“What do you have in there?” he asked. Perhaps he could distract from how awkward it now felt.
“Oh, it’s nothing. Just something I’ve had since I was a child that I rub when I need something to do with my fingers.”
She pulled her hand out, and her fingers uncurled. There, in her palm, was the little pumpkin he had given to Lady Eliana when she was only three.
His heart stopped.
“I don’t know where I got it,” she confessed, turning it over in her hand, her thumb rubbing against the surface. “But it’s a little pumpkin. You can barely tell anymore. The carvings that used to be deep have worn down over the years because I play with it so much. I got anxious a lot when I was with my stepmother, and having it helped,” she admitted.
“May I?” Dietrich asked, his throat dry as he held out his hand.
She handed it to him.
He turned it over, and there, on the bottom, was the tiny “D” he had scratched into it.
“This was the first thing I ever made,” he said, his voice thick. “I gave it to you because you wanted to play ball with it, and it made me laugh. I figured I could make my mother a different one. She’s not much for pumpkins anyway. My father had just taught me how to carve.”
He ran his fingernail through the faint groove left on the “D.” “I never thought I’d see it again.”
His eyes snapped up to hers. “Lady Eliana.” He knelt on one knee and bowed his head, then stood.
She stood frozen, her eyes wide.
“We must go tell your father,” he said. “This proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that you are Lady Eliana Vaughn. And I know I said I would give you time, but I can’t anymore. Not after this. I’ll get a carriage.”
And with that, he turned and walked away, heading for the stables.
His heart broke in two as he left her alone in the courtyard because, while she would never be alone again, she could never be with him.
Chapter fourteen
Ella
Ella sat alone in the carriage, with nothing but her thoughts to keep her company, as they drove from Eldenwilde to her father’s estate.
Perhaps she should have expected this. She should have expected Dietrich to pull away, to once again be alone.
But perhaps she was being naive; she hadn’t expected it.
While she might no longer be alone once they arrived at the estate and she made herself known to her family, the thought of everything changing was terrifying.
She had finally begun to be herself, living a life outside of her stepmother’s demands. It may have only been for a few days, but she had grown accustomed to it, and that would all change once the carriage rolled into the duke’s estate.
She wasn’t ready.
She wasn’t ready to lose the connection she’d begun to have with Dietrich.
The fact that she’d kissed him was so unlike anything she’d ever done, she could scarcely believe it had happened. But she couldn’t make herself regret kissing Dietrich.
If it had been the only moment she would ever share with him, it had been worth every second. But the thought of that being the only moment she ever spent with Dietrich made her stomach twist in an unfamiliar way.
As the trees rolled past outside the window, Ella reached into her pocket to rub her pumpkin. If only she hadn’t shown Dietrich, perhaps she might have had a few more minutes with him.
The fact that he had been the one who made it felt like a dream.
It was going to be the key to proving her identity, and it was hers because of Dietrich. The thought was both comforting and upsetting. If he hadn’t given her the pumpkin as a child, or if she had lost it somehow in the years since, maybe she could have been a normal girl with a normal life and a normal man like Dietrich.
But he was right: if she was, in fact, Lady Eliana, things could never be between them.
