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I blinked. There was only one way a man gave a woman a name.

“A false name,” he clarified.

A laugh startled out of me, half ache, half relief. “You have my permission to invent a new name.”

“Good.”

He released my hand slowly. From the cushion by the hearth, Della made a sound of approval. The ruddy bird got her wish.

“Now, let’s get you settled inside Château du Mer.”

“Château du Mer isn’t even proper Sang,” I pointed out. “It should be Château de la Mer.”

“It should,” Yves agreed. “But Château du Mer rolls off the tongue more pleasantly.”

I looked at him. “You’ve knowingly named your house incorrectly?”

“That I did.”

He gestured for me to follow him out of the little cottage. I scooped up Della and the bodice that was hiding beside the hearth. As soon as I tucked it under my arm, the relics responded. Vibrating against my skin. I soaked in the intoxicating rush of their power.

Even though I couldn’t hold it or harness it, not while my magick was dormant, I felt all the better having them with me.

Yves glanced at the discarded bodice with a sheepish grin, but didn’t question it. I tried very hard not to imagine for the second time what it would be like if he’d been the one to loosen it.

Chapter 18

Seul à Seule

YVES

If one wished to move a woman through Château du Mer unseen, the hour before dawn was the only hour for it. The courtiers were still abed. Even the gulls were silent over the harbor. I congratulated myself on the strategy right up until Cora stepped out of the cottage, and I understood its flaw.

I would be alone with her the entire way.

I had said I would remain faithful to my mate, even in death, but each moment with Cora made that promise harder and harder to keep.

We entered through the servants’ door and into the sleeping corridors, and the silence I had counted as an ally turned on me. There was nothing to listen to but her. Bare feet on stone. The whisper of her linen shift. Her heartbeat.

I thought about what we would look like if anyone found us. The Duke of Valemer, jacket-less at the dark end of night, leading a beautiful woman in her nightclothes through the private corridors of his home. A witness could draw only one conclusion, and it was slander.

It was, I admitted, exactly the picture my starved, traitorous mind insisted on conjuring for me.

Behave, I told myself, for perhaps the hundredth time since the harbor.

I stopped at the door of the nanny’s apartments, adjoining Adrien’s rooms, and opened it for her. She passed close enough for her warmth to reach me. Close enough that her robe fell down her shoulder as it brushed against me, exposing her bare arm and the thin linen shift beneath. So sheer, allowing every imagination.

She didn’t move to cover herself, even when she caught me staring.

I hadn’t seen a woman like this in such a long time. My fingers ached to touch the soft expanse of her skin.

“I-I should leave. You need your rest.”

“Shouldn’t we begin our investigation?” she inquired, settling onto the settee. She patted the space beside her. “I have some theories I’d like to discuss.”

I opened my mouth, but words failed me. I was helpless as I watched her untie the sash of her dressing gown and open the folds. The soft curve of her breasts and her tight nipples greeted me.

“It’s so damnably hot in Valemer,” she complained, fanning herself.