Dietrich took her hands in his, and she had to stop herself from squeezing tighter. When was the last time someone had simply held her hands?
It had been a long time.
“You’re not bothering me,” Dietrich said quietly, “so please do not worry that you are.”
Ella nodded, not trusting herself to say anything.
How could she without betraying the fact that she almost always assumed she was bothering someone? She had a sneaking suspicion the truth would only upset Dietrich on her behalf, and she didn’t want that.
“I know we got off on the wrong foot,” he said. “But if you truly are the duchess, there’s nothing I would love more than to help you find your family.”
“Either way, you’ll be fine,” Ella said. “I’m the one who will have to face the bitter disappointment that my life is truly as miserable as it always has been.”
She meant for the words to be a joke, but in the silence that followed, she realized it was no joke, at least not to her, and somehow Dietrich could tell.
After a lifetime of her words not mattering, they mattered to Dietrich, and the thought made her throat feel funny.
“Thank you,” she said softly, “for trying to find the truth.”
He squeezed her hand, then let it go, and somehow the loss hurt. Why did she want to hold his hand again? She barely knew the man, and here he was turning her whole life upside down.
They made their way to his mother’s front door, where Danise opened it and looked at Ella with a compassionate smile.
“How are you holding up, my dear?” his mother asked.
Ella’s eyes suddenly filled with tears.
Was this what it was like to have someone care about you?
She shouldn’t get used to this.
She had to get out of here.
Pulling away from Danise, she shook her head. “I must go,” she said before turning and running down the walk.
She was a coward, but she had to protect her heart.
She plunged her hand into her pocket and found her little pumpkin, her fingers rubbing along the barely-there ridges. It had been her way of soothing herself for so long that it was now losing all resemblance to a pumpkin.
It was one of her earliest memories—a boy giving her the pumpkin he had carved just for her.
A boy who looked a little like Dietrich might have all those years ago.
She smiled at the thought. And now she was imagining him in her memories.
She should know better. She could not afford to get close to Dietrich—not when she was already starting to imagine things about him after only knowing him for a few days.
Not when he was trying to fill her head with fanciful notions of her being a duchess.
Perhaps it was foolish of her to ask him to teach her how to be a duchess. Maybe she should pretend she hadn’t asked that, go to the duke, and have him declare she was not his daughter so she could return to her life serving her stepmother and scraping by.
It would be easier that way.
But the thought of telling Dietrich she didn’t want lessons in being a duchess filled her with dread. With him, even as they bickered, she felt at peace.
As she followed the lane back home, her mind kept replaying portions of the conversation—the way Eugenia had looked at her in a new light and the way Danise seemed so sure she was the missing girl.
What if they were right? What if she really was loved and cherished once?
