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“Being important to others doesn’t mean you’ll be important to me.”

“A traveler. That was the problem.” He came closer. Tucked her hair behind her ear. “You don’t like to travel?”

“I don’t like when important people leave.”

She hadn’t meant to say it, not to him, and she wanted to snatch the words out of the air and swallow them down. But he’d seen her now, glimpsed her broken, ugly parts. That beneath the pageantry of Madame Bridgette and Ashveil Manor, she was a lonely woman in a dying house.

And she was so tired of being alone.

He kissed the tension between her brows, the corner of her mouth. His thumb brushed over her cheek; when had a tear slipped free?

“I’m glad you spoke to me,” he said after a moment, his breath feathering over her lips. He interlaced his fingers with hers.

“It changes nothing.”

Another slow kiss, chaste, but her knees went weak, regardless. “Why?”

“Because you came here to destroy me.”

He stilled, but did not pull away. She didn’t want to see his expression, to admit the truth of what would happen when they finally escaped the manor’s walls.

He made a low, disapproving sound in his chest. “What if⁠—”

She pressed her fingers to his lips to stop him. “I don’t like hypotheticals.” She stepped back, putting crucial space between them. “Our circumstances are what they are, and there’s no sense in contemplating impossibilities.”

The lines bracketing his mouth deepened with his frown. “Bridget, you spend all day contemplating impossibilities. You talk to ghosts.”

No, I don’t.

She gave him a watery smile and started walking backward. “I haven’t finished the tour, you know. There’s a painting of a woman holding a strange animal in her arms.” She spun around, hoping he wouldn’t notice the tears on her lower lashes. “My grandmother said it’s a cat, but it has a beak.”

He chased her down the corridor, and only a moment later he stood at her back. “It’s a bird. A duck, maybe?”

“Or a goose.” She swallowed the lump in her throat, grateful to be back on familiar territory. Sparring, nothing serious. Nothing real.

“A goose would make a terrible pet.” His hand was on her hip again. She didn’t step away. “Don’t they bite?”

“Anything will bite if you give it cause.”

They stood together for a long moment, contemplating the mystery beast.

“I’m going to give you another hypothetical,” he said, and she groaned. He, of course, ignored her protest. “If you could leave here tomorrow, stop being Madame Bridgette… What would you do?”

She attempted to laugh, but the humor didn’t make it past her lungs. How many nights had she spent staring at the crack in her ceiling, her feet and back and throat aching, wishing she could walk away? Dreams poked through the edges of her exhaustion, fantasies of a different existence.

“I’d have a proper garden,” she whispered. If she said them too loudly, they would be a wish, another unanswered prayer. “Not proper as in proper, like at a palace. Proper, as in with vegetables and flowers, loads of them. Nothing grows here except herbs⁠—”

“And poisons.” He bumped her shoulder with his.

She motioned for him to lean closer and cupped her hand around his ear, whispering, “I pulled them out last year. You needn’t worry.”

He laughed. “Good to know. What else would you do?”

“I’d have blankets everywhere. My grandmother taught me to crochet when I was young, and I want to cover an entire house with my own creations.”

He guided her with a palm between her shoulder blades to lean her head against his bare chest, and it felt wonderful.

“Pets, too. Maybe a dog. My grandmother has a cat, but she’s not very friendly.”