ChapterThree
“‘Number two, run away for a day.’”
My heart flew up into my throat. Those were my words. How did he have them?
His eyes kept reading down the page, and I tried to swallow, to speak, to make sense of how this could possibly be happening. The list had been tucked in my ribbon!
“‘Number five,’” he continued with a humored edge to his voice, “‘hang my painting in a public place.’” Mr. Winston laughed. “Liza, I’ve seen your artwork, and I would not recommend sharing it.”
Liza blinked. Her cheeks were as crimson as mine felt. “Charlie, put that paper down at once,” she begged.
“‘Number eight, change someone’s life.’” With that, he reared back and leaned forward in his seat. “What if they don’t want their life changed? What sort of lististhis?”
“It’s Rosalind’s!” Liza snapped.
Mr. Winston’s gaze flicked to mine and turned thoughtful for the slightest moment, but he did not lower my list. Instead, his eyes wandered the page as though reading it over again.
Humiliation turned swiftly into frustration, and with a few long strides, I crossed the room and tugged the paper from his grasp. “Do you have any manners at all?”
A wave of hair fell over the scratch in his brow, and he brushed it away. “I found it on the floor in the hall. I had no idea it was yours.”
“And that gave you the right to read something not addressed to you?” I folded my list into a tight square and swallowed hard.
“No,” was all he said before I turned back to Liza.
“I should go,” I said, moving quickly past her. My face was so hot I could feel it sizzling.
Liza followed me. “But what about your list?”
I touched my cheeks. “Were you listening just now? Did you hear him reading? ‘Learn to swim’ and ‘run away for a day.’ What in the world was I thinking?”
“You weren’t thinking. You were dreaming.”
She said it so matter-of-factly, with such simple conviction, that my racing heart came to a stuttering halt.
Dreaming.
Hadn’t that been the point all along?
“Will you help me?” I begged. I felt like I was falling, and there was nothing to hold onto. “I know this all sounds mad, but I ...” I could not find the words.
Liza held my arms, waiting. Her eyes were serious and worried.
“Ineedthis, Liza,” I said, and I felt it in my bones. The aching. The hope. The surety that this was the key to everything that felt wrong in my life. I’d been so focused on my accomplishments that I’d missed my dreams. I had to claim them before it was too late. Before I gave my life, my time, my everything over to the people who would be depending on me to be the Duchess of Marlow.
Liza straightened, determined. “Let me see it. The list,” she said.
“I cannot bear to hear it all again.”
“Rosalind,” she insisted.
Reluctantly, I gave her the paper square, which she promptly unfolded.
I held my breath as her eyes read down the page.
“Well, number nine is manageable—recording your childhood memories. You’ve likely already done number seven, considering all the painting you do.”
Two out of ten. That was something. “And the others?”
