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Chapter Eighteen Maybe we could wash the donkeys

“A hayloft!” Isobelle squealed.

“Just like in an adventure story!”

Below in the barn, the horses and a couple of sweet, but rather fragrant, donkeys occupied the stalls.

Isobelle sat with her

feet dangling over empty space, basking in the narrative glory of it all and nibbling on a piece of straw.

She felt delightfully

rural, and she thought the straw probably made her look quite like a philosopher.

“What?” Gwen looked up from where she was trying to kick a bunch of hay into something shaped like a mattress.

“That’s where they always sleep in tales,” Isobelle replied.

“The hero out to seek his fortune, forced to seek refuge in a

humble hayloft.”

Archer had a single spare bed in his cottage, and—aware there were also stories hinging entirely on the predicament of there

being only one bed, for she had read many of them with great relish—Isobelle had insisted Madame Dupont take it.

The last

thing she wanted was for Gwen to think she was being flippant again about being close to each other.

Still, something in her

had wilted just a touch when Gwen agreed quickly and firmly.

Isobelle wondered if by chance she had read the same stories.

Beneath her dangling feet, one of the donkeys shifted its weight and let out a little rumbling sigh.

Isobelle wrinkled her nose.

“I wonder if we should fetch some of the dried herbs,” she mused.

“To scent the hay.”

“I think we might be beyond the help of herbs,” Gwen said, dumping another armful of hay on the pile and then spreading her

cloak on top of it.

“Maybe we could wash the donkeys,” Isobelle suggested brightly, abandoning her perch to see about her own hay bed.

Gwen gave an explosive huff of badly restrained laughter.

“I’d kind of love to see you try.” She sighed, eyeing their nest.

“Dress it up how you like, a hayloft is smelly and itchy and uncomfortable.”

“You wouldn’t say that if you were in a ballad,” said Isobelle, spreading her own cloak and then dramatically collapsing onto

her makeshift mattress, flinging out her arms.

Gwen was silent as she blew out the lantern, and Isobelle’s senses magnified every small sound and movement in the dark.

She

heard the soft pad of Gwen’s footsteps, the rustle of the straw and the soft rasp of the cloak as she found her spot to lie

down.

She felt the way the two cloaks shifted against each other every time Gwen moved.

Here was the chance Isobelle had been waiting for all day—to talk to Gwen.

She drew a deep breath and then immediately sneezed violently, her whole body curling around itself.

“Are you all right?” Gwen asked cautiously once she’d subsided.

“I think I might be allergic to straw,” Isobelle admitted.

There was a muffled sound suspiciously akin to a snort.

“They might have left a few details out of the ballads.” Isobelle sighed.

“I should have known.”

“Well,” said Gwen, and Isobelle realized her eyes had adjusted—now she could see Gwen’s silhouette illuminated by the faint moonlight filtering in through the cracks in the walls.

“Perhaps they got a few things right, too. This does feel a little like an adventure.”

Isobelle bit her lip, on the verge of blurting out something quite embarrassing indeed—that if Gwen could have only seen herself

this afternoon as she practiced her jousting, she would have known what Isobelle herself knew.

That whatever they were doing,

it was better than any adventure story Isobelle had ever read.

She could tell how frustrated Gwen was, missing more often

than she struck the target at first, but Isobelle had the advantage of knowing how often knights missed the shields of their

opponents entirely.

She’d watched Orson practice enough times to know he probably wouldn’t have hit Dupont’s tiny swinging

target even once.

And with Orson, she’d never found herself watching with such breathless focus, needing the sight of the form astride the horse

more than she needed air.

They were both quiet again—thinking, Isobelle was certain, very different thoughts—until Gwen broke the silence.

“Well, good

night, I suppose. We should get some rest.”

It was the forced cheerfulness in Gwen’s voice that made something inside Isobelle snap.

All the half-formed speeches she’d

been rehearsing fractured into pieces, falling around her feet like the shards of a mirror.

She’d given herself all day to

find the right words, and none had come.

Her only course was to launch into the conversation before she lost her moment, and

hope she found her destination without too many detours.

“Look, Gwen. About yesterday. I owe you an apology, but I also want to say—”

“There’s no need to apologize,” Gwen cut in, the words tumbling out.

What Isobelle really wanted was to get to the next part, the I also want to say part, not least because she was interested to find out what, precisely, she also wanted to say.

But she made herself deal

with the apology first. “No, I must. I made you feel pressured to do something you didn’t want to do, and—”

“Truly, it’s fine, Isobelle. We’d both had too much tea, and you didn’t know I— Well, I overreacted.”

“But what I want to say is—”

“Isobelle, please .”

She stopped.

It felt like a fist had wrapped itself around her stomach and begun to squeeze.

“Let’s just forget any of it ever happened,” Gwen said gently.

Isobelle wanted to reply, but she couldn’t seem to get a proper breath.

“We can get back to being partners in crime,” Gwen continued.

“We have to stick together if we’re going to succeed, right?”

Isobelle said nothing.

She felt as though one of the donkeys was sitting on her chest, pressing her down into the hay.

“Isobelle?”

“Yes,” she managed weakly, turning her head to see Gwen’s silhouette once more.

She saw the way she shifted, saw the starlight

picking out a stray lock of her hair.

Saw her close her eyes.

“We are partners, aren’t we?” Gwen asked, uncharacteristically hesitant.

“Of course we are!” Isobelle rolled onto her side to face her, surprised at how normal her voice sounded.

“Of course we are.” She made herself stop before she could say it a third time.

Olivia always said that repeating something a third time undermined one’s credibility.

“Back to normal.”

“Oh, good,” Gwen said, the words a rush of relief.

“I didn’t mean to make things awkward.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Isobelle batted back.

“I didn’t mean to cause all this drama. I’ll warn you about the tea next time.”

Gwen laughed her near-silent laugh, and Isobelle tried with all her might to make herself believe that the feeling coursing

through her veins was relief.

Gwen had shown her all day long what she thought of the not-quite-a-kiss.

She was lucky to have

found Gwen on her balcony at all—lucky she hadn’t run all the way back to the village, never to be seen again.

She was lucky

Gwen was still here to fight on her behalf.

Lucky , she told herself.

Lucky, lucky, lucky.

But watching that encounter on the balcony slip through her fingers and allowing time to carry her away from it, she couldn’t

make herself feel it was true.

Gwen was only a few inches from her, every movement making her skin prickle, but Isobelle felt

as though some vast and uncrossable chasm had opened up between them.

She felt as though she’d held something precious in her hand, just for a moment, and then she’d dropped it.

And now she’d

never have a chance to get it back.