Thirteen

 

The moment she stepped into the great hall, Erik knew his search was over before it had even started. She was here – the girl in his dreams. Or at least he thought she was.

He didn't remember her having curves like that, or perhaps he'd been too young to notice. Her dark hair was hidden mostly under a veil, but a rebellious tendril had escaped. She moved like a stately lady, which indeed she was, if she was the Master's daughter. The grey-clad widow at her side looked like her companion or her chaperone, Erik wasn't sure.

The girl sat beside him, close enough to reach out and touch, though he didn't dare. She shared a bench with her chaperone, he judged, when the widow shot him a shrewd glance that seemed to size up his very soul.

He met the widow's gaze, willing her to believe that his intentions toward the girl were honourable. How could they not be? He'd come here to find her, and here she was, not a foot from him!

Erik scarcely tasted a bite of his meal as he struggled to keep his breathing even. He wanted to blurt out everything to her, everything that had kept him away for the last six years and what brought him here now, but every time he tried to say something to her, his voice died in his throat. What did a man say to the woman of his dreams, when he saw her for the first time in six years?

And so he waited for her to break the silence. A silence he should not have noticed, amid the noise of a hall full of people making merry to celebrate the harvest, and yet the silence stretched in his mind until it lay like a great gulf between them.

The tables were cleared away to make space for dancing, and Erik's heart leaped. A ball! At home in his father's court, the ladies would form up and dance, spinning around one another like flower petals blown by the wind, before coming together as the complex pattern drew them in at the end of the dance.

Erik held his breath for a moment in eager anticipation as the first girls stepped out into the cleared space. But they were followed soon after by men, forming up in couples like no ball Erik had ever been to. Only then did it strike him that none of those present were nobles – the hall was full of common people, dressed in such bright colours that it hadn't occurred to him to look more closely at their clothes. This was a prosperous place indeed if even the peasants' clothes were as coloured as those of his father's courtiers.

He waited for the girl beside him to join the dance, but she remained resolutely in her seat. No partner, perhaps?

Before he'd truly thought the words through, he blurted out a clumsy invitation for her to dance with him.

Her eyes met his – two blue jewels that seemed to hold the depths of the ocean inside them. But the one thing that they didn't hold was any spark of recognition. She shook her head, which made the grey widow pipe up in the girl's support.

Erik's heart ached at the thought that this wasn't the girl he was looking for – how could she not recognise him, when he knew her instantly? – but his ever-optimistic imagination ventured that if she had changed in the intervening time, so had he, and it would take time for her to remember him. Just because he hadn't been able to forget the shipwreck and how she'd saved him from it, didn't mean she had been similarly affected. Perhaps she had endured many shipwrecks, and rescued many helpless boys, and there was nothing special about him at all.

No, he'd felt it then and he knew it now. There was something between them, a connection that once made could not be broken. He felt it in his bones.

The grey widow would not stop him from dancing with her.

Erik countered her arguments as to why the girl shouldn't dance, and just as he felt he had the upper hand, a male voice cut in.

Master Nicholas ordered the girl to dance with him.

The girl's eyes widened, and she looked affronted at her father. She was no dutiful daughter, this one. If not for her vow of silence, the girl would have given her father a piece of her undoubtedly strong mind.

The Master either ignored or dismissed her rebellious glance, and repeated his command.

With an expression that said her father would rue this later, the girl rose gracefully, every inch a veritable queen as she took Erik's hastily proffered arm.

The dancers parted and bowed to allow them to take their place at the head of the formation. The musicians faltered, then began anew, hesitantly at first, then more boldly as the girl stepped across the divide to place her palm against Erik's.

Heat flared between his hand and hers, surprising him. She should have been cold, icy, not warm to the touch. Perhaps he was wrong, and she wasn't...

Deep blue eyes sucked at his soul as they whirled among the other dancers, assessing him as frankly as though she were the Master himself.

Erik stumbled, forgetting the steps, nearly sending them crashing into another couple.

Her arms grew rigid around him, steering him bodily away from the others for all the world as though she had the strength to lift him off his feet. Or pluck him from the ocean into a boat.

Now it was Erik's turn to stare at her. Either she was, or she wasn't.

They moved apart, as required by the steps of the dance, and Erik was forced to partner three other girls before he could approach her again.

"Do you remember me?" he asked urgently. "That day in the water?"

She grimaced as he trod on her foot.

Erik opened his mouth to apologise, but she brought her slippered heel down so hard on his instep all that came out was a pained yelp.

She broke free of his hold, weaving expertly through the dancers until she reached the edge of the room. An imperious wave of her hand brought a servant with a goblet. The girl took the goblet, turned on her bone-breaking heel, and strode out of the great hall, with the grey widow hard on her heels.

Disappointment welled up in Erik's throat. If he hadn't been so clumsy, she might have answered his question. Then he'd know if she truly was the right one.

With considerably less grace than the girl, Erik made his way through the dancers and back to the dais, where he slumped to the bench beside Master Nicholas's chair.

Gesturing for a servant to fill his cup with wine, Erik said to Master Nicholas, "Your daughter is certainly a very spirited girl."

Master Nicholas drained his cup. "That she is. Break her, and she's yours. Consider her a gift."

Erik's mouth dropped open, and he hastened to close it. Break her? She would outlast the strongest granite, Erik was certain. For a wave might break against a rock, but no man could master the ocean. Least of all him.

"My father would welcome a marriage alliance between his kingdom and yours," Erik managed to say. He bowed to the Master and bade him a good night before heading up to his chambers.

It wasn't until he was alone in bed that Erik realised he hadn't even asked for her name.