Page 66 of The Lyon Rampant

He sighed. “I have no reason to doubt it. Besides, there is a strong resemblance between the boy in my locket and my paternal grandfather—Maman has a miniature portrait of him in a cabinet at the parsonage. This is real. I feel it in my soul.”

Belinda looked down at the grave, with its diminutive headstone. At least Charlotte had had the decency to spend some of Piers’s money on a fitting monument for his son.

She took Piers’s hand and pressed a kiss upon his knuckles. “We’ll set him up with a finer one, as soon as we get the chance. He deserves it.”

“I suppose I should thank her for this, at least. Where is she?”

A scan of the graveyard revealed no sign of Charlotte, and Piers went back into the church while Belinda explored the road beyond. Nothing. Charlotte Lavoisier had vanished.

“I suppose it’s for the best,” Belinda remarked as Piers escorted her toward the inn. “I’m sure you have more questions, but for now, you must come to terms with the knowledge that your son is dead.”

Now the words were out there in the world, they sounded harsh and cruel. “I’m so sorry!”

Piers paused in the inn’s doorway. His eyes were soft as he took her hand in his. “We have more in common than we thought. We have each lost a child.”

“Indeed, but I fell apart, whereas you are being a tower of strength.”

“But I have you now. Never chide yourself for what happened after you lost your baby—you found strength in time. It took courage to do what you did at the Lyon’s Den—I’m sorry I ruined it all for you, and that you ended up having to work in the kitchen.”

She beamed up at his handsome, beloved face. “But it turned out all right in the end, didn’t it?”

He took her in his arms and, not caring that they could be seen by any passerby, kissed her with a passion that filled her soul to the brim. Then he smiled at her, and she knew she would do whatever it took to see that smile every moment of every day, for the rest of her life.

“It turned out all right in the end,” he echoed and gave her a look that told her everything she needed to know.

This was what it felt like to be truly loved. There was no better feeling in the world.