Elizabeth’s prettiness had made him awkward, but in the presence of Anne he became something much worse. He forgot how to move. The air encasing his body became thick like mud, binding him. He could barely breathe, yet while his limbs became sluggish and slow, his thoughts quickened. Something happened to him when he saw her. A feeling came to him that he had only experienced twice before. (Once when the farmer in his village had let him rescue the runt of a litter, destined for drowning; the other when the local pond had frozen over during a bitter winter frost and he’d skated clean across
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