Page 80 of Misadventures with a Duke

“This is good,” he says after a sip of the dark-gold liquid. “Very good.”

“On that, I will agree with you.”

Another extended pause, in which I observe the conspicuous angles of his royal heritage along every inch of his profile as he looks around the room. “Whiskey is not the only thing they have improved in the last two centuries. Wine and weather prediction. Crémant and music concerts…”

“Does every part of this point get companion spirits? No wonder you have been enjoying yourself.”

“All right, then. Put down your drink and join me right here and right now. Look around you, brother. Truly look at it all. Not just at the lights overhead, or the intelligence that created the moving period pictures on the walls, or even the advanced machinery that enabled our women to alter these suits within an hour…”

“Ah. Yes.”

I straighten and spread a proud hand down my embossed satin waistcoat, as well as my fancily tied stock—now called a cravat, according to my fashion-shrewd brother. My dove-gray breeches have been renamed trousers. They now cover my entire leg. Though this is called historical attire, it already makes more sense than what I am used to.

Yes. I do like the suits. A great deal.

That must have tumbled out of me at some point, because Maximillian smiles wider. “Wait until you wear one that has not been sitting in costume storage for God knows how long.” He jogs his head and waves across the hall—this time, to someone he actually knows—before wheeling around to me. “And until you sit in a tub with three-speed jets at eight angles. And sample gourmet sushi. And ride in an Airbus A350!”

His zeal has climbed so high, I do not have the heart to declare how soundly he has lost me.

Especially when he really loses me.

When the forest-thick throng seems to thin between us and the dancing area.

When, through that sparser fashion foliage, my stare fixates…

On a fallen star.

It is poetry in a moment when there should be none—especially in the private chambers of my soul. Because surely, Raegan will see them, as she always seems to do, across my whole face.

And when she sees them, she will fight them.

She will find a way to trivialize them, exactly as she played down all the steps of Alessandra’s fascinating, terrifying plan.

In the hours since, I dared not expose my own hopes—and, of course, fears—about how this would all proceed. My twenty-first-century acclimation skills have been more like a mongoose in a snake pit instead of a butterfly in a garden. In this crowd of strangers, was I doomed to repeat all those vicious mistakes? Am I going to in the steps I must cover to get to the dance floor? To Raegan’s side?

Raegan.

My rayonnement.

Is it really her? I am unsure whether to believe this vision before me. How she has suddenly appeared here, looking like this… How did I not see or notice her before? How has every male in the whole room not?

For she is not just a star.

She is a galaxy.

The brilliance of comet trails in her intricately piled curls. The twinkle of moondust in the barrettes that hold them up. The boldness of sunfire in her welcoming smile. And then the stars, so many of them, embroidered from gold threads into the froth of her diaphanous dress…

I rush faster toward the dance floor. Even faster. If I do not get to her—

But thank Christ, I do.

After I reiterate the gratitude aloud—my aversion to church does not preclude my respect for its holy son—Raegan tosses an unsteady laugh.

“Errr…pardon?” she asks, equally nervous—and utterly beautiful.

“I thought you might float away before I got here.” I seize one of her hands, just to assure that does not happen. “In the way that perfect fantasies often do.”

She darts her free hand up to the throat that stutters on air. “And you really want to keep claiming you’re a fighter instead of a poet?”