Page 56 of A Curse of Hope and Shadows: Part I
Eventually, she stilled, allowing him to catch up. She leaned against a fence. Behind her, amidst large, leafy vines, were at least two dozen pumpkins. Adeline looked at them, smile dropping slightly.
“How do you feel about people?” she asked.
He couldn’t see the connection, but he decided to humour her. “The little ones taste better.”
She snorted. “I mean… before the curse, you went to parties, right? Festivals? How did you feel about people then? Crowds?”
He shrugged, “Ambivalent, largely. Although it depended on the combination of people. I wasn’t completely friendless once upon a time.”
He wondered how much of that was true. He’d had the company of many noble children from time to time, but were friends really friends if they didn’t stand beside you when the bad times came? Not that he’d been an easy person to maintain a friendship with. He had not been kind to the children Minty had summoned for him following his mother’s death.
“So, you don’t dislike people in general?” Adeline pressed, with something almost like a waver.
“Why do you ask?”
Her gaze fell once more to the pumpkin patch. “The Autumn Festival is coming up soon,” she said.
Dimitri knew it well. Even though he’d not been for years, he still watched the festivities in the village from the observatory on the top floor of the manor. He used to go with his mother, dressed in the masks the villagers donned for the occasion. Cloaks hiding their finery, they were in disguise, free to mingle with the common folk and dance among them as equals. They feasted on roasted pork, spiced cider and toffee apples, watching fire-jugglers, pumpkin smashing, and magicians whose sleight of hand was so slick it might as well have been magic.
He remembered looking forrealmagic, back then, being mystified by the possibility of it. His grandfather, the king, had a few magic items in his vault. Dimitri had seen them a few times when he’d been welcome at the palace. Rings that compelled the wearer to speak truth, necklaces spelled with fairy glamours to alter a person’s appearance, coins that cast illusions where they seemed to multiply. Back then, magic had seemed magnificent and wondrous.
And now… now he knew what magic could do.
“Would you come to the festival with me?” Adeline asked, jolting him back to the present.
Dimitri blinked. “Come again?”
“The festival. Would you come with me?”
Dimitri was fairly certain Adeline could make following her off a cliff sound enticing. “I’m fairly sure you’re allowed out in the evenings unaccompanied.”
“I am. I’m asking if you’dcome with me. As a friend. I’d… I’d enjoy it more, with you there.”
Dimitri’s chest heated. “You are very hard to say no to.”
“Great. How about a raise, while we’re at it?”
All of a sudden, the lines between them stiffened again, the reminder of what they were. She had asked him as a friend, but he was still her employer. No matter what he felt for her.
No matter what she could feel for him.
It started to rain in earnest. He prickled under the weight of the sky, but Adeline turned her face upwards, embracing it.
It soon turned into a downpour.
Grumbling, Dimitri seized her hand and hurried over to the bandstand in the corner of the gardens. It was the old one on a half-forgotten part of the estate, overgrown with ivy.
“You’re sopping wet!” he said, brushing rainwater from her shoulders. “You remembered my coat but forgot your own?”
“I… er… I gave mine to Leonie. It’s been too warm until now to think about getting another one. Don’t think it’s a money thing. It isn’t. Maybe a time thing.” She shook her head, droplets trembling.
“You’ll catch your death…” Dimitri fumbled for the ties on his cloak, freeing it from his shoulders and draping it over hers. Adeline looked up, startled. “What?”
“Usually I’m the one fretting aboutyou.”
He turned his gaze away from her, casting it out over the rain-soaked lawns. “I can fret, too,” he said.When it comes to you, I have no other option.
“If Mrs Minton or one of the others sees me wearing your cloak—”
