And why doesn’t her silence, filled by her way-too-knowing smile, do a thing for easing that angst?
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
BASTIEN
“Man, can you believe this shit?”
The man who issues the exclamation, a character bizarre enough to defy just one describing word, adds a grand sweep of an arm toward Vanderbilt Hall’s ornately carved ceiling. His other arm is occupied with clamping around Maximillian’s shoulder—not that the sloshed sot cares a whit about my brother’s answer.
I step around to issue an answer on Max’s behalf—and mine. It is my most intimidating stare, the look that shrivels every man at Versailles save Louis.
Until now.
A more foreboding conclusion, to be sure—if the days of Versailles were more than just past pictures in my head. The caricature of humanity before me now simply rears back his own head before snorting out a chuckle.
“Yo, buddy. Stop being so mad as hops and get yourself some from the tavern instead.”
He chortles again, inflated with pride about his ability to read and absorb some of the slang from the Chatty Cheat Sheets that were distributed to the gala guests upon arrival. Maximillian and I have discreetly discarded ours, having already recognized half the expressions from our youthful adventures in Paris and London. But after a while, debauchery is as tiresome as gluttony and vanity. A man knows when to leave all that uselessness behind. I am grateful one of the men next to me is also aware of that fact.
As for the other…
“Seriously. You’ll thank me. They’re making something called the Regent’s Revenge, and it has left me shoook, babyyy!” The character takes a stumbling step, stopping only when he collides into Max’s chest. “Yo. Sorry, dude. I mean, I should be saying it’s got me half-rats, right? Maybe even full rats?”
“Of course.” My brother grits out a smile while tactfully prying free from the man. “That is all…delightful, my friend.”
As we step away and weave through the thickening crush in this grand space, I mutter, “Do you even know who that is?”
“Not one fucking clue.”
My scowl deepens. “And that is…acceptable to you? Amenable?”
“The two are not one in the same, brother.”
“Which means what?”
He stops when we find a waist-high table near the wall, shockingly unoccupied. “That I accept many things that are not amenable so that I can have what is amazing.”
I do not demand details after that. After seeing my brother in the same room with Alessandra Fine, I already know the answer. “Your life with your woman.”
Though the light in here is a mellow tone because of the large chandeliers overhead, his irises glint like a long-lost goldmine.
“It is a very good life,” he professes. “Like nothing I ever imagined, that is most certain—and yet it sometimes feels as if I never were away.”
“You are sincere,” I say, exposing my awe about it. “You do not think of our time…your very history…and marvel at the masses of differences? Well, at the masses themselves…”
He chuffs with quiet mirth. “Not every place on earth is like Manhattan. You have truly had a twenty-first century trial by fire. But on the subject of fire…of course I think about what life was like, before the inferno in the wardrobe.” As he tilts his head back, a small smile spreads along his lips. “But mostly, my thoughts are of what I assumed as utterly lost. Our home and friends. Our duties and purpose. Hell, even Chevalier.”
I grunt. “That mangy hound of yours? Seriously?”
He drops his head, stabbing me with narrowed regard, but goes on like I have merely commented on the flower arrangement on the table. “Mostly, I mourn for Mother, Father…and you.”
I watch my hand lift and then my thumbnail gouge a little crescent into a rose petal. And try not to think of ripping into his memories in the same way. “Chev was a good dog,” I mumble. “Mostly.”
He elbows me with the brutality only a brother can get away with. But his smirk is still smooth, his easy demeanor having nothing to do with the drink in his hand. It is likely the same smooth-as-silk whiskey I am nursing. I am so glad it is not a Regent’s Revenge.
“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?