Page 69 of Songs and Spun Gold
Angelika bounced slightly on her seat. “He must have paid you one of his outrageous compliments. What did he tell you?”
Between her sleep haze and her shock, she couldn’t reliably recall anything that had passed between them. Except for his agreement to speak to his father and the part where she had called him a liar.
She felt her face heating as she sat in the armchair, trying to decide how to answer. “Um...I was half asleep on my feet. And I’m not wearing an evening gown like you were.”
Angelika pouted. “Does he not like you? Maybe he just needs some time to get to know you.”
That was definitely not the problem, but Katy didn’t want to abuse his trust and spread his secret, so she stayed silent.
Reaching up to push her hair out of her face – she needed to find a replacement ribbon – she opened her mouth to give some non-answer when Angelika gasped. Katy dropped her hand and tugged her sleeve back down, but the damage was already done.
CHAPTER 19
Katy
Katy! Your bracelet!”
Fritz looked up. “The one from your old friend?”
“It wasn’tfromhim,” Katy protested, wishing her cheeks were slower to heat. “I made the bracelet myself.”
“Yes, but he gave you the river stones for it, didn’t he?” Angelika said. Her eyes were wide. “That was the next best thing to—”
“He never made me any promises,” Katy cut her off. “He—we found the stones together while exploring along the river’s edge. He kept some, and I kept some, and I made the bracelet out of three of mine because they were pretty.”
“I wish I’d known that,” she heard Fritz mutter.
Her forehead wrinkled as she turned to him. “Why?”
Running a hand through his hair, he dropped his eyes before glancing back at her. “You’d been wearing it since before he left, and you never took it off, even years later. I thought—I assumed he’d given it to you as—”
“As a betrothal bracelet?” Katy finished, gaping at him. “Fritz, I was fourteen!”
He shrugged. “Everyone knew how you felt about him. And he took you with him sometimes when he and his sister came to town.”
“Yes, but—!”
“And I saw the way he looked at you, Katy.” He lookeddown at his hands, rubbing them together in his lap. “It was the same way I did.”
Could she be any redder?
“If I’d known the truth, I would have asked you to walk the day you turned eighteen.” He looked up again, and his blue eyes were unspeakably sad. “If I had, we wouldn’t be here now.”
“You don’t know that, Fritz,” Katy said softly. “The king couldn’t require my marriage if I was already married, but it might have meant that I couldn’t save the mill.”
Fritz started to reach toward her, then squeezed his hand into a fist and drew it back. “We would have figured it out.”
“It doesn’t matter; we can’t go back and change things.” She felt her hand drifting toward her bare wrist and forced it back down. “I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
She shrugged. “For all of it.”
Clearing her throat, Angelika awkwardly said, “So what happened to the bracelet?”
Katy gritted her teeth as she remembered the glee in the stranger’s face when he demanded it as his price the second night. “It was time to let it go. One way or another, I expected to be betrothed soon; I couldn’t keep his river stones on my wrist after that.” Vaguely, she wondered if she would have a bracelet from Prince Axel or if the tradition would be overlooked since it was the king’s decision, not theirs. “So, I traded it for something I needed.”
“What now?” Fritz asked in a quiet voice.
