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“That is a very old-fashioned notion,” Henrik said. “I am at liberty to choose whomever I like. My parents want me to settle down because they’re tired of my boyish ways.”
“That makes things a little different.” She relaxed just a little. “Okay, then. Your father just doesn’t like me?”
“He doesn’t know you. I told him you were the only woman I’ve been able to tolerate for longer than a single evening and your lips tasting like red wine don’t hurt either.”
“You did not tell him that!”
“Okay, so I may have left the kissing deduction off.”
She couldn’t help laughing. “Tolerate? You tolerate me?”
Henrik glided his face dangerously close. “Should I have been more explicit with him?” He brushed his cheek to hers. “How you amuse me?” His lips stroked her skin. “How you make me crazy?”
Her capacity to think melted completely. In that moment, she existed only to be with him, to feel his breath, his heartbeat, his arms around her. Moments passed before she could regain any sense of coherency.
“What about Lady Eden?” Lily asked once she’d recovered.
“What about her?”
“Is she coming here? Have you promised yourself to her?”
His expression turned solemn. “You know I haven’t.”
“Do I? What are her expectations? I don’t want to get in the way—”
“Lily,” he said pointedly. Simply. He took her hand, still holding the horse’s reins in his other. “Lady Eden and I have no agreement. I mean, I still call her Lady Eden and not just Eden, that should tell you much. I detest her company. Our personalities clash, and she brings out the worst in me. I avoid her because I don’t like that version of myself.”
Hearing him put things like this sounded so reasonable.
“I told her I was going to search elsewhere, and she admitted she has a boyfriend of her own—which is why I think my father is grasping at straws to get her to come here at all.”
“So you don’t think she’ll come?”
“No,” he said, squeezing her hand. “I don’t. My father is full of, how you say, hot air. So. Will you stay with me?”
“I—” The fact that he asked meant so much to her. Damon would have held the demand over her head. He would have lorded it over her and manipulated her into staying with the amount of money he’d offered to help her out or something. But Henrik hadn’t mentioned the money.
“Yes. I’ll stay.”
“Good.” He brushed a stray hair from her forehead. “May I show you something now?”
“Yes. Henrik?” He wanted to move on. She found she couldn’t. Not until she said one more thing. “Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For listening and being respectful of me. I haven’t been around many guys who do that.”
“Then the men you’ve been around are idiots.”
She couldn’t argue. They climbed back onto Thunder. Henrik led the horse through the mesmerizing woods and finally stopped in a circle of trees. Sliding down first, he offered her a hand. She took it and glided right into his arms. Lily wanted to stay there for a while, but he guided her into the trees until they broke into a small clearing.
A little well awaited. The stones comprising its base were jagged and uneven, and some of the cement sticking them together had cracked. An A-line roof with old shingles housed the dark chasm below. Lily had the sense they’d gone back to a simpler time when life was slower, where communities and individuals gathered around a water source such as this for the water, yes, but also to greet one another. She suspected this may even have been a clandestine meeting place for lovers. Whatever it was, magic surrounded this place. Magic and memory and an unspoken invitation to linger and be a part of it for a little while.
“This is the wishing well,” Henrik said.
“Thewishing well? You say that as if it holds some significance.”
“Because it does.” Henrik secured the horse’s reins to one of the well’s wooden posts leading to its roof and stared down into the center’s blackness. “This is the well where my great-grandfather proposed to my great-grandmother. This is the well where they agreed to defy laws that said he should wed for an alliance, and instead, he married his dearest love. This well inspired the renaming of what was once a war-ravaged land run by greed and deceit to a land of fairness for the Einvarian people, and it was because my great-grandfather married a commoner that he was able to see the plight of the common people and disband the way the kingdom had been run.”
