And now at last winter is fading and we are beginning to emerge from its gloom into spring. Today Freddie is expected home. Part of me longs to have him here, but I am wary. From Withers’s reports it seems he has been spending longer and longer time away from the hall. Who knows what he has been doing. I have sent a friendly spirit to watch over him, but it is a difficult task to do well. Freddie might not be a witch, but he is aware of our practices, and clever enough when it suits him. Over the years he has become quite adept at evading anyone Father or I have sent to guard him. After all, who are they guarding him from if not himself, and how can they possibly succeed in that?

*   *   *

The glorious early spring morning is too good to miss, Bram insists, and they cannot possibly pass it indoors. Besides, the portrait is finished. He is secretly delighted with it, and he senses that Lilith is, too. He knows he has captured the essence of her, and the muted hues he chose have worked better than he dared hope.

Winter has now fully relinquished its grip on London, and brave new life can be found forcing its way up from previously frozen flower beds, bare branches, and even between cobbles and paving slabs. Small birds flit to and fro gathering twigs and beakfuls of all manner of snatched materials for their nests. The sun is still low in the sky, and the days not yet lengthened into spring proper, but there is a sense of regeneration, of renewal, of hope. This rebirth of slumbering life has infected Bram with what he knows in his heart to be a misplaced optimism. He has even managed to persuade Lilith that they can venture out in public together for once.

The second he sees her slender figure standing by the entrance to the zoological gardens he knows the darkness of winter, of her time of mourning, of the most acute phase of her grief, all have passed. She is quite changed. Although still dressed in her sumptuous black woolen coat, she has chosen a hat of silver-gray, with matching gloves. He marvels at how such a tiny lifting, a minute step of barely a shade, can bring about such an alteration. Her complexion seems rosier, brighter, more alive.