Kiss of the Ice Maiden (novel)

 was a novel in the Lethbridge-Stewart series, released by Candy Jar Books in 2021.

Publisher's summary
Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart is in love.

Assigned to oversee the installation of a priceless exhibit for the British Museum in Vienna, Lethbridge-Stewart soon meets the intoxicating Melandre, a mysterious fashion model from Paris. Romance quickly blooms and they are soon going on a date, seemingly oblivious to the fact that someone, or something, is stalking Melandre.

Anne Travers, meanwhile, is helping out an old archaeologist friend on the Greek islands uncovering the remains of a mysterious race of giants. But that’s not all she uncovers. Soon an unexpected find leads her back to England, and an attack on the Fifth Operational Corps’ base at Imber.

Lethbridge-Stewart and Anne find themselves caught up in a mystery that goes back decades – maybe even centuries. The deadly Ice Maidens await, and they won’t be stopped. Which, for Lethbridge-Stewart, means a trip down memory lane to the Second World War, and an encounter with an orphan in the war-torn streets of London.

Sometimes love has a price. And Lethbridge-Stewart is about to learn, it’s a costly one!

Plot
Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart has been sent to Vienna to guard a travelling museum exhibit from smugglers, when he has an encounter with the fashion model Melandre Tricart. Immediately smitten, he asks her out on a date and soon they become an inseparable couple. The Brigadier notes with concern in the first date that he was comfortable enough to reveal classified details about a Corps encounter with the Great Intelligence. On one date, he spots an eight-foot tall man following them and has a vague memory of an event in 1943. Anne Travers is in Greece, investigating evidence of that the Bible’s tales of Nephilim breeding a race of giants is based on aliens landing on Earth and breeding with humans. She uncovers a strange box containing various chemical vials before she receives orders to depart later to join the Brigadier in Vienna. That night, a mysterious woman enters her hotel room, paralyses her, and steals the box. When she returns to the Corps base at Imber the next day, she finds various soldiers dead after they turned on each other in a psychotic rage. Bill Bishop, who was unaffected, is able to save her and subdue Major Leopold, and Anne discovers one of the lost vials in her lab. Travers arrives in Vienna and the Brigadier is unsettled and annoyed when she becomes aware of his “leisure time”. After discussing Imber and her work (with the Brigadier believing it’s not a coincidence she was investigating giants the same week he’s seen one), Travers is startled to find Lethbridge-Stewart believes his brief holiday relationship will be a long-term thing. When she meets Melandre, she doesn’t trust her and notices the woman’s eyes change colour in a way similar to her attacker in Greece. At the museum exhibit, one of the items turns out to be another chest of elixirs and Melandre, who arrived with several friends, is caught out to see it and learn Travers has one. Men across the museum suddenly turn on each other violently. While the security is distracted, the giant steals the elixirs and kills several guards. Melandre and her friends transform into skeletal creatures and depart, Melandre apologising to the shocked Brigadier. He and Travers realise the women must have caused the rampage and did the same at Imber. He pursues the group, armed with a sword from the exhibit, to an abandoned fair in the rough Praterstern area. Melandre reveals she and her ‘sisters’ are Ice Maidens, and is upset Lethbridge-Stewart doesn’t remember they met before in 1943: that encounter made her seek him out for one last time before the Maidens took the elixirs and left. The Brigadier, however, can’t let them depart after killing innocent people. Before he can attempt anything, the giant knocks him out. The Brigadier recounts to Travers his memory of 1943, which he’d buried: he and his mother were on a day trip to London and Alistair had managed to get a few minutes to explore around Piccadilly Circus when he spotted a troubled-looking girl being pulled around by a giant man. Suspecting she might be in trouble, he tries to intervene. A daylight air raid suddenly hits London and in the chaos, the giant and the girl are separated. Alistair ends up trying to take her to a shelter but when a second raid hits, they take shelter in a damaged theatre. Alistair is struck by her beauty, but concerned she seems to know nothing about the war and says she has no parents, and the orphanage she was in was struck by the Luftwaffe. When a third air raid bombs the theatre, Alistair is trapped under rubble but the girl is somehow able to lift it off him. When the girl leaves the theatre after the all-clear, Alistair tries to follow but is delayed when he sees a theatre worker, Gillian, is trapped. He escorts her out to find his father looking for him; his father is annoyed he went missing but quietly impressed that he rescued someone. Later, Alistair catches one last glimpse of the strange girl, who he realises in the present day must have been young Melandre. He now believes she was manipulating him, while Travers believes Melandre seemed to genuinely have feelings for him. Believing the Ice Maidens will head for Greece, the Brigadier requests permission from General Hamilton to be sent there. Later, hearing a siren’s song in his head, he returns to the fairground to find local derelicts had surprised and stabbed one of the Maidens. He’s able to get a vague location in the Greek islands from her before she dies, turning into ice. The Brigadier and Travers detour to investigate Melandre’s apartment in Paris and while he is briefly surprised by an Ice Maiden removing evidence, a photo of an old lighthouse means they can narrow down their search in Greece. With the aid of a helicopter piloted by Flight-Sergeant Driscoll, whom Travers met during their previous mission in Greece, they find an isolated rural village called Vaktria. A surprising number of giants live there, confirmation of Travers’ theories about the Nephilim being real, but the visitors are treated with suspicion. With the help of giant fisherman Kaimana, Travers learns Melandre (called “Mesie” in Vaktria) was a local girl who left years ago and her giant minder is one of the villagers, someone Kaimana considers “bad”. In Melandra’s old house, there’s a painting of the local fog. Kaimana says sometimes they will hear mournful singing from the fog and then the screams of dying sailors. The Brigadier spots and pursues Melandre’s henchman. The giant attempts to ambush him in the narrow ruins of a castle but accidentally trips, and the Brigadier finds him clinging to the edge; he tries and fails to pull him to safety. Accepting his death, the giant reveals the elixirs are the source of the Ice Maiden’s immortality (and implies Melandre’s age reset to childhood as part of this), that he found her after she’d escaped in 1943, and that she’d tasked him to spy on Lethbridge-Stewart for years due to her infatuation. Before he lets go and dies, the man warns the Brigadier that the Ice Maidens are malevolent and can’t be trusted. A fog soon comes up, with Travers suspecting the Maidens did it, and the Brigadier learns there’s been numerous shipwrecks going back generations and local legends of haunting songs drawing sailors in. Unable to let the Ice Maidens continue killing, the Brigadier heads for the island with a lighthouse and pretends to be driven out of his mind with desire for Melandre. She appears with the Maidens, first trying to convince him to leave and protesting that he doesn’t truly know her, before agreeing to take him into the sea with her. This was bait for a trap: RAF men emerge on the unprepared Ice Maidens and fire modified nets at them. While intended to capture, it causes them to disintegrate. An enraged Melandre attacks the Brigadier and he is forced to shoot her; she rejects a chance of being saved by elixir and allows herself to die. Travers returns to Vaktria with the archaeologist Bertram Stoddard to show him the giants. They find none of them and after a quiet talk with the local priest, Travers realises the villagers are hiding the giants from strangers and agrees to leave them in peace. Later, while lamenting his fate to seemingly be alone, the Brigadier sees Melandre rise out of the sea, having returned to it and reformed. Meanwhile, Travers is once again visited by the Ice Maiden she met before and assured it will never harm her. Many years later, Sir Alistair is on a Russian train which crashes. When helping passengers, he finds a younger Melandre: she claims not to recognise him and to be called Ophelia, searching for a lost orphan (just as she’d claimed to be when they first met). He offers to help her to a nearby village for shelter and notices as ‘Ophelia’s’ eyes change colours to black.

Characters

 * Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart
 * Anne Travers
 * Leopold

Continuity

 * The story takes place soon after the Brigadier's engagement was cancelled in PROSE: The Daughters of Earth.
 * Reference is made to the Keynsham Triangle (PROSE: The Dreamer's Lament) and the events of PROSE: Times Squared.
 * The Brigadier considers that Doris may have been the only other woman he felt as strongly about, and Anne Travers has heard he had several holiday flings with the same woman (Doris).