“To protect you from my father. He’d returned early from London, and I didn’t want him to find you in the east wing.”
“But you left me there all day.” I truly thought I would die in that trunk.
“I would have come back if I could, but Father—” He shook his head. “I sent Ollie.”
“He never came for me,” I said. “I was locked in that trunk for hours; it was a housemaid who finally found me.”
“I didn’t know,” he said in a low voice.
“And that night at dinner, you put a frog in my drinking glass.”
“I’ll admit putting that poor creature in your drinking glass was ill-conceived, but it was not malicious.”
I raised an eyebrow at him.
“I went back to catch it for you. I wanted to make you smile.”
“What?” I shook my head, feeling like my mind had been tied in a knot. For so long, I’d seen the circumstances from one point of view, the images sketched in plain black and white. And although the eventsdidhappen, Damon was coloring my memories with new meaning. He’d not hated me. And if what he said was true, he felt quite the opposite. But there was one thing that remained.
“What about my hair?” I asked. There could be no explanation for that action. “You cut it so close to the scalp that I had to disguise my baldness with bonnets and bows for months.”
Damon’s gaze fell to his mud-encrusted boots. “I never meant to cause you pain,” he said quietly.
“Why did you do it then? Have you no further explanation?”
“I do.” Damon swallowed hard. “But first, you must promise to hear me out.”
I nodded.
“There was a footman,” he said tentatively. “Thomas was his name, and he was desperately in love with a scullery maid. She was leaving, though I can’t remember why now. Thomas didn’t want to forget her, so she gave him a lock of her hair . . .”
“Go on.”
“Well, it was nearing the end of summer, and you, too, were leaving Summerhaven soon, and I would be leaving for Eton, and I thought that if I had a lock ofyourhair, I would never forgetyou.”
The same warmth of desire that I’d felt earlier this morning while he’d played Mama’s melody rushed up at me.
“The night before you were to return home to London, while we all slept in the nursery, I crept over to your bed with a pair of scissors, intending to cut a small lock of your hair. But instead of trimming the end like I should have, I cut near the scalp.
“I knew right away that I’d made a mistake,” he continued. “I ran back to my room and prayed the whole night for a miracle, that your hair would grow back. I will never forget how you screamed the next morning, how you shouted your hatred for me.” Damon looked at me, his eyes regretful and sad. “I’m sorry,” he whispered.
I hadn’t thought it possible but knowing why he’d done what he had bled me of any anger and lingering resentment, and for the first time in a long time, I saw the man sitting beside me for who he really was: a true friend.
Damon had always treated me like a friend and equal—he’d encouraged me to skip my own rocks, to catch my own frogs. And when I had tripped and fallen, it was Damon—not Ollie—who’d run back for me. Damon had locked me in the traveling trunk to protect me from his father; he’d caught me a frog to make me smile; and he’d cut my hair because he hadn’t wanted to forget me.
Damon had cared for me, and Ihad cared for Damon. I’d cared for him as much as I cared for Ollie. How had I forgotten that?
“I forgive you,” I said.
Damon let out a long breath, as if he’d been holding it for a very,verylong time.
“What did you do with the lock of hair?” I asked softly, so he would know that I wasn’t asking out of malice, but because I was honestly curious.
“You can hardly expect me to remember.” He laughed lightly. “I was just a boy.”
“You seem to remember everything else about that day,” I said, but he said nothing in return. “Well, will you at least tell me if it worked?”
“Did what work?” Damon asked.
