He did, I transferred him to Clarabelle’s offered hand then she brought him toward her and stroked him as I sat.
“Do you want me to get right into it? We left it at a good part last time,” I reminded her.
“If you want, Cora, my dear. Or, we can chat. Are you well?” she replied.
“Very,” I somewhat lied.
There were things that were good (dinner at night with Tor, bedtime, again with Tor, waking up when Tor was there and sometimes I could lose myself in the fantasyland around me) and other things that were bad.
“And our prince?” she asked.
“Um… worried about his brother, I think,” I answered, having told her (although no one else knew and I swore her to secrecy) about Rosa, Dash and the evil Minerva.
“I daresay, he would be,” she murmured, her voice somehow strange, then her hand came out, searching, I extended mine, she caught it and squeezed it gently. “You sure you’re well?” she asked softly.
“I’m perfectly fine,” I outright lied. “Happy,” I kind of lied. “Life is good.”
She squeezed again and let me go with an, “If you say so, my dear.”
Hmm. It would seem I needed to be better with my act, even, maybe especially with an old, blind lady.
“So, shall I start reading? Blanche will be back with the kids before we know it, mayhem will ensue and you won’t know if the pirate was able to cow the fair maiden to his will.”
She smiled a gentle smile. “Well, I can’t miss that.”
I opened the book to its marked page and mumbled, “Certainly not.”
I heard her quiet chuckle and I reached out a hand and squeezed her knee.
Aggie chirped a, “Read, Cora!” (he liked this story too).
So I let my friend go and started to read out loud.
Chapter Sixteen
The Only Thing I Needed
Tor’s hand tightened in mine. We’d just walked in his front doors and I was pulling away.
“Where are you going?” he enquired.
“I have to do something,” I said quickly and he stared down at me.
“What?”
“Something!” I cried, getting desperate. Time was wasting.
He gave me an assessing look then he told me something I already knew.
“Hurry, love, you don’t have much time.”
I nodded, got up on tiptoe, curled my fingers around the back of his neck, pulled him down to me and touched my lips to his.
“I’ll be back,” I whispered, let him go and started to rush to the kitchens.
The fireworks were going to start at any minute and Tor and I were going to watch them on our balcony, a balcony that jutted out further than any of the others and a balcony, incidentally, that anyone from anywhere in the village and on the sea could see.
This filled me with dread, being somewhere where everyone could see me with Tor (and they’d be watching).