Page 94 of Misadventures with a Duke

Correction. They’ve been very good, period.

As if fate thinks I need more convincing, it times the next moment to perfection.

As I round another corner, the sunlight finally breaches into town and illuminates the little shop at the end of an avenue straight from a storybook. The sign, a birthday gift from Bast so many years ago, thrills me as intensely as the day he mounted it over the front door.

Raygique: Modiste Magnifique

Business hasn’t stopped since that day, though I’ve had to start double-checking myself on what provincial German townswomen will accept as the newest fashion sensation from the big cities. I’m not sure Frau Kraus has yet recovered from my Aphrodite-inspired sketches as suggestions for her daughter’s wedding ensemble.

Massive note to self: the Regency isn’t here yet.

But it won’t be a chore to wait.

Sometimes, I even wish time would hold still a little more.

“Mama! It’s her! Mama’s home!”

Times like right now.

Though I tenderly place my baskets aside, the attention isn’t half of my care for the five-year-old dynamo who fills my arms. “Oof!” I groan and mean it. “Christophe Maximillian Tavish, have you sized up since I last saw you?”

His giggle tickles my neck while his meadowy smell delights my nose. “Silly mama. You only left an hour ago.”

“Whaaat?” I tease, squeezing him close again. “Well, they were sixty of the longest minutes of my life.”

I duck my head, ready for another wonderful whiff of early autumn mixed with rambunctious boy, but he’s already squirming for freedom. Aha. I should’ve known there was a purpose to Chris’s willing cuddles.

“Yo, buddy,” I prompt. “What is it?”

The little furrows in his forehead, so similar to his father’s, intensify to full grooves. And now he’s practically a carbon copy of Bast—a recognition prompting my wider smile. And his tighter scowl.

“Christophe? Come on, now. You can tell me. You need to, young man.”

The hell yes, he does. Because there are still too many moments like this. Seconds in which a schism like this is shooting along my spine, afire with worry and wonderings. Too many of them.

Have we escaped far enough away?

Taken enough precautions, even with the new identities?

Watched all the shadows and corners that we can?

Another year and a few months, and the Revolution will officially be over. Though Napoleon has already returned Château De Leon to one of Bastien’s cousins, we don’t dare return until then—if we choose to return at all. Right here, in the damp dirt with this sweet boy, I already swear I’m in heaven.

Except for this anxious rope I used to call a spinal cord.

“Are we really the Tavishes?”

And now the petrified punctures I used to call skin pores.

“Ermmm…why on earth would you ask that, buddy?”

As Chris steps back, he rubs at his eyes. Only now do I notice the emotional red rings in them. Holy shit.

“Izzy was teasing me. She says our last name isn’t truly Tavish. That we are pretending for everyone.” He drops his head to one side. “If that is so, are we…lying to people? And don’t you say lying is bad?”

I open my mouth. Clamp it again. Shove heavy air out through my nose.

“Where’s your father?”