Page 8 of Better Love Next Time
Julian devoured the stale bread he’d saved for two days and weighed his choices. Chasing after a fairy wasn’t going to get him back home. Where, he vowed, he would beg and apologize and relish every meal.
He forced himself to hold down a gulp of brandy and then another, and within time, he decided he wouldn’t beg his father, only apologize. After the third gulp had swirled like a warm fire in his belly, he decided just showing up in London and relaying his uncle’s cruelty would be enough to get him back in his father’s good graces.
He laid out a piece of paper over the shawl spread out on his lap and started drawing from memory. In his London bedroom was a sketch of his ship, the one he would build when he’d saved enough money. After he actually worked on a ship.
Maybe he should become a merchant sailor instead of returning home.
Something sniffed.
Julian froze.
No.Someonesniffed.
Careful not to make a sound, he turned his head right as far as it would go without moving his body. Straining until his eyes ached, he saw it. The slightest hint of pink.
He slipped his hands from his lap and, avoiding the fallen leaves, dug his fingertips into the dirt. Slowly, he pushed up and shifted his seat clockwise.
Julian blinked. His heart roared in his ears. He felt it in his chest too, like a caged beast slamming against iron bars.
A fairy, enveloped in a pink cloak, huddled on a log, less than a stone’s throw from him. Pink slippers with darker pink flowers peeked out from her cloak. Long, curling tendrils of shining black hair hung down from her head, almost to the forest floor, hiding her face.
She was tiny. He craved to pick her up. Hold her. Turn her over and around and examine every part of her. He would place her in his pocket for good luck. They would travel the world together, him and his fairy, and she would sprinkle her fairy dust over him, and nothing bad would ever happen to him.
The fairy lifted her head. His breath emptied from his lungs as her hair drew back from her face.
Her cheeks glowed like a pearl, her nose small, with a slight impish turn. Her full pink lips trembled above a chin in perfect proportion to her nose.
He hadn’t said a word, but the fairy turned to him as if he had. Maybe she heard his heart pounding in chest. Her green eyes regarded him in silence. Sooty lashes framed her gaze. Leaves drifted from the treetops to land around her like woodland courtiers.
Was she real? Had he died and this clearing was the gate to heaven? Alive or dead, she was the most beautiful sight he had ever seen.
“Welcome, good sir,” she said. “We are pleased to have you.”
She smiled. He’d never seen anything like it. Bright as morning sun glinting off water, it wrapped around him like a cheery embrace.
The monster in Julian’s soul skulked away in defeat.
CHAPTER TWO
The fairy stoodand walked toward the clearing, her pink cloak floating over the forest floor. Twigs and lichen-covered stones, freshly shed leaves, and fertile earth, created an enchanting music beneath her slippered feet. Halting before him, she surveyed his haphazard encampment with eyes Julian now saw were hazel. Green with bits of gold and orange just like the woods.
She knelt before him, her cloak billowing forth a scent of ripe cherries. Rummaging in her white gown, she brought forward a ruby-red candy and displayed it on her small palm. Her fingers were slender, long for her size. She wasn’t tiny enough to put in his pocket. Shewassmall. Just, maybe, a smallgirl.
“Take it,” she urged. “It’s cherry.”
Julian swiped the sweet from her hand and plopped it in his mouth. Cherry, tart and sweet, like her scent.
“You look sad,” she said.
He rolled up his chin. “I’m not sad.”
She tilted her head, her hair shifting in springy, ebony waves. “Oh.”
“Oh what?”
“Well, I understand why a person would be forced to hide their sorrow. But there is no need to with me.”
If she were a human child, she had to be much younger than him. But her speech was older, her reasoning out of place for a bit of a thing just out of leading strings.
