“You still don’t remember,” he said.
She shook her head as Dietrich studied her. “No, but I want to. I want to remember y—” Her voice cut out before she could finish the word you. Or at least, that’s what he wanted to think she was going to say. “My childhood,” she said, words faltering as if she knew that he wouldn’t believe her. “But if you won’t take me, then I shall look rather silly traipsing back to my room wearing this when everyone knows I haven’t been gone long enough to have been on a ride.”
Dietrich glared at her. “Are you trying to manipulate me into taking you on a ride so you don’t look bad?”
“Is it working?” she asked, her voice perking up.
Dietrich sighed and closed the distance between them. “You’re learning how to be a proper noble, I see,” he said, looking down at her. Not that they had a large height difference, but it was large enough that she would have to stand on her tiptoes to kiss him again.
It was dangerous being this close. If she had done it once, she could do it again. But part of him didn’t care. Part of him wanted her to do it again—to push her luck and kiss him in the doorway of his office, as if no one was there, as if they weren’t going to get caught.
Her gaze traveled to his lips, then back to his eyes, and her lips parted. But before she could do anything, footsteps sounded in the stable behind them, and she stepped back to allow him to walk through the doorway.
“Come with me, my lady,” Dietrich said as John came around the corner. “We’ll find you a nice mare to ride.”
John shot him a look over Ella’s head, and Dietrich frowned at him.
John didn’t know what he was talking about, and neither did his mother.
Ella was only here because she needed to get out of the castle—not because she wanted to spend time with him.
He brought her down to Vanilla’s stall. “I think this mare will do nicely for you. She is very sweet, just like her name,” he said, gesturing to the name on the front of the stall door.
And more importantly, she was gentle enough to use with children, which meant she would be gentle with an inexperienced rider.
“She’s very beautiful,” Ella said, running her fingers over the dark brown mare’s nose. “I like her already.”
“You’ll like her more once we have a mounting block for you to use,” Dietrich said. “Let me get her saddled for you.”
It was only a few minutes more before Dietrich and Ella were on their way through the gate, and this time, it felt right—because he was going with her, and he knew that she would be safe with him.
They rode in silence until they reached the picnic clearing. He could have said something, but he didn’t. Simply being with her was enough.
Dietrich dismounted first, moving over to help Ella, with Turnip’s reins held loosely in his hand. He put her down quickly and took a step back, unwilling to let himself linger the way he wanted to.
Ella took a deep breath and frowned at him. “I don’t like it,” she said finally. “I don’t like watching you put distance between us. I thought we were friends. You’re still friends with Beatrice, even though she is now nobility.”
“It’s different with you,” was all he could manage to say.
“Why is it different?” she pressed. “I’d hoped that we could at least remain friends.”
“Beatrice has never kissed me,” he pointed out.
“So because I did, we can’t be friends?”
“Yes. No. I don’t know,” he said, the words coming out in a whine that would have made his mother cackle. “I don’t know what I’m doing. I just know that we can’t be friends, and I don’t know why you brought me out here to say all of this because it’s not going to make a difference. You and I are too different, and there are lines that we cannot cross and bridges that we have to burn. I don’t know why we’re here.”
“I don’t know, either,” she admitted. “I just needed to get out of there for a minute, and I knew you would help me. I don’t know what’s going to happen in the next few weeks, and I just needed a minute with a friend, even if you don’t want to be my friend anymore.”
Dietrich sighed. “It’s not that I don’t want to be your friend. I just...”
“You just don’t know how to be friends with Lady Eliana the way you were with Ella,” she finished for him, her voice tinged with sadness. Then she walked a few feet away, bending over to pick a dandelion from the ground.
She began plucking the petals out one by one, looking down at them and avoiding looking at him. “And I can’t change your mind?”
“I’m afraid not,” Dietrich said. “I’m very sorry.”
He knew that his mother and John would be upset with him for pushing her away, but it wasn’t their business. It wasn’t their life.
