Page 6 of Legacy of Glass
“No, never mind. You’re alive and unharmed, and that’s good enough. I’m late back as it is, and now I have to retrieve all the flowers.”
Julius glanced back the way they had come. Flowers were strewn in a long path between the cliff edge and their previous location. She had clearly shed them as she hurried after him with increasing urgency.
The girl was turning away, shaking her head, but she paused, looking at him with a creased brow. “Will you be all right to get back to…wherever you came from? You won’t walk off any more cliffs?”
His flush grew deeper at how obviously incapable she thought him. He now hoped desperately that she truly didn’t know his identity. “I can assure you it was a momentary aberration. I’m not usually in the habit of walking off cliffs.”
The girl raised her eyebrows, as if she wasn’t entirely sure she believed him, but after a moment, she inclined her head politely and hurried away.
Julius watched her go, his heart still not returned to its normal rhythm. He was unsure if it was residual fear or humiliation fueling its thumping.
He knew he should hurry after her and offer proper thanks for the rescue. But he remained where he was, paralyzed by humiliation and indecision, until the girl hurried through the back gate of one of the mansions in the Row and closed the door firmly behind her.
He started at the sound of its closure, finally coming back to life. But it was too late to go after her. He couldn’t possibly barge into the house of one of Sovar’s noble families and demand to see the girl who had been carrying the flowers. Someone in the household would be sure to recognize him, even if the girl did not, and then there might be ramifications for his family. He’d already failed in his role badly enough. He didn’t need to continue bumbling around, making it worse.
The best thing Julius could do was get back to the palace as quickly as possible and pretend he’d never left. With any luck, he would never see the girl again. Without her flowers, he’d gotten a better look at her clothes, and while she wasn’t dressed in a servant’s livery, her clothes weren’t expensive enough to indicate she was one of the nobility.
She was a mystery he was never going to solve, and he was content to have it so.
But as Julius hurried toward home, he couldn’t shake the encounter from his mind. The more he relived it, the less he could understand his own missteps. What had come over him?
He moved faster and faster at the uncomfortable possibility that occurred to him. The girl hadn’t known his identity, so he had been interacting with her as Julius, not as the crown prince. Did that mean the Legacy had deserted him in that moment?
He had always known the Legacy aided him to play the charming role required of him, but he had thought of it as a subtle influence, providing a final gloss to his own efforts. But now he found himself questioning all his assumptions. He had given his life to his role, but perhaps he was far less suited to it than he had ever imagined. And if it was possible for both his own skill and the Legacy to desert him so completely, when might it happen again?
He tried to push the thought away. It hadn’t happened before in twenty-one years, so there was no reason to think it would happen again. He had met countless people in his life, and this girl was the only one who had ever discomfited him so.
The solution was simple. He just had to make sure he never encountered her again. Since she hadn’t appeared to be a noble, he didn’t need to fear meeting her at court. And he would make sure that was the last time he ever walked behind Manor Row. If he was fortunate, that was the one and only time he would ever see the girl with the flowers.
Chapter3
Olivia
Olivia polished the enormous mahogany dining table with lackluster movements. And yet the warm wood shone in the wake of her efforts. She looked down the remaining length—stretching along the entire cavernous room—and sighed. Even with the Legacy’s help, it was a tedious and time-consuming task.
“It’s a lovely piece, is it not?” her aunt asked happily, mistaking the meaning of Olivia’s sigh. “It’s a good thing the previous owner was eager to sell us so much of the furniture along with the house. I don’t think this table would fit through either of the room’s doors!”
Olivia glanced from the door near her to the one at the other end of the room and had to agree. She didn’t feel the glee about the sale that her aunt seemed to feel, though. Olivia couldn’t help feeling sorry for the family who had given up their home to strangers, although she knew nothing about them.
“Who was the previous owner?” she asked her aunt, who was busy arranging the flowers Olivia had gathered into a formal arrangement for the center of the table.
“The man who sold it to us was a merchant. Of course, he wasn’t the original owner since all the houses in Manor Row were originally built by noble families. I suppose he must have purchased it from one of them at some point, after he grew wealthy enough.”
Aunt Helen paused and looked up from her work, her nose wrinkling slightly. “He isn’t wealthy any more, which is why he sold the house.” She tsked, and her expression softened. “From what I’ve heard, his wife was always sickly. And she managed to bear him only a single daughter. So when she finally succumbed to her illness and passed away…” She shook her head.
Olivia’s sympathy for the unknown man grew. “The Legacy must have tried to throw every Sovaran widow with two children that it could find at his head.”
“Of course,” her aunt said. “But the silly man refused to even look at any of them! Can you imagine?”
Olivia could easily do so. He must have loved his wife very much.
“So naturally his business failed, and he was forced to sell the house and all its contents and move to a much more modest dwelling on the other side of town.” Aunt Helen gave a disapproving sniff. “He should have thought of his daughter.”
On that they were in agreement, although Olivia was inclined to think he had been thinking of the girl.
“Perhaps they wanted to move,” she suggested. “Perhaps this house reminded them too much of their missing wife and mother. With only two of them, they might be much happier in a smaller home in a different part of town.”
“Happier!” her aunt cried, horrified. “What nonsense are you talking, niece? Do you know how few properties on Manor Row have ever come up for sale? Only the most successful and influential families of business have ever had the chance to purchase one.” Her chest puffed out as she spoke, her expression glowing with pride.
