A Lesson in the Storm: Season of Desire: Part 1 (Seasons Quartet) Read Online Free Page B

alive after the car left the road. It’s amazing that we’re both out of the twisted body I saw fall into the valley. But as the reality of our predicament begins to sink in, I start to feel fear gripping me once more.
      ‘What are we going to do?’ I ask, staring up at him anxiously. I’m more awake now and more able to process what’s going on.
      ‘Don’t worry,’ he replies swiftly. ‘They’ll soon realise we’re not at the airport. Any moment now we’ll be missed and they’ll start looking for us. Your father is the kind of man who will move heaven and earth to find you, don’t worry about that.’
      I wonder how well he knows my father but quickly push that thought out of my mind. Of course Dad will be frantic when he realises what’s happened.
      ‘Can we climb up to the road?’ I ask, and crane my neck to look over his shoulder at the mountain towering above us.
      He glances back as well and says dryly, ‘I don’t think so. Unless you’re hiding some crampons and a few ropes in that jacket of yours.’
      I see what he means: there’s a steep wall of rock behind us that disappears into the white fog that shrouds everything more than a few feet away. There’s no clue of where the road might be.
      ‘Then what do we do? Stay here?’
      He doesn’t answer at once. Then he says, ‘That would be sensible. The car will be warm for a while yet. If they come out with heat-seeking equipment, that’s what they’ll find. It might be more visible from the air than it is to us in any case.’
      ‘Visible?’ I look around at the white, misty world we’re lost in. The idea of being seen seems entirely hopeless. I whisper, ‘Oh my God.’
      ‘Listen,’ he says brusquely, ‘we’ve been lucky so far. We hit the plateau instead of falling bang slap into that valley – that was just a matter of a few feet. And I got us out of the car before it fell. There’s no reason why we can’t go on being lucky. If we can’t go up, then maybe it makes more sense to go down.’
      ‘Down?’ The idea is horrifying. ‘You can’t be serious!’ The only way I know of getting down a mountain is skiing.
      He glances down at me again, and I’m suddenly aware that I’m in the arms of a total stranger, and even though he’s employed to ensure my safety, I am relying on him more than I ever could have anticipated. He blinks at me, his expression impassive. His lips tighten as he thinks. Then, without warning, he turns and carries me swiftly over the snowy ground to the wall of mountain. In the comparative shelter of the sheer mountainside, he puts me down. I’m worried that I have no strength to support myself but as I’m lowered I find that my feet can take my weight, though a cramping pain seizes my chest as I stand on the ground. I can’t help whimpering with it.
      ‘Here,’ he says, ‘let’s build you some shelter so you can sit down.’
    He starts to hollow out a space in the snowdrift at the foot of the rocky wall, scraping out snow with his bare hands until he has made an oval shape. As he goes about it, he starts to talk in his deep Scottish burr, speaking in a curiously sing-song way that I guess must be to keep me calm. ‘So, we’re going to be found, don’t you worry about that… but just in case it takes longer than we want, I have to get you a little warmer. I’m going to tuck you in here and then I’m going to scout about a bit so I can assess our situation. I want to find out where we’ve fallen and if there are any easy routes out, and if there’s a wee bit of shelter in case we have to wait a while—’
    He goes on but I’ve stopped listening, as soon as I grasped the fact that he’s going to leave me here in this little snow cave he’s made for me.
    ‘Wait!’ I cry, putting one hand on his arm. ‘You can’t leave me here!’
    He glances at me and a smile curves his mouth. It’s a handsome mouth, I realise, with well-shaped lips above a strong square