Celeste grunted in frustration. “I keep getting hair in my mouth. It doesn’t taste as good as the cheese.”
Ella grinned. She liked Celeste.
“You should have Dietrich braid it for you,” Beatrice said. “He’s very good at braiding.”
Dietrich glared at Beatrice. “I am not.”
Ella looked at him. Was he really good at braiding? The corners of her mouth turned up in a smirk. She could offer to braid Celeste’s hair herself, but if Dietrich knew how to braid, that would be even better. The idea of him braiding a little girl’s hair was too amusing to pass up.
“He has to braid the horses’ tails sometimes,” Beatrice whispered to the little girls.
“Show us, show us,” Celeste and Colette exclaimed.
Dietrich sighed but got to his feet and circled around to kneel behind Celeste. He combed through her hair with his fingers and began skillfully twisting it into a three-strand braid.
If Ella wasn’t still cranky with him, she might have noticed the way he stopped occasionally to pat Celeste’s head. But she was still cranky, so she didn’t smile at the thought that Dietrich would make a wonderful father someday.
“Is that to your satisfaction?” Dietrich asked Celeste as he reached the end, still holding the braid with his hand.
“Yes, but you have to let go,” she said.
“I don’t have anything to tie it off with,” he replied. She pouted, and Dietrich glanced around until his eyes landed on one of the cloth napkins. Rolling it into a makeshift tie, he secured the braid.
It didn’t hold, the napkin slipping off promptly. “This won’t do,” Dietrich said, staring down at the braid as it began to unravel, his eyes calculating.
“Hold this, my lady,” he said to Colette, who moved over to hold her sister’s braid. Dietrich pulled a knife out of his pocket and cut the napkin into three narrow strips that resembled ribbons more than napkins. “If Cook asks, this blew off in the wind,” he said, looking sternly at the girls, who giggled.
“Now, this should work better,” he said.
“You have a knife in your pocket?” Colette asked, her eyes wide. “Isn’t that dangerous?”
“I have a sheath for it,” Dietrich said, pulling it out of his pocket to show them as he placed the knife into it and put both back into his pocket. “It’s not dangerous for an adult.”
“It’s like it pispappeared,” Celeste said, eyeing his pocket. “Can I have a pocketknife someday, Mama?”
The duchess sighed. “You’ll have to take that up with your father.”
“And now, we shall see if this works,” Dietrich said, taking the makeshift ribbon and reaching for the braid held tightly in Colette’s fist.
The adults watched in amusement as he tied off Celeste’s braid, and Colette immediately clamored for her turn. He made short work of Colette’s braid, then turned to Ella.
“Would you like yours braided too?” he asked carefully.
Ella knew that Beatrice and the duchess were watching, so she did not respond as she would have liked to but simply nodded her head. Even though she was still annoyed with him, at least it would get her hair out of her face. She sat on the ground, his fingers caressing the back of her neck as he pulled her hair into one central strand before dividing it into three.
He was gentler than she had thought he would be, and the feeling of his fingers against her sensitive skin made her giggle. He stopped and looked at her face, even though he sat behind her.
“I’m ticklish,” Ella said. It had been so long since someone had touched her that she hadn’t needed to be ticklish in a very, very long time.
“I’ll be more careful,” Dietrich said as he returned his attention to the braid.
The sunshine grew warmer, and of course, now that she was doing something about her hair, the wind had stopped. But Ella couldn’t find it in herself to regret the feeling of Dietrich carefully smoothing her hair back, twisting it into a braid, and tying it off.
“Thank you,” she said, turning to look at him when he finished. She shouldn’t have felt the loss of his hand, and yet, as he stood up and stepped away, she missed having someone touch her in an easy, gentle way.
Her stepfamily had not been much for touch. If her stepmother touched her, it was usually in reprimand, and her stepsisters would occasionally shove her over something.
To have someone do something as simple as braid her hair…it was something she hadn’t experienced in a very long time.
