Let it Snow!

❄️Thirty-Seven❄️

"This is the most popular room of the castle, nowadays used for weddings. I always hoped I'd get married here," she said, then blushed. Why on Earth did she have to say that?

She caught his smile from the opposite end of the large chamber before she let her eyes stroll to the very famous ceiling. It was carved out of pinewood, with one hundred eighty-three gold-plated angel faces looking down, each with a different expression.

"The medallion in the centre of the ceiling depicts Count Pállfy's crest, a deer, and a broken wheel. Legend has it that one of his ancestors was miraculously saved from a certain death by hurtling off a precipice, when a deer who jumped in front of his carriage caused one of its wheels to break, and forced the horses, scared by thunder and out of the coachman's control, to change direction and stop running. The Latin inscription on the ribbon around the medallion, 'Omnia Cum Tempore', the Count's motto, translates as 'All in good time'".

Everything in its time... Nora mused, thinking the words over for the umpteenth time. She had kind of adopted the motto as her own a long time ago, and believed it. There was no reason to rush, or get stressed about life, if things were supposed to happen, they would when the right time came...

She leaned into Martin when he approached her, his arm wrapping around her waist from behind pulling her into him. Maybe this was her time, time to let herself go and follow her heart without trying to think too far ahead and run away before any of the possible consequences of her decision could reach her.

"That was wonderful," Martin whispered, his breath tickling her earlobe and making her shiver, his touch and closeness taking her breath away. "You sound as if you've been doing this your entire life. Come," he added, taking her by her hand, leading her to another door.

Nora followed him into the cold darkness of one of the many courtyards, towards an ill-lit archway which hid the castle's oldest flight of steps, cut directly into the travertine hill on which the castle stood centuries before the last reconstruction, leading to another courtyard. If she expected to meet the Black Lady, the castle's famous resident ghost, this would be the most likely place... She shivered at the thought and refused to look over her shoulder when she heard a sudden rush of wind so close to her ear that it could be a cold whisper leaving ghostly lips, drawing a step closer to Martin as she followed him up the cold, arched stone passage, step after slippery step.

Even though she wasn't immediately sure where she was when they finally reached the top of the stairway, Nora recognised the courtyard the moment her eyes found the well standing in its middle. She rushed towards its ancient iron grid just as when she was a little girl, curious to see the water deep down, happy to find the underground lake that filled the crater of an old thermal spring illuminated. A cold draft carrying scents of old stone, moss, and mildew from the deep pit caressed her face, and she closed her eyes momentarily as elation she could not explain threatened to overwhelm her.

"It's twenty-six metres deep; it's quite unbelievable, isn't it?" she asked, voice shaking, meeting Martin's eyes. He stood close at her side and she smiled at him before raising her eyes towards the dark, wintry sky, squinting against the falling snowflakes as she found what she she was looking for.

"And there's the Thorn Crown," she said, admiring the gilded, spiky circle placed on top of one of the towers. "The symbol of one of the owner's unrequited love," Nora muttered, "the love of an old count for a much younger girl, for whom he repaired an old castle, and yet she refused to marry him."

"Would you fall in love with such a count?"

"Such a count?" Nora repeated, looking at him again, finding him observing her.

"A man almost ten years older than you, someone whom you believed to be another Blackbeard, a man who might have something in common with your Mr Rochester, a father... A count... with strings attached?"

He let his voice trail off, and Nora could feel he was in difficulty of how to continue.

"Would anyone fall in love with a woman who has been old enough to become a wife and a mother for years, and yet achieved nothing in her life, not even a career to be proud of? A woman who tries to erase the last ten years of her life and start all over again? A woman who owns nothing apart from an inherited cottage and an old car?"

She shook her head, letting her eyes drop to the surface of the water rippling at the bottom of the deep pit as she continued, "Reaching a certain age, we all have strings attached... But are we really defined by what we did and do? If yes, what does it say about me, a thirty years old woman looking after another's child for a living? Would anyone fall in love with a woman like that?"

A sigh escaped him, making Nora turn her face to him again, and as she saw him open his mouth, she wrapped her arm around his neck and pulled him down, silencing the words he was about to utter before they would leave his lips. She wasn't ready for a confession her words might have tempted him to make, and he wasn't either. Even if he liked her as much as she liked him, it was too early. They had only just met, and there were many things lying between them they needed to talk about before taking another step forward.

Nora may have decided to let herself go and stop overthinking the future, but she didn't want to rush. If she and Martin were meant to be together, they would have the rest of their lives to figure everything out.