“Prince Aethelbald!”
He startled, stepped back, shook his head, and looked again. “Princess Una?” Swiftly he slipped down to the streambed and splashed across rather than crossing the bridge. Water poured from his boots as he climbed up the near bank, and he beckoned to Una. “Princess, what are you doing here? Please come off the bridge!”
She clutched her journal close to her side and licked her lips. “I . . . I could ask the same of you.” She had not spoken with him since the evening of Gervais’s departure. On a few occasions he had made some polite attempt at conversation, but true to her vows, she had snubbed him. The memory of Gervais’s sudden departure and her subsequent embarrassment was still too fresh in her mind. She raised her chin and tried to speak grandly. “I mean that this is my father’s wood. What are you doing tramping around in it? Does my father know?”
Aethelbald beckoned again. “Please, Princess Una, come off the bridge. This is not your father’s wood, and I need no permission. But you – ”
“It is too,” she snapped, backing away from him. “It grows in his kingdom; therefore this is his wood. I have every right to be on my father’s land, haven’t I?”
He glanced at the forest on the far side of the bridge. “Have you crossed over?” he asked.
Una blinked. “Over the Old Bridge? Of course not.”
The Prince let out a long breath. “You remain on the near side?” His hands were outstretched, as though he wanted to pull her off. Afraid that he actually might, she stepped from the planks onto the leafy bank.
“No one crosses the Old Bridge,” she said.
“Good.”
She looked down at the dirt and grass clinging to her wet toes. Aethelbald stepped closer to her. She wanted to ask him why he was there, what he had been doing on the far side, the far side that no one went to – but for some reason the words would not form in her mouth. She could not ask, no matter how she might wish to, and she chewed on her tongue, frustrated.
Yet Aethelbald was visibly relieved. “This side belongs to your father,” he said. “Stay over here, princess. But, tell me, do you often come to this place alone?”
“Of course I do,” she said. “I told you, this is my father’s wood and perfectly safe.”
“You’ve never met anyone here?”
She glared at him. “Not until today.” She paused, then added almost as an excuse, “Felix comes with me. Sometimes. He used to.”
“Ah,” Aethelbald said. He cast one last glance back across the Old Bridge, pursed his lips, and looked at her again. His gaze lit upon her journal, and he half smiled, indicating it with a nod. “You come here to read?”
She hugged it closer. “No.”
He noticed then the pencil in her right hand. “To write, then? Are you a writer?”
“Sometimes,” she admitted.
“Stories? Poetry?”
“Poetry.”
“I did not know you were a poet.” He spoke with a smile that surprised her with its warmth and interest. She looked down at her feet to avoid it. “Do you seek to follow in the footsteps of the great Eanrin of Rudiobus?”
“Lights above, no!” she said quickly. “I wouldn’t dream of comparing myself to his genius.”
“Well, that’s a relief in any case,” said the Prince, and he smiled again, though she, glancing up, couldn’t quite read his expression.
He asked, “Perhaps you would one day recite a piece?”
She did not answer. Deep down inside Una wanted to. Other than Felix, who didn’t count, no one had ever inquired about her poeting attempts before; none had ever been curious to read her pieces or asked her to perform them.
But she kept her mouth tightly shut.
Aethelbald looked at the ground at her feet, his jaw working as though he was trying to say something. At last he said, “May I – ”
“If you’re thinking to ask about my hands again – no, they’re still not burned.”
He blinked, and all trace of a smile left his face. “I was going to ask if I might escort you home.”
Shame scratched at the back of her mind. How could she be such a shrew? But she drew herself together and shook her head.
“You will stay here alone?”
“Yes.” And as an afterthought she added, “Thank you.”
“It grows late.”
She shrugged, which wasn’t a particularly elegant gesture, but for the moment she didn’t care.
He sighed and took a few steps uphill toward the gardens, then paused and looked back at her. “Don’t cross over.”
The next moment Aethelbald was gone.