as careful as usual. People might see those ones. He hadn’t thought it out. Perversely pleased that she had unintentionally scored a point against her brother, she smiled to herself. She briefly contemplated damaging her wrist a little more, just to make sure people noticed. She was on the verge of doing so, when a shadow passed the window of the summerhouse. It blotted out the moonlight for a moment and she looked up, assuming it was tree branches. She sighed. Bored of her wrist, or perhaps simply forgetting her intentions, she went back to contemplating the fire. She began to hum a little tune, slightly off-key, and pulled her cloak tighter around her body. She leaned forward to poke at the embers of the fire and the flames whooshed up again. The wood crackled, spitting sparks out and singeing her dress. She tutted and tried to brush the marks off.  Then there was another noise – the noise of the door handle being tried, and then a scraping sound as the door began to open.
    Genevieve grabbed the poker and watched the door. It creaked fully open and a figure stood in the doorway. The figure was dressed from head to foot in black; it appeared to be a man, swathed in a cape with a hat pulled down low over his brow. Genevieve’s grasp tightened.
    ‘Joseph!’ she said. ‘I swear to God, I will kill you if you touch me...’
    The man laughed. ‘I’m not going to hurt you. Put the poker down, Veva.’ He stepped into the summer house, the light from the fire picking out gold flecks in his dark eyes.
    ‘Will!’ Genevieve threw the poker down and it clattered onto the floor. She stood up. ‘What are you doing here? Why not be a man and come to the house? Are you scared of my brother?’ she laughed cynically. ‘Yes, I suppose you could be. It’s understandable, I suppose. How did you know I’d be here?’ 
    ‘So many questions,’ said Will. ‘Again. Why do you ask so many? But tonight the answer is simple. I wanted to see you, so I came. For your information, I did come to the house; I was hiding in the trees across the lawn. I saw you dancing.’ He frowned. ‘Who was