The Knight's Mysterious Maid-Chapter 470: Fit to be a mother (3)

"I’m not normally terrible at this. You just make me nervous," Annalise confessed as it was taking longer than it should for her to put the shoe on for Lydia.

These shoes fit Lydia better but Annalise was so worried about putting them on wrong that she was taking longer.

"Done," Annalise said, sighing in relief that it was over with. "We can go outside for you to play now. The others were being scolded for getting their clothes dirty. Do you want to hold my hand again?"

Lydia nodded her head again in response to what Annalise asked.

Annalise didn’t mind that Lydia was not a talkative child. Lydia was shy and needed to be comfortable to speak more. Rafael and Annalise had been able to get her to speak after sitting with her by the tree.

It wouldn’t be long before Lydia would be talking a lot.

They stood up together and went back to holding hands. Annalise looked around at the other beds belonging to other girls in the orphanage. They all had different animals carved into the box in front of their beds.

"Do you like birds, Lydia?" Annalise asked, curious if it was the children who picked the animals or random.

"Yes. They fly around and some are pretty," Lydia answered.

She liked seeing the birds that came around the flowers.

"Many of them are pretty," Annalise agreed with Lydia. "I like a lot of animals. Some that most don’t enjoy but they are pretty in my eyes. I have a spider and a kitten. Maybe I had a spider because I don’t know where Herbert has run off to. Do you think he is hiding from me because I am scary?"

"You are not scary and the knight isn’t scary," Lydia said as they were both nice. "Maybe he is playing the game of hiding. We do it all the time here."

A spider was small so Lydia thought he would be good at hiding because he could go places where others could not.

"Maybe he is. When Rafael goes home, I will tell him to search for the spider. Then again, they don’t like each other so Herbet would hide," Annalise muttered, fearing Herbert would be lost for longer until she returned to the manor.

If no one had spotted him by then, it would be safe to assume that he was now dead.

If not for wanting to have a future with her, Rafael might have killed the spider long ago. She didn’t suspect that he had already killed Herbert because Rafael would never betray her like that. He would ask that they send him outside to be one with nature before ever killing it in secret.

Lydia skipped as she walked with Annalise. She was happy to have her friend back because now there would be someone to sit with her by the tree. Even though she was here for a long time, she failed to make many friends because she was too shy and she sometimes wanted to sit by the tree while the others wanted to run around.

When the others came to play with the swing on the tree, they sometimes rushed to go ahead of others so she would be scared and come back inside.

As long as Rafael was away to keep the other children busy, she could play with Annalise by the tree. ƒгeewёbnovel.com

Meanwhile, Annalise didn’t worry about the test Thelma would give her as she was confident she would do well. She would give it her all along with Rafael to prove that they were fit to be parents for Lydia. She was ready to do whatever was necessary to prove it.

"Oh, a ring," Lydia said, now noticing the ring on Annalise’s finger. "Glenn says that means you are married."

"I am going to be married to Rafael in the future. That is something I don’t think is shared with everyone yet," Annalise said as though she wasn’t hiding the ring, she hadn’t revealed that they were getting married.

Lydia placed her finger on her mouth thinking it was another secret she was not to share. She tried to look at the ring as they walked. It was different compared to the rings they had made with the teacher who stopped by.

Annalise slowed down so Lydia wouldn’t trip as she inspected the ring. They had reached the gates to go out of the orphanage.

Children were running around the carriage or crowding around one of the caretakers while Rafael and Thelma were still off to the side talking.

"Do you want to go play with your friends?" Annalise asked. She didn’t want to change Lydia’s plans she had.

"There," Lydia said, pointing to the tree. She wanted to play there with Annalise again. "I know how to climb now."

"You can show me now and I will join you in going up. I haven’t climbed a tree since I was here with you. Should we race?" Annalise asked, wanting to have some fun.

Lydia let go of Annalise’s hand and started to run so she would have a chance against the adult whose legs were longer. She laughed as she ran, eager to win for once. She was not the fastest child at the orphanage, but she could keep up and be ahead of a few of her peers.

"I won!" Lydia yelled, turning around to see Annalise slowly running toward her. "Did you let me win?"

"I am tired from the long trip we had so I am too tired to run. You won this round," Annalise said, clapping for Lydia.

She couldn’t be so competitive that she ran ahead of Lydia and made her sad. Had it been Rafael in place of Lydia, she would have been by the tree before anyone could blink twice.

This interaction reminded Annalise of the first time she sparred against Rafael when he believed that she had let him win.

Lydia believed Annalise and didn’t think anything more of her win not being real. "I can climb to the branch there," she said, pointing to where she planned to go. She practised what Annalise taught her when she came outside.

As long as the caretakers didn’t see her, she could go higher.

"Ok. I will watch you and I will be here to catch you if you start feeling like you are going to fall," Annalise replied, going closer to the tree.

Lydia walked up to the tree and repeated what Annalise had shown her the last time she was there. She made it to the branch she pointed to, but didn’t stay long because she feared the branch would break.

All of the practice had paid off and she was lucky to not fall while Annalise was watching her.

"You did well. Soon you’ll be going all the way up to the top of the tree. Rafael and I have to go to our home to get our things out of the carriage and eat, but I will be back later with gifts for you and your friends. I must smell terrible right now," Annalise said as she sat down on the grass.

"I can’t smell you," Lydia said.

"Thank you," Annalise laughed.