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She couldn’t tell if she welcomed the shift in conversation or did not. And her cheeks were too pink either way.
“I question anyone who does not like art,” she managed to reply.
“Then your task is to change into something appropriate for looking at art in Paris.”
Nina lifted her chin. “Defineappropriate.”
He didn’t smile, but his green eyes grew warm. He waved his usual languid hand, but this time at the racks of clothing.
But when she took too long, only staring at him like she couldn’t quite comprehend anything that was happening—because she couldn’t—he went and chose a few pieces himself.
Nina went up to the room he’d given her the night before, but she hardly saw it. She put on the simple dress he’d chosen, then sighed. Because it looked like nothing on the rack, but it fit her like a dream. The fabric was soft yet held enough of a shape that, once again, she could see the difference between her belly and her body.
And she blamed her hormonal state when she got a little teary at that.
She wrapped a bright scarf around her neck, knotting it carelessly, then pulled on the trench that slid over her shoulders like a hug. She looked in the mirror and thought it was all so beautiful that maybe, if she squinted, she was beautiful, too.
Just in case, she went and fixed her hair, too. And swept some mascara over her lashes.
When she came down the suite’s winding stair, Zeus was waiting at the bottom. He took her hand and kissed the ring she wore, and she thought she wasn’t the only one who felt shivery inside.
Then he led her to the nearest chair and helped her sit.
And she felt her mouth go dry when he knelt before her.
“I’m already wearing the ring,” Nina managed to say. And she waved it at him, in case he’d forgotten in the twelve seconds since he’d kissed it.
“And it suits you,” Zeus rumbled in reply. “But you will need shoes, I think, to brave the city.”
Nina watched, then, as Prince Zeus of Theosia slid a delicate shoe, itself a near-operatic work of art, onto one of her feet. Then did the same with the other.
Like another prince she used to dream about. When she’d still believed in fairy tales.
She cleared her throat and reminded herself that these shoes, however stunning, were not made of glass. “I don’t know if I can walk in these.”
He pulled her up to stand in them, and she swayed, gripping him tighter.
“See?” she demanded. “It’s a tragedy waiting to happen.”
“Then lean on me, little hen,” Zeus murmured, as she clung to him. “I promise, I will not let you or my child fall.”
My child, she marveled. He’d actually saidmy child.
And the moment between them seemed dipped in gold. He stared at her for what felt like a millennium or two, then lifted her hand and the ring to his lips once more.
“You do understand that no one will believe this is real,” Nina whispered, though she felt...fragile and beautiful, both not herself and more fully herself than before. “Since when have you wanted to do anything in private? Yet you supposedly proposed to the servant you knocked up where no one can see?”
“But of course.” He lowered her hand and guided it to his arm. “This will only add to your mystery.”
And that night, he took her on a private tour of several of Paris’s most famous museums. She found that once she decided she could walk in her shoes, she did. And they were more comfortable than the heels she’d had to trot in while chasing Isabeau around. So comfortable she kept forgetting where she was, or who she was with, the better to tumble heedlessly into one masterpiece after another.
“What made you think to do this?” she asked at one point, her eyes almost overflowing with the marvels she’d seen tonight.
“The time you don’t spend in the library you spend walking the halls, looking at the art on the walls and in the gallery,” Zeus replied. Then smiled when her mouth dropped open. “I know. It is so difficult to imagine I could pay attention to such things, but I assure you, I do.”
“Thank you,” she managed to say. Awkwardly. But heartfelt all the same.
And he didn’t look like himself then. No lazy smile, no laughing gaze. He only looked down at her as if they could have been anyone. Just a man and a woman in front of a painting so famous it had its own merchandise.
