Jonathan’s mouth opened with shock.“Your father gave you permission to accompany me, didn’t he?”
Lise shrugged and offered a weak smile.“He said you were to fetch your horses.But I thought it best to guide you myself.”
“By all that’s holy, Lise, you have done a terrible thing.Your father will probably shoot me if and when we do return to your home.”
Her cheeks went red.“I will explain —”
Jonathan shook his head.“I should have known.No father of sane mind would allow his daughter to go alone with a single man into the forest.What if someone finds out, besides your parents?What about your betrothed?”
“How would Friedrich ever discover any of this?”she gestured around them.
He sighed.“If we don’t hear any more soldiers for half an hour, then we shall set out.”
She nodded her agreement.Minutes passed like hours.Jonathan became aware of every small sound — his own heartbeat, Lise’s breathing, every small woodland creature that moved nearby, the distant cawing of a crow.And underneath it all, the strange sense that the nearby tree was somehow watching over them, sheltering them with a patience born of centuries.
“What’s the legend?”he asked, from where he now sat with his back against a boulder, after trying to find the smoothest area.It was still extremely uncomfortable, but he couldn’t allow himself to stretch out on the small space of grass.It was unseemly to do so in front of a lady.Besides, with his luck, one of the horses would crush his hand.
Lise, on the other hand, apparently felt no such compunction.She was prone, on her side, her legs curled under her voluminous skirts and her head resting on her outstretched arm.He doubted he’d ever been with a woman who looked so entirely at ease on the hard ground.Like that forest sprite he’d once accused her of being.
At his question, she pushed herself up so her head rested on her hand with her arm at a perfect angle.Looking at him from this sideways position, Lise said, “I beg your pardon?”
“You mentioned earlier that there was a legend about the oak.Do you want to tell me now?”
She hesitated, then said softly, “The village girls say that if a maiden comes to the Great Oak with questions about her future husband, the tree will give her answers.”
“What type of answers?”he asked, knowing it to be utter foolishness, but curious anyway.
“That night, she’ll dream of him,” she said.“And if she’s already in love and very brave, she can climb up between those two great limbs and shout her true love’s name, and he’ll come to her before the year is out.Those girls called it the Bridegroom Oak.”
He considered this silly myth.“Did you ever do it?Shout a man’s name?Or dream of your beloved?”
The silence stretched between them, thick with unspoken words.
“No,” Lise said finally.“I never did.I was promised to Friedrich when I was fifteen.The match was arranged between our families as soon as it was deemed respectable.It seemed like destiny.Like something that was simply meant to be.”
“And now?”He should stop pressing her, but he couldn’t.
She looked away, her profile outlined in the thin shaft of sunlight that filtered through the gaps in the leaves far above.“Now I know there’s a difference between destiny and duty.And I know that sometimes what seems like fate is really just the absence of choice.”
Jonathan’s chest tightened, even as he reminded himself that he had no say in whether she should have a choice in her future.That was between her and her parents.Still, he desperately wanted to ask what she might do if she had such a choice.Might she consider an Englishman for her husband?
“Your brother,” he said instead.“Does he approve of your betrothed?”
Her slight hesitation told him more than she could realize.“Henrik and Friedrich were close as brothers when we were young.Or perhaps one might say they were like cousins.”
She said nothing more for so long, Jonathan couldn’t help prompting her.“Something happened?A falling out?”
“Nothing so drastic as that,” she said.“Friedrich is only a year older than my brother, but he has a way of ...That is, he can be rather ...,” Lise trailed off.
“Pompous?Bombastic?An exaggerated sense of his own importance?”he suggested.
This made Lise smile then laugh, and Jonathan wouldn’t mind if time froze and they stayed that way indefinitely, as though locked in amber.Just so he could forever look upon her face at a moment when he’d amused her enough to laugh.
“He can be commanding,” she said finally, back to her normal serious manner.
“Then why isn’t he an officer like his brother and yours?”
She frowned.“I don’t know.I believe Captain Albrecht wanted to wear the uniform, and Friedrich did not.I scarcely know his brother.He is fully a decade older.”
