I would own up to my mistake, and I had made a perfectly glorious one. I had presumed too much. Rafe was a guest of the inn. I was a maid who worked there. And that was all. I thought of the terrible scene in the dining room. My shameless flirting with Kaden, and everything I had said to Rafe. Heat flushed my face. How could I have made such a mistake?
I slid from the rock to the ground, hugging my knees and staring at the creek. I had no interest in cold or hot baths anymore. I only wanted to crawl into a bed where I could sleep forever and pretend today had never happened. I thought about getting up, walking to the cottage, and melting into the mattress, but instead my eyes stayed locked on the creek as I thought of Rafe, his face, his eyes, his warmth, his disdain, his vile presumptions.
I had thought he was different. Everything about him seemed different, every way that he made me feel. I’d thought we had some sort of special connection. I was obviously so very wrong.
The sparkling color of the creek dimmed to shadowy gray as daylight receded. I knew it was time to go before Pauline worried about where I was and came looking for me, but my legs were too tired to carry me. I heard a noise, a soft shuffling. I turned my head toward the path, wondering if Pauline had already hunted me down, but it wasn’t her. It was Rafe.
I closed my eyes and took a long pained breath. Please leave. I couldn’t deal with him anymore. I opened my eyes. He was still there, a bottle in one hand, a small basket in the other. He stood tall and still and so beautifully and irritatingly perfect. I looked at him blankly, betraying no emotion. Leave.
He took a step closer. I shook my head, and he stopped. “You were right, Lia,” he said quietly.
I remained silent.
“When we first met, you called me an ill-mannered boor.” He shifted from one foot to the other, pausing to look at the ground, an awkward worried expression crossing his face. He looked back up. “I’m everything you could ever call me, and more. Including stupid oaf. Maybe especially that.” He walked closer.
I shook my head again, wanting him to stop. He didn’t. I got to my feet, grimacing as I put weight on my ankle. “Rafe,” I said quietly, “just go away. It’s all a big mistake—”
“Please. Let me get this out while I still have the courage to say it.” The troubled crease deepened between his brows. “My life’s complicated, Lia. There are so many things I can’t explain to you. Things you wouldn’t even want to know. But there’s one thing you could never call me.” He set the bottle and basket down on a patch of grass. “The one thing you can never call me is repulsed by you.”
I swallowed. He closed what gap was left between us, and I had to lift my chin to see him. He looked down at me. “Because ever since that first day I met you, I’ve gone to sleep every single night thinking about you, and every morning when I wake, my first thoughts are of you.” He stepped impossibly closer and lifted his hands, cupping my face, his touch so gentle it was barely there. “When I’m not with you, I wonder where you are. I wonder what you’re doing. I think about how much I want to touch you. I want to feel your skin, your hair, run every dark strand through my fingers. I want to hold you, your hands, your chin.” His face drew nearer, and I felt his breath on my skin. “I want to pull you close and never let you go,” he whispered.
We stood there, every second an eternity, and slowly our lips met, warm, gentle, his mouth soft against mine, his breaths becoming mine, and then just as slowly, the perfect moment paused, and our lips parted again.
He pulled back far enough to look at me, his hands sliding from my face to my hair, his fingers tangling in it. My own hands reached up, slipping behind his head. I pulled him to me, our lips scarcely touching, taking the tingle and warmth of each other in, and then our mouths pressed together again.
“Lia?”
We heard Pauline’s distant worried call and moved away from each other. I wiped my lips, adjusting my shirt, and saw her coming around the path. Rafe and I stood like awkward wooden soldiers. Pauline stopped short when she saw us. “I’m sorry. It was getting dark, and when I didn’t find you in the cottage—”
“We were just walking back,” Rafe answered. We looked at each other, and he sent me a message with his eyes. It only lasted a brief second, but it was a full, knowing look that said everything I had felt and imagined about us was true.
He stooped and grabbed the basket and bottle, handing them to me. “I thought your appetite might return.”
I nodded. Yes, it seemed it already had.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
I leaned forward in the tub as Pauline scrubbed my back, savoring the slippery luxury of the bath oils on my skin and the hot water soothing my bruised muscles. Pauline dropped the sponge in the water in front of me, splashing my face.
“Come back to earth, Lia,” she called.
“It’s not every day one has a first kiss,” I said.
“May I remind you that it wasn’t your first kiss?”
“It felt like it was. It was the first one that mattered.”
She had told me as we were drawing water for our baths that everyone could hear us yelling from the dining room, so Berdi and Gwyneth had started another round of songs to drown out our words, but Pauline had heard me shout go away, so she never thought she’d end up interrupting a kiss. She’d already apologized several times, but I told her that nothing could take away from the moment.
She lifted a pitcher of warm rosewater. “Now?”
I stood and she let the fragrant water trickle over my head and down my body into the tub. I wrapped myself in a towel and stepped out, still reliving every moment, especially that last brief exchange looking into each other’s eyes.
“A farmer,” I sighed. “Isn’t that romantic?”
“Yes,” Pauline agreed.
“So much more genuine than a stuffy old prince.” I smiled. He worked the land. He made things grow. “Pauline? When did you—” And then I remembered it wasn’t a subject I should broach with her.
“When did I what?”
I shook my head. “Nothing.”
She sat on the end of the bed, rubbing oil onto her freshly bathed ankles. She appeared to have forgotten my half-said question, but after a moment she asked, “When did I know I had fallen in love with Mikael?”
I sat down across from her. “Yes.”
She sighed, pulling her knees up and hugging them. “It was early spring. I had seen Mikael several times in the village. He always had plenty of girls around him, so I never thought he’d noticed me. But he had. One day as I walked by, I felt his gaze on me, even though I didn’t look his way. Every time I went by after that, he stopped, ignoring the attentions of those around him, and he watched me until I passed, and then one day—” I watched her eyes looking at the opposite wall but seeing something else. Seeing Mikael. “I was on my way to the dressmaker, and he suddenly fell in step beside me. I was so nervous I just looked straight ahead. He didn’t say anything, just walked beside me, and when we were almost at the shop, he said, ‘I’m Mikael.’ I started to reply, and he stopped me. He said, ‘You don’t have to tell me who you are. I already know. You’re the most exquisite creature the gods ever created.’”
“And that’s when you knew you loved him?”
She laughed. “Oh, no. What soldier doesn’t have a posy of sweet words at the ready?” She sighed and shook her head. “No, it was two weeks later, when he’d exhausted every posy at his disposal, and he seemed so dejected, and he looked at me. Just looked at me.” Her eyes glistened. “And then he whispered my name in the sweetest, weakest, most honest voice, ‘Pauline.’ That’s all, just my name, Pauline. That’s when I knew. He had nothing left, but he wasn’t giving up.” She smiled, her expression dreamy, and resumed massaging oil into her foot and ankle.