She paused for a moment, touching the flowers too. “There’s a lot one can do with these, you know. My sisters and I used to press them between the pages of books. Sometimes we’d make paper out of them. Very poor paper, mind you, but it was fun. Once, we tried making ink, though that ended in absolute disaster?—”
Suddenly, and without a single word, Abigail shoved her and made a run for it.
It happened so fast that Valentine didn’t even have time to react. Cecilia’s figure lurched to the side, and before he could so much as take a step, she was swallowed by the hedge.
His breath caught. “Abigail!”
Without hesitating, Valentine crossed the short distance to her in quick, long strides. Cecilia was already attempting to rise, tugging at her skirt with one hand while trying, with the other, to extricate a small branch from her hair.
He offered his hand before he could think better of it. “Forgive her,” he said, his voice low. “She has never done anything like that before.”
Cecilia accepted his help, gripping his hand as he drew her up. Her eyes, when she met his gaze, were not hurt, not even startled, but sharp with something closer to defiance.
“That was low,” she said, panting. “Shoving me when I least expected it.”
“I’ll speak to her,” he added.
“She ran that way,” she said, brushing crushed leaves from her shoulder as her gaze swept toward the path Abigail had disappeared through. “I should go after her.”
“No,” Valentine said quickly, intercepting her movement. “Give her a moment. She knows the grounds, and her governess will find her shortly.”
“But it might be dangerous,” Cecilia added. “Plus, she might probably be upset by something I did, so I–”
“She knows the grounds,” he repeated. “She won’t come to harm. She’s prone to dramatics, but she never strays far.”
Cecilia hesitated, clearly unconvinced, but said nothing more. Her hand moved to her skirts again, shaking out the remnants of soil and green. Another leaf clung to her hair, just above her ear. Before he could stop himself, Valentine reached out and plucked it free.
“There’s another,” he muttered, reaching to pluck a damp, half-curled leaf clinging to her sleeve. “And here.” His fingers brushed across the lace edge of her bodice where a bit of hedge had snagged. Then another by her shoulder. A burr was tangled in her loosened ribbon. Another was tucked just behind her collar.
He stepped around her slightly, not thinking. “Hold still,” he said lowly.
“I can manage,” she said quietly, reaching up with a shaky hand.
“You missed some.”
He reached again, fingertips skimming along the curve of her neck as he swept away a final petal. His hand hovered, just for a moment too long. Then he noticed a faint speck of dust along her cheekbone. Absurdly small. It shouldn’t have mattered.
Yet his hand lifted.
He brushed it away gently, thumb grazing the soft line beneath her eye, and in response, Cecilia froze.
The contact was brief, but it was enough. Her breath caught, and color spread slowly across her cheeks. She looked up at him, startled.
He felt it too. That momentary shift in the air. As if the garden itself had gone still. Then, remembering himself...remembering the boundaries he had so clearly drawn, he stepped away.
Fool.
He had told her only yesternight that he would never touch her. Yet here he was, contradicting himself. He stepped back immediately, dusting his hands against each other. What was he thinking?
Valentine stepped back immediately, the pads of his fingers tingling faintly. He dusted his palms together, as though he could shake the contact loose, erase the heat that lingered in his skin.
“It was a German knight,” he said suddenly, voice a shade too brisk, “not a French soldier.”
Cecilia, still adjusting her gown and tucking loose strands of hair back into her braid, looked up at him, blinking. “Pardon?”
“The legend,” he clarified, gesturing vaguely toward the flowerbed she had gestured to earlier. “You said it was a French soldier who called out to his lady. It wasn’t. It was a German knight.”
She frowned slightly. “Are you certain?”
