“Yes.” She’d meant to set small footprints of mist as part of her return path. “Should I go straight to you?” she asked. “Or how I intended?”
“How you intended, naturally. Don’t change a thing for me.”
What an odd statement to make. Men always wanted changes, and he was no exception. But in this, she returned to what she’d planned. She took a moment to adjust the lines of the shoulder to accommodate her smudges. Then she took careful steps before trailing her feet as tiny puffs of cloud until she at last landed where she had begun.
Done.
And already a portion gone to the water.
“I wish you had painted this for me,” he murmured as he made it to her side. “But if you had, I wouldn’t have seen this.” He gestured to the entire beach. “And this was something I’ll never forget.”
“It was a game.” Something she hadn’t done since leaving China.
“Not for me, it wasn’t.” He looked at her. “And neither are you.” Then he held out his hand to her as if his words made the tiniest bit of sense.
Chapter Nine
Daniel didn’t knowwhat he meant by his own words. She wasn’t a game to him? He didn’t play games with people, so this was an obvious statement. But it wasn’t obvious to her. In fact, she clearly thought he was crazy. Which meant they had a large distance to bridge before she trusted him.
Very well. He had crossed larger chasms.
She grabbed her boots and turned to climb the steep walk back to the castle. Given the late hour and her wet skirts, that was a dangerous path. “Did you come down that way?” he asked. “That’s daring for a woman in skirts.” He knew few people—male or female—who would have done it no matter how they dressed. “There’s an easier path this way.” He gestured to the opposite side. Unfortunately, the easy way to get there was across the top of her sand painting. “Do you think you can climb over these rocks?” he asked, gesturing to the rough brush and stones that marked the edge of the beach.
“We can walk across the top,” she said.
“No. I won’t disturb—”
“I’ll make it into clouds,” she said. “Where is the path?”
He pointed it out to her, and she nodded.
“Step where I step,” she said. She gathered her discarded boots in one hand, then jumped onto the sand and feathered her feet as she moved. He could not hope to imitate her graceful movements. Worse, his big feet disturbed the sand far more than her tiny ones, but she didn’t seem to care. She jumped and twisted. She kicked to make a deeper hole for the cloud, and he struggled to both follow her footsteps and watch what she did at the same time.
Again he saw the dance in her movements. She had a lift to her body as she worked. She swished her skirts to create softer lines on the ground. And once she stepped and spun in a circle to create a dot in the sand. She smiled as she moved, and he thought he heard a giggle, but he couldn’t be sure. The wind was picking up. Then, with a final hop, she made it to the far edge and turned to look back at what she had done. Her face was alight with joy until she looked at him where he stood like a clod in the middle of the image.
When she saw him, her expression stilled and quickly settled back into that blank expression he hated. Her head bowed, and she clasped her hands before her. He knew it was her habit. When she was alone, she was the animated creature who danced on the sand. But whenever she was with another, this silent statue came forward.
He was going to break her of that habit somehow. He wanted her to be herself around him always. But at the moment, he had to find a way to get to the edge without destroying what she had created.
Meanwhile, she stepped further back along the path, presumably to give him room to leap over to her.
“I can’t do it without destroying what you’ve made here,” he said.
“It is not meant to be permanent,” she said. “The water will wash it away soon.”
“How did you learn to do this?” he asked. He did not want to leave where he stood. He was at the top of the painting, looking down on a goddess in repose. It made him feel like the divine creature’s consort.
“Children in China practice writing with a wet cloth tied to a stick. They dip it in a bucket of water and then write on stone. The sun dries the markings and then they do it again.”
“You learned to write with a stick and a rag?”
“Why waste paper and ink on a child?”
“I suppose that makes sense. But how do you go from a wet stick on stone to this?”
She shrugged. “I didn’t have a stick or a rag, so I used my feet in the dirt. My toes were my first brushes.” She gazed out at the ocean. “I got into a great deal of trouble for my large, dirty feet.”
Her feet were tiny, elegant things. Even though they were covered now by her dark skirts, he had watched with masculine interest when she’d worked. Her calves were shapely, her feet delicate, and all of her was built upon slender lines.