Diamonds and Dreams by Rebecca Paisley

complement to
the color scheme. Warm oak furniture served to soften the effect.
Goldie couldn’t suppress another soft squeal at the sight of the
white lace canopy sweeping delicately to the floor. She knew it
would be sheer heaven sleeping in the princess bed.
    “Does that little squeal mean you like it or
dislike it?” Saber asked. He ambled over to the glass doors that
opened to the balcony and began to pull the pink silk drapes across
them.
    “No, don’t close ’em!” Goldie cried, running
to the doors. Flinging them open, she stepped out onto the balcony.
The moonlit garden met her wide eyes; the fragrance of
night-blooming flowers caressed her senses. A graceful tree branch
swept lightly across one corner of the balcony, creating a pleasant
and soothing sound. Absolute contentment floated through her. “Oh,
Saber,” she whispered, looking below. “I can’t believe I’m stayin’
here. It’s like a—Well, like a dream,” she said shyly. “This house
is like a castle. If I were still a little girl, I’d pretend I was
a princess.”
    Saber smiled, suspecting that once he left
her alone in the room, she would pretend to be a princess. She’d
been a mermaid in the pond, hadn’t she? “How old are you,
Goldie?”
    “I’ll be nineteen in five months and three
days,” she replied, still hanging over the balcony. “How old are
you?”
    “Thirty, and don’t lean over so far.” She
was so little, her feet weren’t even touching the ground as she
balanced herself upon the rail. “You’re going to fall into the
shrubbery below.”
    He scowled, remembering the time when he’d fallen from that same balcony and into those same
bushes. God, he hadn’t thought of that in years. Quickly, he looked
down at his right hand. There it was. The little scar from the
injury caused by the fall. Lost in the memory, he ran his finger
over the telltale white mark, trying to suppress the bittersweet
nostalgia.
    “When will you be thirty-one?” Goldie
asked.
    “I only recently celebrated my thirtieth
birthday.”
    “Did you have a party?”
    “No.”
    “Why?”
    “I—Because I didn’t want one.” Saber’s
thoughts drifted again to a time when he had birthday parties every
year. His mother and father filled the house with presents, and he
was pronounced “King for the Day.” He even got to wear a crown. He
hadn’t been “King for the Day” in twenty years. Potent emotion
seized him once more, making him long for those days.
    Those days that had been taken from him when
he’d needed them the most.
    “I never knew someone who didn’t want a
party,” Goldie informed him. She got down from the railing, turned
to face him, and lifted her balled hands beneath her chin. “Are you
sure the owner of this Leighwood estate won’t mind me stayin’ in
this room?”
    Saber leaned against the door frame and
contemplated her. Her eyes were so wide, so full of gold sparkle.
Her stance, the way she held her hands, and the unmitigated wonder
in her soft, childlike voice... She was like a little girl who’d
just wandered into the land of make-believe. This made him almost
sure that she would be Princess Goldie very shortly. “Why would he
mind?”
    Slowly, she relaxed her fists, her fingers
uncurling on her cheeks, their tips disappearing into the unruly
curls framing her face. “I—Well, it’s such a fine room,
Saber,” she tried to explain. “Finer even than Imogene Tully’s tea
parlor back in Bug Hill, Kentucky. The town had a lot of crickets,
y’see. I always liked to hear ’em singin’ at night. Ole Imogene
used to have tea parties in her tea parlor every Wednesday at three
o’clock. She near about wore herself into a frazzle puttin’ the
parlor together. She traveled all over the state huntin’ out frilly
things to put in it. I wasn’t ever invited to her parties, but once
she hired me to clean that parlor. It was the first and last time
she ever let me in there.”
    “Bug Hill, Kentucky, and