Page 57 of Must Love Scones and Secrets
“And you wish he’d told you he was a prince?”
“Yes!” I exclaimed, then hesitated. “Wait. Wait… Okay, no. I don’t know.” I paced the small kitchen, narrowly avoiding knocking over a jar of dried lavender. “I mean, if he’d introduced himself as Prince Bjorn of Frostfjord, wielder of royal magic, owner of fifty fancy fur-trimmed cloaks, I’d have—” I stopped short, realizing what I was saying.
“You’d have what?” Winifred prompted, looking amused.
“I’d have acted differently with him,” I admitted. I groaned, covering my face with my hands, forgetting they were coveredin flour. “Oh, gods. I had a one-night stand with a prince. My mother would faint dead away.”
“Knowing he was a prince, would you have flirted with him, invited him to dinner, been yourself with him?”
I opened my mouth to say “of course I would have,” then closed it again. Would I? Or would I have been intimidated, formal, careful? Would I have asked all the same questions, shared all the same stories, kissed him in the rain-soaked cabin with the same abandon?
“I think he wanted you to knowhim,” Winifred continued. “Not his title. Just him.”
“But who is he? The real Bjorn?” I sank onto a stool. “Was any of it real?”
“My dear,” Winifred said dryly, “I may be the town gossip, but even I don’t have the supernatural ability to determine a man’s sincerity. Though if I did, I’d be much richer and probably married to that handsome merchant who passed through last summer. That said, I think it’s possible that the Bjorn you know is far more real than whatever princely version exists in Frostfjord. From what I can tell, he came here to escape all that.”
I thought about our time together. The way he’d smiled when I made him dinner, how he’d asked genuine questions about my baking, the tender way he’d touched me in the darkness of the cabin. The vulnerability in his eyes when he’d told me there were things about him I didn’t know.
“When we first met at Elder Thornberry’s,” I said quietly, “he seemed so uncomfortable with all the attention.” I paused, remembering the moment.
“That is telling.”
“But then his glowing runes. I mean… That was over the top in terms of a lie.”
“His runes glowed when he was with you?”
I nodded.
“Dear, that’s not something he can control. That’s a sign of love.”
“I thought he was just excited to see me. You know, in a state of…undress.” I felt my cheeks heat again. “But his arms practically lit up the whole cabin when we, um… Well, you know.”
“Did they now? My, my.”
“Not helping, Winifred!”
“On the contrary, I’m providing valuable context for your romantic crisis,” she said. “That’s more than just attraction, dear.”
“I didn’t fall in love with a prince,” I murmured, more to myself than to Winifred. “I fell in love with a man who helped unicorns, who was kind to Merry, who fixed my teacup when it broke.”
Winifred’s eyes widened. “Love, is it? We’ve progressed from ‘that handsome Rune elf’ to love rather quickly.”
I hadn’t meant to say that word aloud, but I couldn’t take it back now that it was out. And I didn’t want to. Because it was true. Somewhere between that first meeting at Elder Thornberry’s and our night in the cabin. I had fallen completely in love with Bjorn.
Not Prince Bjorn. Just Bjorn.
I sighed heavily. “You’ve seen him, Winnie. Those shoulders alone could inspire sonnets.”
“I’m old, dear, not blind,” Winifred said. “Though I suspect your feelings run deeper than an appreciation for his physique.”
I sighed, tracing the rim of my teacup with one finger. “He still should have told me.”
“Yes, he should have,” Winifred agreed. “But secrets have a way of becoming harder to tell the longer they’re kept.”
I thought about the fear in his eyes this morning, the way he’d said there were things about him I didn’t know, his promise that he would tell me soon. He’d been working up to it.
“What would you have done?” Winifred asked. “If you were a royal, tired of being seen only for your title, and you’d found someone who saw you for yourself?”
