Page 8 of The Goblin and The Dancer
Rosanna sounded pleased to see him—so pleased that Grik stopped short with joy—but surprised. His joy wavered.
Paul’s expression was the exact opposite of Rosanna’s. He glared at Grik as if he were a bug that had dared to crawl across his boot.
“What do you want?” Paul demanded, not exactly spitting but coming close, and Grik felt himself folding inward, flinching from the soldier’s perfection and open derision.
“It’s,” Grik stammered miserably. “It’s . . . it’s . . . it’s . . .”
Paul’s eyebrows were drifting further and further upwards in an expression of increasing censure, and Grik finally managed to blurt out, “I have a delivery for Miss Rosanna!”
He thrust the package at her awkwardly, but when she took it, he held on a second longer. Their fingers almost touched, but not quite. He held on tighter and looked up at her desperately.
His voice was little more than a croak as her surprised gaze met his. “This is for you.”
Here I am!he thought, gazing up at her.I want you to have this candy, and I want you to know that I’ve loved you from the moment I saw you. I know I’m ugly and I look ridiculous next to this soldier and I couldn’t even afford the carriage ride he was so quick to pay for on your behalf—but I love you.
Rosanna shot him a vaguely startled look, and Grik felt sure she had somehow read his thoughts, and his heart twisted into knots of hope as he saw her cheeks turn slightly pink. But her voice was perfectly controlled when she spoke.“Thank you, Grik. I’m sorry you came all this way in the rain. You could have left it in my dressing room.”
Grik shriveled inwardly at her unemotional response. Was that a vague hint that she wished he hadn’t shown up just then and interrupted her morning with Paul?
Rosanna’s eyebrows were slightly pinched together as she looked at him, obviously trying to understand his depressed posture.“But thank you for bringing it to me.” She offered him a bright smile.
He laced and unlaced his fingers, his stomach twisting unhappily, clearing his throat and trying to find the courage to compliment her, to blurt out that the package was from him—but the unbearable presence of a third party choked him.
“Do you need something?” Paul demanded pointedly. The unspoken message was clear: Go away.
Grik turned to look at the soldier and hated him.
Paul might as well have been a handsome iron ornament for all the lack of feeling he possessed. No, not iron; that was too substantial. Tin: he was a ridiculous, hollowed-out, brightly-colored tin toy that might catch the eye but had nothing of true value to it.
And he couldn’t compete against it—not when Rosanna could literally look between the two of them and see what they both had to offer. Grik and his rock candy, or a handsome soldier with a hero's pay with which to lavish gifts on her.
Grik suddenly couldn’t get out of there fast enough.
“Well, I guess I’d better leave,” he choked out.
Rosanna nodded slowly. “Thank you very much for bringing this to me, Grik.”
Her tone was apologetically dismissive. Of course it would be. She thought he was making a delivery. And she couldn’t really ask Grik to join their party—and he didn’t want to.
He couldn’t blurt the truth out here, with Paul glaring at him with such obvious disgust. It was hard enough to put his heart in someone else’s hands without having his rival standing by ready to smash it.
He couldn’t say it, not in front of Paul.
“Well, um, good-bye.” He turned away quickly, because he was suddenly afraid that he was going to burst into tears of failure and mortification.“Good-bye,” he mumbled again, looking at his feet. So he walked away and worried that he was leaving his one chance behind him.
It took all of his strength not to look over his shoulder; he feared that he would see Paul laughing at him, and Rosanna looking after him pityingly. Her pity would be even worse than Paul’s derision.
His feet scuffed against stone. With every step, he felt himself becoming smaller and Rosanna growing farther and farther away.
Tonight! This evening he would be the first one at her dressing room door, and he would ask her to dinner—he would spend every penny he had to afford it—and then he would tell her.
But it would be too late then. The words ran through his brain like a horrible song.Too late, too late, too late.
Paul was moving fast—as if he were on battlefield maneuvers. By this evening, Rosanna’s heart could be firmly his. She might even be engaged.
If only he had scraped up the nerve sooner! It couldn’t be too late. He would do something, anything, to give himself just one chance to try to win her heart.
He thought desperately and wistfully of that long-imagined, perfect evening that he had been dreaming of, perhaps by a fountain or pool.
