I scowl. It is not a proper reply for her mirth, but her honesty deserves the wholeness of my own. “Which means what?”
“Which means…what if you really were just here for a stop-over but not a full arrival? What if you were always meant to return to your own time—but not to rescue Magique? What if you were meant to travel here so you could bring her back with you?”
At once, there are wings springing from my heart. But then I realize they have always been there. All this time, I have been carefully cutting them back, refusing to let them take complete flight. They are poised now, so ready to carry me into the heavens…
But not yet.
“Rayonnement…” The endearment is equally as tenuous. Waiting…for what, I am not fully sure. But it feels like something good. So right. So huge. So full. “Are you really saying…”
“That I love you, Bastien.” She wraps her hands along my face again. Pushing her warmth and life and adoration and love into me again. “I think I’ve loved you for a very, very long time. Yes, in another life. In our life, the one that we were planning that night, until everything went so awful and wrong.”
“Mon dieu,” I breathe out. “I love you too.”
I can no longer hold back. I lean in and take her lips beneath mine, sealing myself to her with a bond recognized by the ages…symbolizing a promise that has survived the centuries.
Until death…but beyond…
The words resound in my heart and soul—and now, I know, from Raegan’s, as well. She returns my kiss with all their strength and magic…and oui, all their time-defying power. It makes me tremble, and I part her lips to delve in deeper, but we are interrupted by thunderous rhythms in the walls around us. A sound I know all too well.
The pounding force from determined footfalls. The lockstep sprints from focused, coordinated soldiers.
For a second, but only one, I am amazed how some sounds survive the trounces of time. Passion, joy, sorrow…violence.
But at this exact moment, I do not choose violence.
I focus on the power that betters it.
The purpose through the providence. The love that got me back to her side, at the exact moment that I should have been there. The love that pulled me through so many minutes, days, years, decades…centuries. The destiny that she believed in, even while she lay dying in my arms so long ago.
Until the end of time, my love…
I am praying again. This time, it is to give every kind of gratitude I can put words to—though there is so much inside that defies syllables or syntax. So much I want to say and ask but cannot.
Only one line seems to crawl its way from the clamor of my mind and take discernible form upon my mouth. “So…what do we do now?”
“Hmmm.” Raegan tilts her head, eyeing me with intent that is all Magique. The sly slant of her lips, joined with the open honesty of her gaze, that pummels me ten times harder than when we first locked gazes at Versailles.
This time, it carries the best of both worlds. The magnificence of both women. The doubled treasure I have been given, in one stunning beauty.
The love I will cherish for the rest of my days—no matter what time and place they are in.
“I think we should go home, Monsieur le Duke,” she murmurs at last. “I mean, if Kavia and Carl are right, it seems we have some catching up to do…” Her quizzical glance is met by Kavia’s confirming nod.
I tug her even tighter. Dip my head so that our eyes fully meet again. “You are absolutely certain?” I prompt, wondering if I have ever meant any words more.
“Oh, believe me, I think she’s certain.” Drue is the one to laugh that out, with Alessandra chuckling by her side.
“We’ll tell your mom and dad everything,” Alessandra states. “I think they’re the only parents on the planet who’ll actually get it.”
“I love you two wenches.”
Raegan pulls from me long enough to rush into a three-way hug with her friends. When they pull apart, I am skittish about getting back a woman with hesitant steps and teary eyes, but my rayonnement steps back over to take my hand with more surety than before. Her emerald gaze is clear and bright and adoring.
“I’ll write them, and you, some long letters,” she promises to them. “They’ll be in the wardrobe. In the meantime…” She pushes all the way back against me, snuggling her cheek atop the heart that now beats because of her. For her. “Tell everyone that I’ve run off with the hottest duke of all time.”
EPILOGUE
RAEGAN
1798 — Montjoie, Germany
Morning mist clings to the tops of the lush Eifel hills as I make my way along the narrow cobblestone road, fighting the urge to break out in a song or three from a favorite princess-y type Broadway show. I mean, in this setting, any of them will do.
Instead, I hum a simple folk tune while turning right to cross a stone bridge over the happily babbling Rur. Along the way, I pass a couple of fellow shopkeepers. Neither of them startles at the pair of bulging baskets dangling from my curled elbows. They already know I’ve not been to market for fruit and bread.
My treasures are better: new lengths of fabric from the Troistorff and Red House cloth layers, who have turned wool and cotton and thread into lengths of beautiful inspiration for me today.
Already, my senses are zinging. If I embellish the sage velvet with gold thread, it’d make a stunning new coat for Bastien—just in time for the town’s harvest ball. At once, I’m sizzling in other places too. The years have been very good to my hottie desperado…
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.