“I don’t want to play this game, sir,” I warned.
He didn’t care. “What else do you remember about your Willem?” Cyrus asked.
I was shaking.
“What else, Svana?” he pressed.
“He…”
“I don’t share your secrets,” he said. “I just like to hear them. I like to hear what it isyoulike,” he said.
I replayed his statement. “What?”
“Tell me,” he whispered.
“He… He had blond hair,” I allowed.
“Good. Your Willem was blond, was he?” he checked.
“Yes,” I said. “Curls. Quiteunruly,really. They always fell in his face.”
“And?”
“I don’t understand the point of your questioning,” I said. “Is this… Are you…?”
“What else do you remember of your ostler’s boy, Svana?” he asked.
I gave in. “I...I remember his eyes. And his mouth.”
“His mouth, huh?” He quirked a grin.
“Yes. It was wonderfully round and always got him in and out of trouble.Especiallywith the staff.Especiallywith my governess.” I swallowed. “And I remember that he was stupidly chivalrous.”
Mr. Evergreen paused. “All that just to call him stupid?”
“Hewasn’t stupid,sir.He was stupidlychivalrous,”I explained. “One is worse than the other.”
“Which?”
“Oh!” I moaned. “What doyouknow anyway? Willem was a knight! You’re just a flirty sword in an expensive sheath!”
Mr. Evergreen balked boldly. “Oh!A knight was he?”he asked.
“Yes!”
“Your Willem sounds quite fantastical! How grand for him to rise from stable buck to knight! How very impossible.”
“He–”
“And to think, how much better that must make him than me inyoureyes, Swan.”
“You have nothing to do with this, Mr. Evergreen,”I said.
“No, no. Don’t back down from the insults now, love,” he said. There was an insistence in his voice. “Don’t call me mister; don’t call me Sir, for I am nothing but shiny steel in pretty fabric, aye?”
“Oh!” I marched toward him, squaring my frame, calling out to the imaginary crowd around us. “Hurry! Come quick! Someone fetch me a tiny violin! Not-A-Lord Cyrus Evergreen wishes to sing his ballad for us! On andonit goes, how muchlesserhe is than everyone else!Hear ye! Hear ye!Here comes the refrain!”
His eyes were a fiery twister of whatever level of anger burned for the comment.
