And then I set to work like a woman possessed, determined to finish everything early so that Jeffrey and I can have more time together before dinner.
I’m so driven, so focused, that everything but the deadline fades to mental background noise. I don’t finish early, after all, but I do pop into the post office with twenty minutes to spare. I have my confirmation ticket in hand when Jeffrey meets me outside the small building at one corner of the square a few minutes after four.
“Hello, beautiful,” he says, looking as happy to see me as I am to see him. “Are you a free woman?”
“All free and all yours.” I jump into his arms, grinning as he hugs me hard enough to lift me off my feet. “Want to go back to the hotel and celebrate naked?” I murmur into his ear.
“Very much,” he says. “But first I need to pick up the camping equipment I ordered from the supply store before they close. Want to come along and help carry my tent?”
“I will absolutely help carry your tent,” I say, kissing his cheek.
He makes a happy, rumbling sound that vibrates my ribs. “I like how dirty you made that sound.”
“You’re welcome,” I say as he sets me back on my feet and we start across the square, hand in hand. “So, what did you do today?”
He sighs, and his smile fades. “I went through everything the Gallantian genealogical institute had on your family tree, all the way back to the middle ages, but there was nothing about Greta’s secret baby and no date of death for Greta. She was simply shipped off to Italy and forgotten about, apparently.” He squeezes my palm. “I’m sorry. I’d hoped to return with something we could use.”
“It’s all right,” I say, shrugging it off.
“But if we hit a dead end in Wettingfeld, Jarod, our genealogy man, said there are a few old journals we could—”
“Can we…not do this right now?” I pause in front of a statue of another of my ancient ancestors that sits in the center of a fountain in the square.
This one was a decent human being, celebrated for abolishing workhouses and founding compassionate care homes for aging Rindish veterans, but she also died at twenty-six after tripping over her cat and tumbling down the stairs in the west wing. Her younger brothers were serving with the army, and her parents were away on holiday, so the poor woman’s body lay there for weeks. They later found one of her earrings in the cat’s sandbox out back, a part of the story that baffled me until Zan explained that the cat must have eaten the woman’s ear—and the earring—and pooped it out later.
I was ten and immediately stopped begging my parents for a kitten.
Even my heroic ancestors are depressing, and I don’t want to be sad tonight. “I just want to enjoy you,” I say. “Enjoy us and leave the rest of it for tomorrow. Is it okay to pretend to be normal for one night?”
“You’re normal,” Jeffrey protests, laughing when I shoot him a hard look. “All right, but who wants normal? Certainly not me.” He brings my hand to his lips, pressing a kiss to my knuckles. “I can do normal. After we pick up the camping equipment, I’m taking you out to dinner. Some place decadent where we can buy ridiculously expensive wine.”
“I’ve never had ridiculously expensive wine,” I say, smiling up at him. “Is it really that much better than the reasonably priced stuff?”
“So much better,” he scoffs. “And much less likely to give you a hangover. And then we’ll get dessert to go and take it back to the hotel room, and you can put your money where your mouth is about all that licking you promised me back in Frye.”
I bounce on my toes, so excited I barely feel the sewing crick in my neck anymore. “Yes! That sounds perfect.”
And it is—so perfect that I don’t realize Zan hasn’t replied to my text until, after a blissfully romantic dinner with Jeffrey and an even more blissful close encounter with his cock and the whipped cream from our dessert, I’m awakened at three a.m. by a bleat from my phone.
Instantly, instinctively, I know it’s Zan and that something’s wrong.
Rubbing the sleep from my eyes and gently lifting the arm Jeffrey’s slung over my hip, I slide out of bed and tiptoe across the room to the desk where my phone’s charging.
Turning off the sound so as not to wake Jeffrey with clicking, I open Zan’s message to read—Call me as soon as you get this. Make sure you’re alone. Your friend isn’t who you think he is. He might not be a friend at all.
Pulse picking up and a sour taste rising in my throat, I glance over my shoulder to find Jeffrey sitting up in bed, watching me, and nearly jump out of my skin.