Page 5 of Gilded Locks

That had been their promise. As soon as they received their own cloaks, she and Jonathan were going to resurrect the legend of the Rogue and force their parents to do something more than sitting in silent protest to change the lives of the suffering people around them.

Today was two years since that conversation.

All that remained of that promise was an empty chair and the realization that becoming the Rogue could cause as much harm as help, if not utter destruction.

Grace looked away from the chair.

She tried to comfort herself. There was always her little brother. And eventually, there could be something concrete between her and James. Or someone else.

But she didn’t believe it. Her immature, boastful thirteen-year-old brother showed little promise of developing the restraint and responsibility needed to be a Protector. And who in Fidara would want to tie themselves to someone who refused to appease the mayor’s ego? Even James, with his reliance on the gentry for a large portion of his scribe work, might balk. Could she doom an outsider to life in an oppressed, dying town? Could she trust anyone with the secrets Sherwood Forest held?

The soirée proceeded. Four songs passed in angry loneliness, the happy clusters of jovial gentry mocking her future. Grace made a point of staring at the mayor between every dance.

I’m a rebel protector,she reminded herself.

It was as James ambled toward her that her spirits lifted again.

“I’d ask you to dance, but I’ve been told you’ve spent the day tending to every single stalk of wheat and would faint if you even tried to stand.”

A genuine smile spread across Grace’s face. James seemed to be trying to sound flirtatious. He spoke with an awkwardly and adorably formal hiccup in his phrasing. Composed as he may be when speaking and writing of economic or political matters, James was a dreadful social conversationalist. If his lips weren’t turned up at the corners, she might have thought he was criticizing her.

“And if I hadn’t—How did Lizzy put it?—'tended to every single stalk of wheat’, I’d have said yes.”

He coughed in acceptance of her response, then stood there, staring at her.

It was nice to have someone appreciating her. Though, if she was honest, right now he seemed to be trying to think of something to say rather than truly seeing her.

Quickly, the air around them tensed. Grace wanted to laugh to ease the pressure but fought the urge. She’d noticed he far preferred prim, happy smiles to amused ones. He probably thought she was making fun of him.

So Grace decided to let him figure out what to say while she just enjoyed the sight of him.

James Patton was, as Lizzy said, dizzyingly dapper.

His dark curls, accented with a hint of auburn revealed only in the glow of direct light, fell softly on his forehead, and below that, those olive-green eyes Lizzy had reminded Grace about. They were, Grace admitted, worthy of swooning, if she had been the type to swoon. He was a handful of years older than her, yet his clean-shaven face lent him a boyish air.

In other ways, he was anything but boyish. Grace admired how his loose-fitting cotton shirt pulled tight at his broad shoulders and upper arms. Perhaps life as a farmer, among men with developed upper muscles, had inspired her appreciation. Though James spent his days at a desk with ink and paper, transcribing for the less literate and recording and duplicating writings for the busy gentry, Grace had seen him practicing with a blade now and then as she’d passed his home behind the Zhong manor. Watching him had fanned Grace’s desire to loop her arm through his and hug tight.

Despite the racing pulse such memories inspired, his commitment to reserved propriety intrigued Grace most. Her mind and heart adored a mystery, and reserved individuals were always hiding something.

She wanted to know what James really wanted to say to her.

Grace finally took pity on the man. “You’re looking quite dapper tonight,” she said.

“Thank you, Miss Robbins,” James replied, then, after a brief pause, “And you are enchanting.”

Grace leaned closer to James. “Such flattery. I’ll blush.” She wouldn’t, thankfully. Oh, to possess the gentle pink that touched Lizzy’s cheeks on the rare occasion she was embarrassed.

James tactfully inched back a step.

Grace sighed. With her sitting and him standing two feet away, she hadn’t been all that close to him. Propriety was nice, but too much distance, and stilted flirting was all there’d ever be in this relationship.

The soft pang of longing returned. Not for James specifically, but for someone, anyone to trust and rely on.

“You deserve the compliment,” came James’s belated reply.

“Thank you.”

James must have sensed Grace’s disappointment. He nodded and made his escape.

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