Page 30 of Misadventures with a Duke

“Oh. Is that all?”

“Not…exactly.”

“Shit.”

“You’re going to need more bad words than that.”

A lot more.

Thirty minutes later, Drue is actually proving me wrong. She stands here in Allie’s bedroom, her spare keycard in her hand—and zero words on her lips.

She’s so silent and still, I reach up to deliver a small nudge.

“Hey. You believe me, right?”

The question drips with desperation. What am I going to do if she doesn’t?

“Drue?”

“Yeah. Sorry,” she finally says. “Of course I believe you.” But she still stares into the wardrobe as if she wants to retract it right away. I’m not encouraged by her scrutiny of the bed, where the rumples confirm my tale in ambiguous ways at best. “It’s not like I can call you insane, right?”

“Wouldn’t be the first time.”

“I don’t think this compares to taking that commune vacation with your parents.”

I surrender to a small chuff. “And here I was, thinking you’d drag out the second date with the professional hot dog eater.”

She turns green. Nearly literally. “You mean after the first date that should never have been?”

“Similarly, none of this should have been.” My own words have my chest clenching and my arms spreading. “Maybe…it wasn’t. I mean, what if it really wasn’t? Maybe I really did just dream it. Shit. One glass of wine has never done shit like that to my dreams before…”

“Raegan.”

“What?”

“Why are you doing this?”

“I don’t unders—”

“Of course you do.” She tosses turquoise bangs out of her eyes while hooking thumbs into her trendy jeans belt loops. “You know exactly what I’m talking about, but you’re trying to explain it all away. And you were the one refusing to let Allie get away with that shit last year.”

I snort. “Allie had the truth walking around in front of her.”

“And you’ve got it in the form of some impressive beard burn along your neck, as well as an armoire that still smells like a campfire and a story that does you no good to fabricate.”

I clutch at my nape. “Yeah. You’re right. I just wish you weren’t.”

“Then I’m not going to make you feel any better now,” she rejoins. “Because if you’re really after the truth, let’s remember everything we learned of it during the trip to Château De Leon last year.”

I push out a hard breath. “What makes you think I haven’t already?”

She jogs up her chin. “Okay. So have you checked every fact?”

“Twelve times each since this morning.” I hope she sees, as I wave my phone, that the statement’s literal. Even on the toilet, with eyes still bleary, I’d started the fact-checking marathon. “But there’s hardly any mention of Bastien, except as footnotes to Maximillian’s story. But even those are unchanged. They all allege that he was put to death shortly after his parents. So unless someone lied to the historians or went to the block in his place—”

“Oh, fuck me to Christmas.”

Guess I wrote off the profanity too early.