She stopped and rounded on him. “Who told you to call me that?” The question was a confusing mix of accusatory words and an indifferent tone.
“What do you mean?”
“You called me Lizzie.”
“I…yes?”
“My name is Eliza. No one calls me Lizzie anymore, and if my father thought it would endear you to me, he was wrong. I don’t find anyone endearing.”
Freddy searched her face, beautiful and familiar and yet achingly foreign. He was certain that Lizzie would recognize him up close if given the chance, despite the change in hair color and the obnoxious beard. After all, she had once known him better than anyone else.
But as he looked into her eyes, he saw no spark of recognition, no sign that she knew him as anyone other than the wandering minstrel who had been the fortunate winner in Alfred’s ill-planned scheme. His heart fell to his toes.
“You don’t know who I am?”
“I know that you are Kai, a second-rate minstrel who happened to be in the right place at the right time.”
She shivered, and Freddy belatedly realized that her arms were huddled around her not out of sadness, but because she was cold. He quickly shrugged out of his own coat and threw it around her shoulders.
“What are you doing?”
“Your coat isn’t nearly warm enough for this environment.” A brisk breeze blew at that moment, biting him with a chill that went straight to his bones.
“But now you’re not wearing a coat.”
He waved her words away. “I’ll be fine.”
He lied. Freddy’s southern blood was much too thin for the snowy climate, and he was now counting down the moments until they returned to the warmth of the fire.
Lizzie seemed to accept his words at face value, and she pulled the edges of his coat tighter. Spots of red on her fingers caught his attention, and before Freddy fully realized what he was doing, he had captured her hands, turning them over in dismay.Her hands were red and chapped, and the skin on the tips of her fingers had split. “What happened?”
She looked at her hands far more clinically than he had. “I would imagine a combination of cold air, attempts at basket weaving, and spinning yarn.”
He ran his thumbs gently over the back of her hands. Now that he was finally touching her again, he couldn’t bring himself to let go. A grin pulled at his mouth. “You tried basket weaving?”
Lizzie pulled free. “Of course I did. I need a marketable skill.”
He had to clasp his hands behind his back to keep from reaching for her again. “Why did you need a marketable skill?”
“Economics, of course. If I want to be able to buy food and wood for a fire, I need a way to make money. Begging is an option, of course, but it would be far more consistent and profitable to learn a skill or trade.”
Freddy’s smile grew. There, underneath the frosty cold exterior, was the resourceful and resilient Lizzie that he knew and loved.
She’s a princess who has never had to worry about meeting her own physical needs. She could have whined and cried until someone took pity on her, or used her royal status to get her way, but instead she found the practical solution and worked for it.
“Shall I look to you to fulfill all our basket needs?”
“My attempt was hardly worthy of being called a basket. I had much better success with spinning.”
His eyes dropped once more to her split, bleeding fingertips. “But at what cost?”
She shrugged. “I’m sure they’ll callous eventually. And you? Do you have any marketable skills other than amateur lute-playing?”
“Amateur?” He held a hand to his chest as if offended. “I’ll have you know I am a professional.”
“Your voice is untrained, and your technique is sloppy.”
The words were delivered in such a factual, impersonal way that Freddy felt like his only two options were to laugh or cry. He chose to laugh.
