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It’s an uncomfortably true statement, and I’m grateful when he speaks again, stopping my mind from traveling too far down the road ofwhoI was the most thoughtless toward.
“You were close.” It’s not a question, but I nod anyway.
“Like sisters,” I choke past the ridiculous lump forming in my throat.
He sways us, still holding on to me firmly like he knows I’m feeling untethered right now. It almost reminds me of—
“It was the same when Louis died,” he says. “Except I’m afraid I wasn’t nearly as resilient as you are, because it took me a year just to be able to speak his name.” A coy grin tilts his mouth up when he says it, but there’s grief in his voice that resonates with my own.
Except that the pain of losing his brother was directly caused by the woman who orchestrated our marriage. Though it wasn’t my fault, I didn’t kill him, I still feel the edges of guilt creeping in all around me.
I grasp around for anything else to talk about besides the gaping hole where my sister used to be and all the people Mother sacrificed to get where she is now.
“Look at us, almost being civil to one another.” My mouth manages some imitation of a smile. “Perhaps marriage wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world, though I can see why you were sad to pass over such inviting prospects.”
I incline my head to where a lady dressed in a black gown with an owl mask is not so subtly yanking the neckline of her dress down, revealing admittedly impressive assets.
“Well, if that’s the hand I’m dealt…” Francis lets out a deep chuckle.
His mouth pulls up into the first real grin he’s given me, revealing the smallest hint of a dimple.
Warmth spreads through my body, and warning bells clang in my head. I’ve been so caught up in the bizarre turn of events of this entire evening, so off-footed by the prince’s unanticipated conversation, that I have been entirely blind.
The room spins off kilter.
That chuckle.The smirk and the dimple.
The offhand reference to a card game.
The way I can already read the minute changes to an expression with very, very few tells.
My hand loosens around his, my fingers automatically moving against the rough patches evident even through the silk of my gloves.
Callouses. On a prince’s hand. Surely, that isn’t the norm.
“I was only joking,” he offers, like he senses something is bothering me, and I feel so unconscionably stupid for not recognizing that voice before.
But the accent is different, and I never expected to find him here.
Every part of me wants to deny what my mind has already figured out, so I subtly maneuver my steps until we are dancing in the brightest lit part of the room.
Emerald eyes twinkle down at me in wry amusement — eye drops, just like mine, could change the color, but the shape is familiar, even if the sentiment is so at odds with the emotion they held the last time I saw them.
I stop breathing.
Remy.
The prince is Remy.
Remy is the prince.
And I am in deep, deep trouble.
