Chapter two
Ella
Ella glared at nothing as she made her way down the lane toward home.
Of all the people she could have run into today, of course, it had to be the man whose eyes she hadn’t been able to forget since she met him only a few days after moving to the Northlands.
He had been surrounded by people who hadn’t noticed her, but he had.
And he had lied to her.
If there was one thing Ella couldn’t handle, it was people who lied to her.
There were many people who lied to her, so she should have had lots of practice, but it still stung.
She let out a deep breath. It would have been one thing if she hadn’t been thinking about him for the past several weeks, but to spend all that time thinking about him only to have him turn out to be a jerk?
That was unfortunate.
She’d had high hopes, but perhaps it was better this way.
After all, if you never got to know someone, you couldn’t be disappointed by them.
So, she would avoid getting to know him. She would have to be careful, as she’d gotten used to visiting the widow Danise, and she wouldn’t want to miss out on that.
Why hadn’t she thought to ask if he would be staying before she ran out in a huff? Now she’d have to investigate, and she might run into him again.
Her heart was wondering if that would be such a bad thing.
Her head was telling her it was better to avoid getting attached.
It wasn’t a long walk from Danise’s farm to hers, and Ella forced herself to bring a smile to her face as she made her way home.
She had other things to think about, like what she was going to make for dinner, and how she was going to avoid her stepmother’s shrieking tonight. Dietrich had given her a headache, and Tabitha was not one for being quiet.
It wouldn’t be long until Tabitha expected dinner, and she didn’t have anything planned aside from the loaf of bread she’d made earlier.
She probably should have gone to town for more ingredients, but at this point, she’d made it most of the way home and didn’t feel like turning around. And Tabitha would be cranky if dinner was late.
Ella stopped in the henhouse, breathing a sigh of relief when she found three eggs. If nothing else, she could make eggs and toast. She placed the eggs into the basket and said goodbye to the chickens, girding her loins to enter the house. The chickens were far better company than those inside.
She had barely stepped through the front door of their modest home when it started.
“Ella,” Tabitha yelled down the stairs. “Is that you?”
Ella took a deep breath before answering. “Yes, it’s me.”
“I need you,” her stepmother shrieked.
Their home was not large enough to require shrieking, but then again, Tabitha had never been one to pay attention to things or know when she was being a little too much. And she was a little too much most of the time.
Ella slipped her hand into her pocket to rub the tiny pumpkin, the feeling of the smooth wood under her fingers reassuring as she made her way upstairs to the bedroom where her stepmother was waiting.
“Where did you go?” Tabitha asked.
Ella smiled thinly. “I went to bring a loaf of bread to our neighbor,” she said. “She’s the one who helped me start our bread culture and I wanted to repay her kindness, since I made an extra loaf today.”
It hadn’t hurt to get out of the house and take a break for a moment, either.
