“Are you in need of assistance of some kind?” he asked.
She gave him a tight smile. “I am quite fine. Thank you.”
It was an obvious dismissal, but he just stood there, watching her with a rather inscrutable expression. Not unfriendly, just not, well, scrutable.
She flicked her hand toward the chapel. “You can go back inside and wait with all the other gawkers.”
“I will,” he said. “But first, I am curious. What are you doing?”
“Nothing,” she said quickly.
“You are clearly doing something,” he said, rather affably, to tell the truth.
She put one hand on her hip and waved her other arm in an arc that motioned to absolutely nothing. “I am not.”
He looked amused, and frankly, somewhat condescending. “You are.”
“I am not,” she ground out.
“You are.”
Himmel, he was annoying. “If you must know, I am trying to ascertain the best way to climb the garden wall.”
“Climb the . . .” He looked at the wall, then back at her. “Whatever for?”
Charlotte was so frustrated she wanted to cry. All she wanted to do was escape, and this complete stranger would not stop asking her questions. Worst of all, she had to conduct this conversation in English, which was a dreadful language. So unhelpful. In German, she could mash words together and make new ones, delightfully long and descriptive. Instead of saying, “I am jumping over the wall to escape my wedding,” she could describe the whole situation as preweddingwalljumping.
A German would know exactly what she meant.
The English? Bah.
“Please leave me be,” she said to the stranger. “I really must go.”
“But why?” he persisted.
“Because I think he may be a beast,” she burst out.
That got his attention. His brows—those lovely dark brows that would have looked so ridiculous under a wig—rose. “A beast.”
“Or a troll.”
He blinked a few times. “Who are we discussing exactly?”
“Well, that is impertinent. And it’s none of your business.” And then, because she was clearly losing her mind, she went and contradicted herself by telling him everything anyway. “The King,” she said desperately. “I am talking about the King.”
“I see.” His face grew thoughtful. It was a handsome face, Charlotte thought with a tinge of hysteria. Unlike the King, who was being hidden from her.
“No one will speak of him,” she said. “No one. He is clearly a beast. Or a troll.”
“Understood.”
Charlotte returned her attention to the garden wall. “You know, if I just grab there . . .”
“Right there?” He motioned to a spot.
“Yes.” Charlotte looked at him with renewed interest. Truly, he was well-built, fit and athletic under his clothes. She had rather a lot of brothers, and she knew that tailors employed countless tricks to make men look stronger and more manly. She also knew how to recognize these tricks, and it was quite clear that this man’s tailor had employed none of them.
He was definitely strong enough to be useful.
She smiled gamely. “Perhaps you could assist me by lifting me up?”
“Yes, of course,” he said, all amiability and politeness. “I do have one question, though. You do not like beasts or trolls?”
She gave him a look. He was wasting time. Time she most certainly did not have. “No one likes beasts or trolls.”
But the young man was not done with his questions. “What he looks like matters so much?”
“I do not care what he looks like,” Charlotte practically cried. “What I do not like is not knowing. I have asked everyone about him. Not just what he looks like. What he is like. And no one will tell me a thing.”
“That is a problem,” he murmured.
“Here,” she said, motioning him over. “Just take hold here. With a lift, I believe I can make it over the garden wall.”
“You want me to lift you over the wall so you may escape.”
Mein Gott, he was slow. “That is what I said, yes.”
He glanced behind him, back toward the chapel. “People will notice you are missing, will they not?”
“I shall worry about that later. Now, if you please, I just need a little help.” She motioned urgently. “Come, make haste.”
But he just crossed his arms. “I have absolutely no intention of helping you.”
Now she was irritated. He’d been so polite and chatty, giving every indication that he was a gentleman, when all he was really doing was wasting her time. “I am a lady in distress,” she snapped. “You refuse to help a lady in distress?”
“I refuse when that lady in distress is trying to go over a wall so she does not have to marry me.”
Charlotte went still. So still that she would have sworn her blood stopped flowing. She looked up. Into his eyes, which were very, very amused.
“Hello, Charlotte,” he said. “I am George.”
“I—I—”
His mouth curved into a devilish smile. “You . . . ?”
She sank into a curtsy. A very, very deep one. She would have scraped her forehead to the ground had it been anatomically possible. “I am so very, very sorry, Your Majesty.”
He reached down and took her hand, tugging her back upright. “Not Your Majesty. George.” His mouth made a funny line, and for a moment he looked almost flustered. “I mean, yes, Your Majesty. But to you, George.”
Charlotte was quite certain that words did not exist to describe her current state of wretchedness. Not in English or German. But she tried, nevertheless. “Please accept my apology,” she begged. “If I had known that you were you . . .”
“You would have what? Not told me you were trying to escape?”
He was teasing her. She could hear it in his voice. But this did little to ease her utter and complete mortification. And fear.
He seemed like a nice man. He hadn’t flown off in a rage over her behavior. But they both knew he could make her life a misery with a snap of his fingers. And she had just insulted him in the worst possible way.
“Well . . .” she said, trying to find words that could possibly fit such a situation. “Yes. I mean, no. I mean, I do apologize, Your Majesty.”
“George,” he said. “Just George.”
She couldn’t take her eyes off him. He was so . . . kind. Not at all what she’d expected, even before she’d tried in vain to question everyone about him.
It wasn’t that he was handsome, which he was.
He really was.
It was something else. Something she did not know how to describe, except that her arm had been tingling since he took her hand, and she would have sworn that her body was somehow lighter than it had been a moment earlier, as if she might suddenly find herself floating a few inches above the ground.
Everything felt different. She felt different.
He leaned in. “The King situation,” he said, almost conspiratorially. “It towers over us. Accident of birth on my part. But I thought perhaps as my wife you could ignore that, and I could be Just George to you.”
“Just . . . George?” she echoed.
He nodded. “That was of course before I found out that you do not want to be married to me.”
“I did not say that,” Charlotte said quickly.
“Oh, you did.”
“I did not.”
“You did.”
“It is not . . .” Charlotte shook her head, utterly frustrated. “I do not know you.”
He held his arms out to the sides. “I do not know you, either. Except that you are terrible at climbing a wall.”