“Did you?” Alethea inquired, with a skeptical smirk. She wanted to say, how did you manage to miss me with your face smashed against Megan’s? Or perhaps, more cruelly, that’s not what I heard. But she supposed it was entirely possible that Tristan had missed her, in his way. In a friend way.
Though, his briefly wandering eye did not escape her notice.
“I missed you, too,” she admitted, with an exaggerated sigh. “The manor seems so dull, without any princes running amok.” Her smile turned roguish, playful, but she did not answer the question about preferred welcoming behavior. It was best not to discuss what she would have liked, and besides, he seemed to have forgotten the subject as soon as his feet touched the floor. She raised one eyebrow, her smile turning incredulous.
“Alright, I’ll go with you, but I am not wearing that outside.” She popped the lid of the trunk at the foot of her bed and withdrew a pair of slightly rumpled woolen breeches and a felted coat, and put them both on under and over her chemise, respectively. She wanted to ask, is that all Megan wore, when she met you in the garden? Or the orchard, or the henhouse, or wherever you actually met... “Sketching in the dark will be an...interesting challenge,” she commented instead. Her voice sounded nonchalant as she tucked the book and a roll of pencils into a small satchel, and slung the strap crosswise over her body.
Tristan was already at the door, checking for unwanted eyes. It gave Alethea a moment to take note of the changes in him – his height, for one, and the breadth of his shoulders, and hands that seemed rougher as they gripped his boots. She was not the only one growing up, thankfully. Maybe that meant that Tristan would eventually notice her.
But what then? Would she just be another Megan, meeting him for a roll in the hay?
“Right behind you,” she whispered, closing the door behind her as softly as she could. Her footsteps were light as a burglar’s on the carpets and the stone, her most worn, faded boots clutched in one hand.
|
 |