Tillie poked her head in. “If you’re finished, I have some bread dough to knead.”
Simon followed me into the kitchen, where a large lump of dough was on the table. He folded his hands into the dough, pushing and rolling it together.
“Like this?” I asked, joining him.
“It’s hard to do it wrong.”
“Are you sure?” I grinned mischievously. “Some of it didn’t get mixed in at all.”
He looked around. “Where?”
I tapped his nose with some flour. “There!”
He laughed and grabbed a larger pinch of flour and blew it into my face. “No worries, I fixed it!”
Accepting his challenge, I reached for the entire jar of flour, perfectly willing to sweep for the rest of the day just to have the last laugh now. But he grabbed one end of the jar and pulled on it. I didn’t let go, so his tug threw me off balance toward him. I might have stumbled, but his arm went around my waist, steadying me. Holding me. And suddenly, there we were like before, except this time it wasn’t a broom between us, but a jar of flour. And this time, there was no question what either of us was thinking.
Hours seemed to pass as we stood there, though it must have only been seconds. He was probably nervous, worried that if he moved too quickly,
I’d run. Maybe I would. Maybe I should.
But running would never answer the question of whether these emotions surging through me were real. I had to know. I wanted to know, though it terrified me more than I could ever explain aloud.
If the rush of excited nervousness I felt at being near Simon, the tug to draw even closer, the growing sense of caring for him—if all these feelings were real, then every other facet of my life was a lie.
If so, then I didn’t even know who I was.
I couldn’t allow this to be real.
I released the jar, forced a smile to my face, then dipped my fingers into the jar and flung the powder at him. He laughed and released me, commenting on what a mess we’d made.
A mess? Yes, that described the swirl of thoughts inside my head with perfect accuracy.
Whatever I felt for Simon, I couldn’t seem to hold on to one single, coherent thought, because there was no single thought where he was concerned. He frustrated me, intrigued me, and was constantly on my mind. Did I hate him or like him? … Could I have loved him once? It frightened me to get closer to him, but I spent our moments apart wondering what it must be like in his arms. Yet some part of me had already tried to kill him.
He was staring at me again, smiling. I stared back, trying to focus on the question at the forefront of my thoughts. What if I let him kiss me?
Would it prompt a return of memories? And if it did, how would I react?
Would Endrick know? Would he consider it disloyalty?
I just couldn’t take the risk.
Tillie walked in at that moment, hands on her hips. “Enough of this, you two! I’ll finish the bread. Go fetch me some water. Simon, I hope you can get to the well without creating another disaster.”
He winked at me. “For the record, she started it.”
“Then I like her even more.” Tillie shoved a couple of buckets into his hands and shooed us out the back door.
“Tillie is wonderful,” I said as we walked. “How can she be happy, all by herself here, when she is of no value to the Dominion?”
“She’s happy because she has no value to the Dominion,” he said. “And she’s not alone. She has a daughter who recently joined the Coracks in the western part of Antora. I come to visit when I can, as do many friends she’s made over the years.” Simon shifted both buckets to one hand, then offered his other hand to me. “It’s a steep slope down to the well. Let me help you.”
At first, I thought it was a convenient excuse to hold my hand, but when we started down the hill, it was indeed steep enough that I accepted his offer. He led me to the base, then set the first bucket beneath the pump and began to draw up water.
I said, “Two days ago, I told you that I love Basil.”
He stopped pumping and pressed his brows low in earnest. “Do you?”