The beginnings of a smile appeared on the edge of her mouth. “You mean about the beach?”
He nodded. “Do you have any others?”
The tremble was gone—thank goodness—replaced by a full-fledged gappy grin. “You mean you like them? Jamie won’t let me tell them anymore. He says they’re all dumb ‘wee bairn’ jokes.”
Thommy leaned close and whispered, even though there was no need, “You can tell them to me. I don’t mind. But first, I need you to scoot a little closer so I can help you off that branch.”
She did as he asked without thinking, but her dress caught on one of the broken branches. She reached out, leaning all her weight on the thin branch to try to unsnag it. He tried to warn her, but it was too late.
The branch didn’t break, but the cracking sound and sudden movement as if it might startled her. She lost her balance.
Thommy’s heart shot to his throat and jammed. He may have cried out, but only the “nay!” was intelligible.
It happened so fast, yet he saw it in slow-moving time. She fell back, and he lunged. Somehow he managed to catch her around the waist and catch hold of the branch above him at the same time. But now he had a screaming, terrified little girl latched to his side, unbalancing him on the less-than-solid branch on which he was precariously balanced.
For one terrified heartbeat he thought they were both going to plummet to the ground, but he dug his fingers into the bark until his arm burned and, after a stomach-in-his-throat few seconds, managed to steady them both.
He could feel the frantic beat of her heart against his as he stood there for a moment letting his own slow.
Her eyes didn’t blink as they stared into his. He’d never been this close to a lass before. Did they all smell clean and fresh as a patch of wildflowers after a spring rain?
Jo and Jamie must have seen enough from below, as he was suddenly aware of their shouting.
“We’re fine,” he yelled back, in a far calmer voice than he felt. “Ella is going to hold on real tight, and we’ll be down in a minute.” To her, he asked, “Can you do that?”
She nodded mutely, still too stunned to do anything else.
“Good. I need you to wrap your arms around my neck and keep your legs wrapped around my waist so I can use my hands.”
She looked uncertain for a moment, but then brightened. “My father sometimes carries me around on his back like that.”
Thommy smiled back at her. His da had done the same when he was a wee one. “Aye, just like that, except you’ll be on my front, not my back.”
She retracted the kitten claws digging into his side long enough for him to help maneuver her into position.
“You’re strong,” she said. “Jamie says I’m too big to carry now.”
He’d been thinking the same thing (despite the heavy loads of charcoal he carried every morning for the forge), but the admiration in her eyes gave him a burst of strength. “Aw, a wee lassie like you? You don’t weigh much more than my da’s hammer. Now, what about those jokes you were going to tell me?”
For the next few minutes as he wound his way back down the maze of moss-covered limbs to the ground, he was barraged by a stream of silly jests from a seemingly bottomless well. They weren’t all that funny, but he made sure to chuckle at the appropriate time.
When he finally hopped down from the last branch, every muscle in his body was shaking with exhaustion. But he’d done it. The lass was safe.
“That was fun! Can we do it again?”
Thommy tried not to groan, while Jamie started yelling and cursing something fierce, the way Thommy’s da did when he burned himself.
His arms tightened around her in an involuntary squeeze of relief before he started to hand her off to Jamie, who looked as if he didn’t know whether to shake her or hug her to death.
But she held on to him long enough to press a small kiss to his cheek and whisper in his ear, “Jamie was wrong, you area knight, and when I get old I’m going to marry you.”
He was so startled by the proclamation he didn’t know what to say. He should have laughed—it was as ridiculous as some of those jokes she’d told him. Even if he wasn’t only almost nine and she six, she lived in a castle and wore gold circlets in her hair. He lived in a two-room wattle-and-daub cottage with a thatched roof that they shared with the livestock for warmth and didn’t own a good pair of shoes for the winter.
But he didn’t laugh. Instead he felt something in his chest squeeze. Something that felt a lot like longing for something he knew he could never have. But for one moment he allowed himself to wonder if such a thing were possible.
It was a mistake, as his father would hammer into his head many times in the years that followed. But Thommy never forgot those carelessly uttered words spoken by a little princess that made him feel like the greatest knight in Christendom. Words that made a boy who had no right to dream.
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