A second later, Belle had yanked up her skirts and was running the last few steps toward him. For one wild moment, Henry actually thought that she was charging to embrace him, to throw her arms around his neck and draw him close like a lover. Instantly, his entire body started to hum, and his breath stopped in his chest. He held it, felt a sharpness in his side...
...and then she was darting around him and on toward the mirror.
She skidded to a stop before the sweeping expanse of silver, and Henry watched in puzzled silence as she leaned into her reflection. She blinked. She winked. She placed a finger to her nose and then stuck out her tongue. Each childish gesture was repeated back at her.
"It's me!" she cried.
After his mistake over her illiteracy, Henry had vowed not to overlook the girl's potential ignorance again. But there was still something surprising in his realization that she had never before seen a mirror.
"It is a mirror," he said.
"I know! I've heard of them. I just ne'er seen one befor—" She gasped. "The painting!"
Now, Henry was truly confused.
"Painting? The one in your chambers?"
"No! In the laird's room. It were on his table beside the bed. He were looking at it. It was a paintin' of a little girl. Same color hair as me. I didnae ken then that it were me! Look! We have the same freckles!"
Recalling the little portrait she was referring to, Henry nodded. The laird must have had the picture commissioned from a distance. Sent his artist into the township to find her and paint her without notice. The painting had been old, so perhaps it had been the last time the artist had managed to voyeur upon the little girl without drawing attention.
The laird had simply wanted an image of his daughter.
"I think the laird cares for you greatly, my lady. In his own way."
"That's nice."
The words were detached, which was understandable. It was hard to accept affection from someone that had not only been a stranger but a complete unknown in her life until now. Henry remembered a time when he had lived within a family he had not known. When he had been taken under the apprenticeship of a powerful man who claimed interest in his life. It was true that the man had been less a stranger to him than the laird was to Belle, but it had been peculiar nonetheless.
"It feels a little like you are floating, does it not?" he said.
"W—Pardon me?" Belle turned with a questioning frown.
"When you're brought into a new world like this. It feels like you are floating. No tether keeping you in place, no anchor to stop you drifting away on the current?"
Belle looked down at her fingers, now interlocked in front of her.
"A little, I s'pose."
Unable to resist, Henry reached out and placed a hand upon her shoulder. One side of his palm pressed into the fabric, but the other was over the hemline. His skin touched hers, and it was impossible to ignore the spark of warmth that shot up his arm.
"You need not fear anyone or anything in this castle. And if you should want for anything, I am here to assist. If the need arises and you permit it, I shall pledge myself as your anchor."
The girl's smile began uncertainly. It flickered and trembled upon her lips before being blown into a full beam. Her cheeks rounded, her eyes sparkled, and her worries seemed to instantly vanish.
All because he had made a simple promise.
The weight of that vow now settled upon Henry's chest, warming his body and wrapping around his heart. Strangely, the sensation was not unwelcome. It was without weight and yet possessed the most delicious pressure.
"Now," he said, letting her go and coughing awkwardly, "shall we apply ourselves to a little mathematics?"
Three days later and Henry's nerves had been wrangled into knots, twisted into spirals, and pulled to their greatest extent.
And he had no one to blame but himself, for he could not blame Belle.
As a pupil under his tutorship, Belle was a challenge in her level of ignorance but brilliant in her study. That first day, it had been a pleasant surprise to discover that she already had a head for numbers. Her duties when aiding her mother meant counting and calculating, both in number, distance, and amount. With so short a time available to them, Henry was focused on at least giving her the foundation of every subject, and he had been able to write off arithmetic after a single morning.
Getting her to leave the abacus alone afterward had been more of a challenge.
