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~~~ THE ICE QUEEN ~~~

A Winter Rose oneshot

St Petersburg, 1874

She stood out, amongst the common horde of titled sycophants and twits, like a flame in the night.

Harold Hepworth, gambler, womaniser and the third Viscount Hepworth to hold that reputation, dug his frozen fingers into the deep pockets of his greatcoat. Around him, the British delegation swirled and shoved. Their feet slipped along the icy deck of the Castalia as they pushed to get closer to the gangway. From the ropes and pulleys above, the sailors watched the proceedings with jaundiced eyes.

Harold, as ever, found himself in limbo. Not in the front of the deck, where the Crown Prince waited in his bulky glory. Not in the back with the rabble and hangers-on. He was too much an intimate of Prince Edward's circle to be dismissed from the upper deck. Too poor, with too low a title and too little influence to stand right at the front, at the Prince's elbow.

An outsider in this world of privilege. He wondered, in his idle moments, if she ever felt the same. Was that what drew them together?

Violet Crawley, Countess of Grantham.

She was in the front. A lick-spittle from the Russian embassy in London hung at her elbow. The boy stared up at her with puppy-eyed devotion but Hepworth's countess toyed with him like a cat batting at a string mouse. A cool smile here, a glance of her skirts against the boy's leg there. Harold knew her games, the push-and-pull of attraction that Violet Crawley- Miss Violet Steyne as he had first known her- could command at will.

The rich velvet gown was trimmed in seal. The white fur was tawdry against her skin. Her veiled hat shaded her eyes, eyes that were a blue to rival sapphires. And her hair, the rich auburn mass of it, tumbled in careful disarray down her slim back. It reached her waist, falling to the narrowest point of that captivating circumference.

Her husband, the Earl, was in the front party. Kissing the Prince's arse, no doubt. Patrick Crawley would forsake anything for the sake of advancing his pet passions. Lately, it had been the Foreign Office. For some reason, the Earl of Grantham thought a close relationship with the Crown Prince would help him to attain that.

Harold had wanted to hint to Patrick Crawley that the only foreign connections Prince Teddy had was with the mesdames of Paris's best brothels. But why spoil the fun? Besides, Crawley might come to his senses and realise that abandoning his lovely wife to the rabble on the public deck was the work of a fool.

Then again, the Earl's actions throughout the past few years of his marriage suggested he possessed more than a fleeting acquaintance with the bawdy houses in the City of Light himself.

Again. A fool.

Hepworth did not disparage a man for paying for his pleasure. He had done it himself a time or two, when the coffers were fuller and the Hepworth coin chest had some weight. It had been a delightful way to spend some of the settlements laid at his feet by his mercantile father-in-law. After all, if one was forced to trade title for money, one may as well get the benefit of the bargain.

But there was little reward in a prize so easily surrendered. The night flowers of London's bordellos were witty enough in the beginning, able to beguile and tempt with the best she-devils in hell. Once the money was laid on the table, however, they were canny as a street-hawker in assessing their wares. The wit was gone. There was only one commodity in the game now and both parties knew it.

It had become, Harold found in the last few years, more sordid than stimulating. In the last few years…

Ah. He tsked in his head. Fool. The only advice his loose-fish father bestowed on him that Harold ever took to heart was simple and Shakespearean: To thine own self be true.

Harold, like Papa before him, used the motto to excuse all manners of bad behaviour. Unlike Papa, he took it a step further. Others might pass off a night of drinking and gambling as solace for a frustrating day, a harpy wife or the trials of bowing to a demanding parent. Harold did not. He gambled, he freely admitted, because he enjoyed the risk. He drank because he enjoyed being drunk. He had many affairs- used to have many affairs- because he found any other bed preferable to the legal one he shared with Mildred.

So now, on the deck of the Castalia, he admitted to himself that his first distaste for the easy pleasures of London's ladies of the night arose the night he made the acquaintance of Miss Violet Steyne.

For a moment, in the freezing Russian breeze, Harold could smell again the heavy perfume of hot-house flowers, the sweat and over-blown scents of London's high society. The crush of a dozen crinolined skirts around his legs. The inexpert sawing of the musical quartet. Cheap, of course. Pamela, Viscountess Courtenay, was the party's hostess and she despised spending a groat when pennies would do. Only her lineage, impeccable down to the Conqueror, ensured her balls were packed to the hilt.

He had been prowling, seeking distraction from the stinging lecture his solicitor had delivered unto to him that same afternoon. Cards held no interest. The wine was unpalatable. He sought the ballroom, crammed with new debutantes and wily matrons, as a last resort. His current amour had hinted she would attend with her husband. Harold had been tempted to see if he could wile her away from her stately husband under the full glare of society.

At least, he had been. If only she had not been directly in his path.

Amongst the mawkish brunettes and simpering blondes, Miss Violet Steyne stood out like a ruby in silt. If the eye was drawn to the burning flame of her hair, it lingered to discover the porcelain quality of her skin, the deep blue of her eyes. Taller than the average, slim and girlish in her limbs with a woman's curves in all the right places.

The cheap cloth of her ballgown and its unfashionable cut did not to detract from her looks. It did, however, give an indication of why she remained with the chaperones and dowagers, tucked up against the ballroom walls, while other girls, less pretty but with richer dowries, whirled around the floor in the waltz.

The Steynes were poor. Poverty, as Harold knew well, was a more damning curse in London than any amount of personal infamy. Society would gladly welcome a mass murderer, provided he had enough cash to carry it off.

He could not say now what devil prompted him on his shoulder to approach her. He could not say what devil prompted him to request her hand for the waltz. He most certainly could not say why she would accept. Even then, good mamas and demure debutantes new better than to let their ruffled skirts brush the tips of his shoes.

Yet she did accept. When he took her in his arms, she was tall enough to look him straight in the eyes.

Harold, who had always considered himself a tall man, found the unexpected alignment surprisingly stimulating.

They waltzed in silence at first. She was graceful, light as a feather in his arms. If he had been another man, Harold could imagine that it had been fate that they matched steps so easily, that she seemed to float in his grasp as though she could intuit his every thought.

But then he had been a man on the edge of ruin. Ruination was a ruthless taskmaster and the enemy of such soft, foolish impulses. So on the turn at the far left corner of the ballroom- already they had excited whispers across half the ballroom and furious glares from Harold's spurned mistress- he bent his head and whispered in the delicate ear. "You should know that I have no interest in courting you."

Perhaps it was the bluntness he assumed that brought the look of surprise to her eyes. They widened until they seemed to dominate her face: wide and black-lashed and the deep blue of a summer twilight.

"I- indeed." The surprise in her eyes barely brushed her glacial tone of voice. Even then she fought her battles head-on, despite the restrictions the demands of decorum and ladylike behaviour set on her. "Is it too much to ask why?"

She had been wearing some kind of fragrance. Lilac, Harold imagined. The exertions of the dance had caused it to waft upwards and tease his nostrils. He permitted himself one breath- a dying man's last gasp, he thought in amusement- before fixing those astonishing blue eyes with a casual smirk in his own.

"Because, Miss Steyne, I have no interest in penniless virgins. However prettily they might wave their fans." Before she could gasp in outrage- or would she? He still wondered - he shrugged and continued. "Come to me when you are an old, married woman and I'll welcome you with open arms."

He allowed himself a lingering look down her form, the last before he deposited her back to the ranks of dowagers and wallflowers. "I promise you, it will be worth it."

She was silent as he left her there, silent as he strolled away. Even then, she wore a mask to hide her emotions.

For himself, Harold's heart was thundering in his chest like a runaway horse.

He kept his word, though. They might have shared a dance or two- moments of weakness, Harold assured himself, nothing to suggest otherwise- but no one in London could say that Harold Hepworth was courting Miss Violet Steyne. When she married Patrick Crawley, Earl of Grantham, Harold was among the first to wish her happy. And then, he waited.

A heir was born within the first few years. Crawley celebrated by a lavish christening followed by a night on the town. Violet was no where to be seen. No doubt the proud woman who flashed icy fire at him in the Courtenay ballroom found her husband's well-known infidelities hard to stomach. Had she asked, Harold would have presented her with a solution.

Yet she did not ask. She did not return to town. A second child was born, a girl this time. It was only two years after the girl appeared that Violet Crawley descended from her Yorkshire fortress.

The change in her was captivating.

The uncertain girl in cheap poplins and badly-cut ballgowns was gone. The new Countess of Grantham descended to the ballroom in emerald silk, the Crawley diadem glittering in her rich red hair. Like Juno from Mount Olympus, she was everything gracious and dignified and regal. She smiled on cue, an enigmatic curve of her lips and studied the prancing hordes around her with a detached, almost chilly air.

Harold felt his heart thunder to life again at the sight of her.

She was impossible to catch alone. Everyone, it seemed, wanted to know her, to speak with her, to bask in her flashes of attention. Her husband watched her as though he could not believe the woman he had married and bedded.

It took three balls and a hour of kicking his heels in the Yarrows' card-room before Harold had a chance to claim Violet Crawley, once again, for a waltz. When they stood together, he felt a thrill to realise they still aligned, nose to nose, lips to lips.

Once again, they waltzed in silence for the first few moments. Once again, she was as light as gossamer in his arms. They dipped and wove through the exuberant hordes like ships steering serenely through the foam.

When, at last, the temptation great too great, Harold broke his silence.

"Well, my lady," He whispered under his breath. "Have you decided to avail of our bargain?"

She did not blink this time. The large blue eyes slid from his hairline to his chin in a cool, dispassionate stare. For some bizarre reason, her very lack of reaction was more exciting than if she had blushed and fumbled and giggled.

"Really, Lord Hepworth." There was a slight drawl to her voice now. She had been spending too long with her husband's Yorkshire tenants. "You astonish me."

"Don't deny that it has occurred to you." He could have told her how her husband felt no need to restrain his peccadillos, how every married woman in London took a lover and no one blinked an eye at it. He held back. When she spoke again, he was glad he held to circumspection.

"Lord Hepworth." The chill in her eyes had seeped into her voice. To become the woman she was, Violet Crawley had drawn her fire and spirit back behind icy bridges. "Just as a few years ago, you had little interest in penniless virgins, let me assure you now, I have little interest in such tawdry affairs that are your speciality."

He didn't believe her then. He still did not. No woman, most certainly not a woman like Violet Crawley, could be satisfied with a cold bed and the numbing attentions of Patrick Crawley. Yet she had held aloof. All that Season. All the next.

It was now the third year that Harold was in pursuit of the Ice Queen. In the middle of the Russian winter, far from the gossips of London, he was certain he would find the key to bring down the drawbridge of her defences.

The Royal party began to descend from the ship in a flurry of fur and woollen cloaks. On the quayside, the Russian party waited. A menagerie of bright colours, uniforms in gold and red and green. Prince Alfred, as round and cherub-like as his elder brother, was a butter-roll of warm clothes topped by a ridiculous sable hat.

As the princely brothers embraced to general applause, Harold edged his way forward to the front. The Russian Count had abandoned Violet, returning to hover at the shoulder of his ambassador. She stood alone. A plump matron at one shoulder, the other open. Harold moved forward, a greeting poised on his lips to distract her attention.

No.

He frowned. Violet, unlike the rest of the royal entourage, was not looking towards the two princes and the dancing Princess Alix. She was not looking at the English company at all.

Instead, her eyes were turned to the Russian nobles who were conscripted into Prince Alfred's escort. There were over a dozen of them, all dressed in some kind of uniform with those all-enveloping cloaks military men enjoyed so much. No doubt the cream of the Tsar's royalty-obsessed court, a mess of princes and counts and barons. Gilded laurels and braid shone under the cloaks, like peacocks, Harold thought in derision. No wonder Violet stared. The Countess of Grantham was renowned in London circles for her preference of sumptuous understatement. Excess delivered so discreetly, it existed in the very air one breathed. Nothing like the brash ostentation of these Russian despots.

But something was wrong. Her face… Harold frowned. It was too open. He knew this, he had studied that porcelain countenance more times than he could count. Violet Crawley masked her emotions, she always had. The most she would permit the world to see was disapproval or a small, gentle smile of approval.

Now, a dozen emotions chased themselves across her full lips, her wide eyes. A frown of surprise, a widening of consternation. Her lips parted on a surprised breath then tightened again. Like she was biting back hasty words or an unguarded smile. Harold pushed up until his line of sight joined hers, to see what had caused the Ice Queen's fortress to crack when his practiced love-making failed.

A burly, black-haired fellow stared at Violet Crawley like a pirate coming on buried treasure. Dark eyes swept over the Countess from her coiled and pinned hair, down the dipped curve of her waist to follow down to her feet. Then back and, as his eyes rose, the grin that had begun to bloom on his face- a dashed lascivious grin, Harold thought indignantly, his jealousy coming quick and fast- widened with pure animal appreciation.

Harold stiffened and moved up closer, until the scoundrel, the damned rogue, could see that an Englishwoman, any Englishwoman but this one in particular, had more than enough countrymen on hand to guard against foreign advances.

His advance made little effect. The Prince- he had to have been one of those countless little despots in the Russian court, judging from the amount of ridiculous braid pouring from his shoulders- did not so much as glance in his direction. Only when the thin-faced man in green at his shoulder, an equerry or some sort, tugged at his elbow, did he lift his gaze from Violet.

Harold took his chance. Sliding up to stand at Violet's shoulder, he bent his head until his lips were inches from the shell of her ear. He fought to keep his voice light and amused. "I see your frosty gaze has already captured one of our Russian hosts, my lady."

Violet turned to him, flinching from surprise. Then the veneer of frost slid down over her eyes and the familiar haughtiness took hold. "Nonsense!"

Harold took her elbow in his grip. To outside eyes, it would seem he intended to guide her away, perhaps to follow the retreating english party. He did not. He wanted her to stay there, right there. Not to move an inch from his side, most certainly not at the invitation of a Russian barbarian.

"You may capture foreign hearts, my lady. But an Englishwoman is best served," His grip tightened, digging into her flesh. "Closer to home." Closer to me.

"Be assured, Lord Hepworth." Violet pulled her arm from his grip. "I prefer to remain at home. In the company of my husband."

The old refrain was familiar but there was a new note of uncertainty. A tremble under the perfectly cut words that Harold latched upon like a tic seeking flesh. Whether it was from the new surroundings, the insolent Russian, or perhaps the unexpected fervour in his approach- so different from the languorous, careful prancing he was forced to adopt in London- Harold was not sure. Still, new blood surged in his veins, the sting of a fresh challenge appearing over the horizon.

He released her. She pulled away, a rustle of starched skirts and petticoats, a flush rising from the white lace collar of her neckline. Harold sketched a bow to her retreating back, his eyes not once leaving her.

"But does he prefer to remain with you, my lady?" He asked the icy air. And where will you turn to when you realise he does not?

In this city of canals and crystals, Harold determined, it would be him. And it would only be a matter of time.

Hello there! I know I should be working on my other downton abbey fics (not to mention Winter Rose itself!) but I was reading over some of the previous chapters to try and get continuity with upcoming events and Harold was a character that I felt needed a bit of fleshing out. Not to mention his previous history with Violet that affects so much of the events and Violet's actions in Winter Rose.

So here we go! The story - not to mention that scene on the quayside- from Harold's point of view. I don't know if this will make him more likeable or make you shudder more when he appears in Winter Rose, but at least he's had a bit of a say.

I hope you enjoyed reading this (and hope you will go back to see the scene from Violet's POV in Winter Rose - subtle push...) and thank you for taking the time to look!