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heart sped up a few notches as she rounded the corner and made out his form resting against an apple tree a few rows behind the others. He was leaning against it, sitting on the ground as if he had done so a hundred times—as if he belonged there.
    “What brings you here?” she asked as she curled up her feet under her dress, her apron going over her lap as she sat down next to him
    “Forgive me!” John sat up. “I did not hear you coming. I was so lost in my own thoughts, or I would have stood.”
    Ella laughed. “Goodness, I have never been around such manners for years, I sincerely did not think a thing about it.”
    “Well, you should. It is rude of me to not perform that custom when a lady approaches.”
    She grinned and raised her eyebrows. “So does this mean I must wait for you to stand and sit back down before you tell me what it is that has you coming back to the house so soon?”
    “Well, when you put it that way…” He pulled an envelope out of his coat pocket. “Here, this is for you.”
    “Me?” She held the pretty missive in her hand and flipped it over. On one side it had her name scrolled in an elegant script across the front, and on the back was green wax seal with the royal emblem molded into it. “The invitation to the ball. I had nearly forgotten about this. You did it, then?”
    He smiled and turned more slightly toward her. “Open it and see for yourself.”
    Inside there was indeed a very formal invitation to the royal ball, with distinct addresses to her and her only. “You amaze me! When you said you would be able to do this, I was not quite ready to believe you—and yet, here it is, one day later and the invitation is in my hand.”
    “So, will you go to the ball with me? I will not be able to come right as it starts at eight o’clock—because I have duties to attend to—but perhaps if I come at half past nine, I could bring my coach and pick you up. Would that be agreeable? You are welcome to stay as long as you wish. And then, I will bring you back home again.”
    Her fingers traced the graceful swirls of the letters. “You are very serious. You mean for me to attend?”
    “Yes.”
    She looked up, searching his eyes for clues. “And you truly will go to all of that trouble, just for me?”
    He was about to protest that it was no trouble at all, but instead he answered, “Yes.”
    “Why?”
    “Because I think you need it. Because I have missed you. And because the ball will be exceedingly boring without you, and so it is worth it to travel all the way here to fetch you, to guarantee I will have someone to laugh with.”
    “I really do not prefer to dance.”
    “That is fine; you need not do so if you do not wish to.”
    She took a deep breath and glanced up at him, then looked at the bark of the tree across. “It is not that I do not wish to, it is that I simply was never taught how.”
    “ You were never taught how to dance? Lord Dashlund’s daughter was not taught how to dance?”
    “I—uh,” she began, and then fiddled with the invitation a bit. “No. My stepmother preferred to have dancing lessons taught while I was doing my riding lessons. At first I did not know about it, and when I did find out, my father was so hurt and upset that I had been excluded he was nearly shouting down the rafters—and so I told him it was not necessary to become so irate as I simply did not wish to learn.”
    “What did your father say to that?”
    “He was not happy, as you can imagine, but he was grateful that all was well. He could not bear to see me harmed in any way, and so he was mostly angry on my part believing that I was.”
    “And were you?”
    “Angry?”
    “No, harmed by their actions.”
    She opened her mouth and then closed it. Her hands tightening their hold, nearly crushing the small envelope. “No,” she whispered.
    “Eleanoria Woodston.”
    “Yes?”
    Her eyes met his and he struggled with the weight of harmful acts he saw hidden within them. She was