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tale, where was I?” What a spineless ass he was! Next he would be fleeing toddlers with sticks. “Poor Angelica, the goat maid, the tall, white castle, and—”
    “The prince who wasn’t the Serpent Prince.” She conceded defeat and picked up a charcoal stick. She’d brought a different book this time—one bound in sapphire blue—and she opened it now, presumably to draw his story.
    A great feeling of relief came over him that she wouldn’t pursue her questions, wouldn’t find him out—at least not yet. Maybe never, if he was lucky.
    He tucked into the pie, speaking between bites. “Quite. The prince who wasn’t the Serpent Prince. Need I mention that this prince was a fine, handsome fellow with golden curling hair and sky-blue eyes? In fact, he was almost as beautiful as Angelica herself, who rivaled the sparkle of the stars with her midnight tresses and eyes the color of treacle.”
    “Treacle.” Her voice had a disbelieving, flat tone, but her mouth pursed as if she fought back a smile.
    How he wanted to make her smile. “Mmm, treacle,” he said softly. “Ever noticed how pretty treacle is when light shines through it?”
    “I’ve only noticed how very sticky it is.”
    He ignored that. “Now, although poor Angelica was as beautiful as a celestial orb, there was no one about to notice. She had only the goats to keep her company. So imagine her thrill when she did catch a glimpse of the prince. He was a person far, far above her, both literally and figuratively, and she longed to meet him. To gaze into his eyes and watch the expressions on his face. Merely that, for she dared not hope to even speak to him.”
    “Why not?” Miss Craddock-Hayes murmured the question.
    “To be frank, it was the goats,” he said solemnly. “Angelica was rather conscious of the odor she’d picked up from them.”
    “Of course.” Her lips twitched, reluctantly forming a curving smile.
    And a strange thing happened. His cock twitched as well, although what it formed was definitely not a curve—or a smile, for that matter. Good Lord, how gauche to become blue-veined over a girl’s smile. Simon coughed.
    “Are you all right?” She’d lost the smile—thank God—but now she was looking at him with concern, which was not an emotion he usually elicited in the fairer sex.
    His pride would never recover from this low. “I’m fine.” He took a drink of water. “Where was I? Ah, yes, so it seemed that Angelica would spend the rest of her days mooning about for the golden-haired prince, doomed to never even be on the same level as he. But one day something happened.”
    “I should hope so; otherwise, this would be a terribly short fairy tale,” Miss Craddock-Hayes said. She’d turned back to her sketchbook.
    He chose to disregard her interruption. “Late one evening, Angelica went to herd her goats home, and as she did every night, she counted them. But on this night the count was one short. The smallest of her goats, a black nanny with one white foot, was missing. Just then she heard a very faint bleat that seemed to come from the cliff on which the castle was built. She looked but saw nothing. Again the bleat came. So Angelica climbed as close as she could to the cliff, always following the bleating, and imagine her surprise when she discovered a crack in the rock.”
    He paused to take a sip of water. She didn’t glance up. Her face looked so serene in the firelight, and even though her hand moved swiftly over the page, she seemed to have a stillness within her. Simon realized that he felt comfortable with this woman he hardly knew at all.
    He blinked and began his story again. “There seemed to be a flickering light coming from the crack. The space was narrow, but Angelica found that if she turned sideways, she could just slip in, and when she did, she saw an astonishing thing. A very strange man—or at least he seemed to be a man. He was tall and lean and had long silver hair, and he was quite, quite nude.