Chapter 17

17

Andrew had not slept much last night; he'd been going over all his options, over and over. The early morning light felt too bright. But it didn't matter; there was too much to decide.

He poured tea and handed cups around.

Lily, also looking wan and exhausted, took a sip of hers and shut her eyes.

Alan took his and clutched it in his hands. His knuckles whitened. "I've been thinking. This is a right mess, and I'm probably in this all alone, since you lot are happy with the logbook gone and all."

Andrew shook his head.

" I think," Alan said, "that I should go to the newspapers. Make an announcement. Make a fuss. I must protect my own interest in not being the earl."

"Alan." Andrew felt too tired. "What happened the last time you spoke to someone about the logbook?"

"Well." Alan looked mutinous. "But what else am I to do? Nobody is on my side."

"That is what I've been thinking," Andrew said. "I've been thinking that he went about this all wrong. We are brothers. We must be on each other's side."

"How? We want completely opposite things."

"Please." Andrew exhaled. "Hear me out, and if it's not enough, you can do whatever you like. It's not as if I can stop you."

"Very well." Alan sat back.

"Oh, no," Lily breathed. "That look on your face. It can only mean one thing."

"Of course. I'm only good at one thing." He managed a smile. "Alan, Lily. This is what I believe needs to happen. We must steal back the logbook."

"Ooh!" Alan's eyes brightened. "Yes! Please!"

"So long as they have it, they are in control: Alan becomes the earl, and his uncle becomes his guardian, once his father?—"

"Our father," Alan interrupted.

" His father," Andrew repeated mulishly, "because it's absurd for me to refer to a man as ‘father' when I've never met him. As I was saying: once we have the logbook, we will be in control once again."

Lily looked at him. She did not look convinced. He looked to Alan, who looked similarly skeptical.

"So," Lily said. "How are we supposed to know where it is? How are we supposed to get it?"

"A more relevant question." Alan pointed a finger. "Who is she, and why is she here?"

"Rude!" gasped Lily.

"Lily is here," Andrew said, "because she was given the logbook by the captain. That makes her the rightful owner of said logbook. If we take it on our own, it's stealing. If she's involved, it's justice. She is here to consult and to lend the veil of righteousness."

"I don't think that's how the law works," Alan mused. "It doesn't much care about righteousness, veiled or otherwise."

"Well, you're a child. You're not the law expert."

"That's—that's—" Alan sputtered. "I'm fifteen! And I'm attending Eton! Wasn't your point about the whole ‘no, Alan, you are better suited to be earl' thing that I was the one trained to do it?"

Lily shook her head gravely. "I also don't think that's how the law works. Do you really believe an earl's brother-in-law will just say ‘oh, well, I certainly won't press charges against you, because the thing you are doing, which I very much do not want you to do, is righteous'?"

"I take back my prior objection." Alan nodded. "She should be here. I approve." He frowned. "What is your name? I don't believe we've been introduced."

"Lily Bei."

"A pleasure to meet you, Miss Bei."

"Skip the law." Andrew slapped the table. "Shakespeare had it right: the law is an ass."

"I'm not convinced Shakespeare knew how law worked, either," Alan muttered. "Particularly not the workings of it centuries after his passage."

Andrew glared at them both in turn. "We don't care about Shakespeare. We scoff at the law. We are going to steal the logbook back. It is ours from a moral standpoint; we shall simply not get caught doing so."

"Oh, yes, we shall simply not get caught!" Alan threw up his hands. "Do we have a method for not getting caught? How do we know they haven't destroyed it yet?"

"We know nothing," Andrew said. "That is why we are here: to devise a plan. We're all very intelligent. I know none of us have ever committed theft before, but surely?—"

Lily tentatively raised a hand. "This is incorrect."

"Right." Andrew brightened. "I did technically steal the logbook from you the first time. I do have experience. Thank you for the reminder."

"I wasn't referring to that. You were inept."

Andrew let out a choked noise. "Your pardon?"

"Should I have phrased it less directly? You lacked a certain competence that one might wish for under the circumstances."

Andrew turned to Alan. "Don't listen to her. I am, in fact, a seasoned larcenist."

"Tell the truth." Lily folded her arms.

"Very well. I am so unseasoned I could pass for an English roast. But I am all that we have, and we will make do." Andrew nodded grandiosely.

"Now that we've heard your explanation," Lily said, "will you allow me to speak? I have stolen things before. Multiple times, in fact."

Both Andrew and Alan turned to her; Andrew with a feeling of disbelief, and Alan with rounded eyes and a look of dawning awe.

"What have you stolen?" Andrew blinked. "You don't even like lying."

"Women from their husbands. And their personal things, after." She said this so casually that Andrew could scarcely believe her words. He must have been staring at her for far too long, because she sniffed and tossed her head.

"The Hong Kong Aid Society?"

"You steal in women's aid societies?" Alan's eyes grew round. "Brilliant."

"Evading a spouse is a very common sort of aid," Lily said stiffly. "What did you think women do with all their time? Sit and drink tea and complain?"

Alan grimaced. "I do not think I should answer that question."

"Of course we sat and complained," Lily told him sweetly. "How else would we get men to not take us seriously? Nobody ever sees women. We're invisible. If you'll listen to me—and you should—you need someone invisible right now."

"No." Andrew felt his gut clench. "Absolutely not. I won't put you at risk."

"What a ridiculous thing to say. Men always say things like that, but when have women ever not been at risk? And who are we largely at risk from?"

"Ah…" Andrew shook his head.

Alan raised a diffident hand. "Is it men?"

"Congratulations!" Lily smiled at him warmly. "You may have a man-ticket!"

"Is that exciting?" Alan looked hopeful. "Do I want one?"

"Mm," Lily said by way of non-response.

Andrew thought of Alan's maternal uncle and felt his nose wrinkle. Lily wasn't wrong. He just didn't want her to be right.

"What we require right now is reconnaissance," Lily said calmly. "I was thinking of it this morning as I was doing some binding. We know you sent the telegram to your solicitor; we know he speaks with your uncle. I think we should ask Letta."

"Letta!" Andrew shook his head. "Why? We don't need someone to sew."

"Don't we?" Lily smiled. "We need to act quickly, I'm sure. We must be there first thing tomorrow morning. In order for any of this to work, though, we require someone to provide information that will get us in the door."

"However will we get that?" Andrew frowned.

"From Alan." Lily smiled. "His brain, I am sure has everything we need."

" My brain?" Alan looked surprised.

"Your brain." Lily nodded. "Come. Let's go find Letta."

"That's the plan, then."

Andrew had refused a seat in the cramped kitchen in Lily's home, choosing instead to pace. Lily sat at the table, where she'd sketched some notes as she'd explained what needed to happen on the morrow. Letta sat next to her, an embroidery frame in her hand, stitching as she worked.

"Simple enough." Letta gave them both a brief smile, looking up from her work as she did. "We've done it before."

" You've done it before?" Andrew looked between them. Letta Grimsley had arrived in Wedgeford slightly less than two years before, and she was a scant few years older than Lily. She sewed and stitched, and he'd never imagined her as anything other than a very young widow. Certainly not the sort to have engaged in criminal behavior.

That was Wedgeford: you never knew what anyone had hidden in their past.

"Is that everything?" Letta asked.

Lily nodded.

"But what do I do?" Alan demanded. "Just tell you about the cushions?"

" You go back to Eton before your classes start tomorrow," Andrew said. "Otherwise they'll tell your uncle you're missing. Your task is very important: you must make sure that your family suspects nothing."

"Ugh. Fine. Boring. But you'll tell me all about it afterward, won't you?"

"I will."

Letta stood. "If you don't need me anymore, there are things I must take care of upstairs, if I'm to be gone most of tomorrow."

She left.

"I don't like this plan," Alan said, when she'd gone. "This plan gives you the logbook. This plan means that I'm an earl."

"This plan," Andrew said, "means that we work together as brothers. That I try to protect you as best as possible."

Alan's nose twitched. "Fine." He muttered that syllable sullenly. "I suppose. But you must promise not to abandon me."

"I promise," Andrew said. "I promise I will protect you. But I won't be able to, if you don't get back to school. Get going."

They watched him depart through the front door. Then Lily stood. "Come." She gestured, and he followed her out the back door of her house, down the steps, and into her kitchen garden. At the moment, its future potential lay mostly beneath the ground. The carrots were nothing more than a few feathery strands of green. Chives were poking up the tiniest green spears, and little heart-shaped false leaves of radishes waved bravely in the crisp air. To almost anyone but Andrew, this would look like a patch of dirt. He knelt beside it and began to pull weeds.

Lily squatted beside him, the hem of her gown brushing the earth. "I know this isn't easy for you. You've not had to rely on anyone else in years." She leaned forward, coming off her heels to work a creeping thistle sprout out of the soil. "And you don't really know Letta. Talk to your mother about her; I believe she'll set your mind at ease."

There was something utterly beautiful about her with the late morning light dancing around her like a halo. He wanted her. He yearned for her. He'd done so almost his whole life.

Yet his yearning was something of a lie.

Maybe he couldn't have her as a lover or a wife. Maybe circumstance would not allow it. But he'd never allowed himself to have the faith in her that a true partnership would require. Instead, he'd lied to her, made her feel inadequate, had stolen from her—all that, rather than confide in her.

What would it look like if instead he let her in?

"I don't need to speak with my mother," Andrew said quietly. "If you vouch for Letta, your word is enough."

"Is it? Because…"

She did not say because you've not behaving like someone who trusts me. She just raised an eyebrow.

He met her eyes. "It is now. Ever since I've known the truth, I've vowed to protect my mother the way my father should have done. It is tangled up in who I am, why I do what I do. It has been hard to accept that I don't have to be alone."

She reached for another weed. Andrew set a hand on top of hers. "Not that one. It's a sow thistle."

"Are those good to eat?"

"They attract hoverflies, which eat aphids. Best to keep them."

She nodded.

"Mostly, I always supposed men to be the protecting sex."

"Hm." It was a charming, dubious noise.

"When I really think about it, women spend more time protecting each other than men."

"Very true," Lily said. "But you mustn't feel badly about it. Men aren't supposed to notice."

"Why not, if it's the truth?"

"Because men get angry when they're not in charge."

He frowned.

"Not you, silly." She smiled at him. "Mostly not you. But in general. We maintain the illusion that they're arranging everything. But how could they possibly do so? This is the age of the absence of men."

"What absence?"

"Men go abroad." She looked off, away from her garden and out into the trees beyond. "They enter the army. Here in England, men leave and serve as administrators or soldiers in India or British Malaysia or the offices in Shanghai. The women who remain in England are called ‘surplus,' as if we're corn left in a field to rot. In China, husbands, uncles, brothers…" Lily shook her head. "They're also gone. They're looking for money, because there's little enough to be found at home. They build railways in the Canadian Confederation or work on farms in Brazil or the sovereign kingdom of Hawai'i. If they're wealthier, they travel West to seek education. Ask any of them why they're doing it—why they're leaving wife and sister, child and mother, and they'll all have the same answer. They're protecting us. They're making money. They're making the world a better place—that's what they say, although if you ask too many questions about the how of it, you'll be told to be quiet and just accept what you're given."

Andrew looked at Lily.

"If women were not competent," Lily said, "the world would have fallen to pieces, a million times over. Instead, we hold everything together, because at this moment, the men do not."

"I see." Andrew's head was spinning, his view of the world rearranging. She was not saying anything new to him; he understood the role his mother and aunt played in Wedgeford. But it had never been articulated this way, and now that it was, he didn't think he could stop seeing it.

"It is not an insult," Lily told him, "for me to allow you to see what women can do. It is a gift. Because I trust you."

If there had been an absence in Lily's life, it was one partially of Andrew's making.

He had been trying to protect Lily from the things he had never told her all his life. He'd never told her what he felt, had never let himself dream of being present in her life. He'd been protecting Lily by absenting himself; he'd imagined in the worst case scenario that his best protection for Wedgeford would be leaving.

Yet when she'd finally asked him for protection, she hadn't asked him to leave.

She'd asked him to make love to her. To take her virginity, so that other men wouldn't see her as worthy of their officious over-protection. She'd asked him to be there for her.

What would it look like, if he actually protected Lily the way she wanted, rather than the one he had believed necessary?

He looked at her, at the steel in her spine, at the wind rustling her skirts, and the dirt on her fingertips.

And he thought.

Lily had brought him a logbook containing an earldom. Which, yes, had been technically misguided on her part, but only because he hadn't told her the truth. Once he'd given her the barest hint of what he wanted, she'd turned around and fought for him.

What Lily did for him looked more like protection than anything he had ever done for her. When had he ever cared for her in that same way? And what would it look like, if he did?

"How is the volume of poetry going?" She might think this a change in subject; it felt natural to him.

"Oh!" She perked up. "It's not much, but I managed to bind a volume last night. I couldn't sleep. Would you like to see?"

"I would love it."

She stood, brushed the dirt off her hands, and led him to the shed. True to her word, a slim volume, bound in brown cloth, lay on the table. He picked one up. The tooling on the front was simple white ink: Chinese Women Poets. Translated by Her Imperial Princess Zhu Wei Na (in exile).

This mattered to her. From what Lily had said, her desire to print this had brought her halfway round the world. This was seditious in the best sense—a danger to the world as it was, and as it shouldn't be. This was Lily.

He ran a finger along the edge. "However do you get the corners of the binding to be so square?"

"Oh, that's simple. It's the bone folder. You should see—" She reached for it, then laughed and looked away. "Never mind. That's rather inconsequential in the moment."

"I do want to see," he told her.

"Haven't you other things to do?"

"What, because if things go badly tomorrow, I may find myself under immediate threat? Because I may have to…" His throat closed.

"You might have to…what?"

"Leave Wedgeford for good. And never look back." He spoke quietly.

"Oh." The word was small and pained. "Have you been thinking that all this time?"

"Yes."

"Then why are you here with me?"

"If this is to be one of my last days in Wedgeford, where else would I want to be?" He set the volume down. "What else would I want to do but watch you do what you do best?"

"Andrew." Her eyes glittered.

"No. Please show me. I want to know."

So, she did. He sat and watched her, watched the precision of the movement, as she demonstrated binding a second volume, and then a third.

It reminded Andrew of watching Kai throw pottery—the smooth economy of motion, the pristine result.

"Make as many as you like," Andrew said quietly. "We'll sell them at the inn."

"You'd abuse your position to make sure you fob them off on unsuspecting customers?"

"Oh, they'd never stop suspecting." His eyes met hers. "I would not be able to stop singing your praises."

Their gazes locked. He felt like a clear spring pool, visible down to the bottom, the wants that he'd tried to hide for so long in the murk laid out for anyone to see.

"Andrew." She breathed the word and he felt a thrill running up his fingertips.

"Lily."

He could imagine himself years in the future, telling visitors about her fourth volume of poetry.

They were such opposites. Lily was built to dream large and achieve everything. Andrew yearned to be the man she did it beside. He wanted to be able to track her achievements, to boast about her in the evenings when he poured ale. He could imagine himself years in the future, telling visitors about her latest accomplishment. He wanted to be able to say: that's my wife.

At any moment, Alan's uncle might figure out that the actual earl lived in England, and when he did…

Mr. Hortense Sallet had hesitated not one iota in sending a man to ransack Andrew's seed shed in search of the logbook. He'd shoved Andrew's mother down a staircase. What might he do if he knew of a legitimate heir to the earldom? What would he do if Andrew had a wife?

Still, that desperate little daydream felt lodged in his throat, stuck like a dry cracker that refused to be coughed up. Andrew, glowing with pride, saying?—

My wife translated that.

Or— do you need some handbills? My wife can print them for you.

Even if the theft went well on the morrow, Andrew could not risk that future. He could only ever say my friend. It could only be that.

She looked up at him. Her eyes grew brighter. Slowly, she stood.

She took a step toward him, then another. He knew he should move away, but he was frozen by his own desire. When she stood so close to him that he could feel her breath, he reached out and set a hand on her waist.

"Andrew." She sighed out the word.

"Lily." He needed to escape. Instead, his hand gripped. The moment stretched. He could smell a faint rose scent, as of soap, mixed with the tang of oil and ink in the shed.

He pulled her in, tilting his head so their lips met. It was a fantasy, a dream. Then their lips touched, and it felt real: shockingly, physically present. She was soft, so soft, and hot, so hot, and he didn't know how he'd ever managed to keep his distance from her. His arms wound all the way around her.

My wife, that imagined thought echoed at him, and he wanted it. He needed it: needed to be the one who boasted of her translations, the one who held her, the one who celebrated with her.

"Lily," he murmured. She opened her mouth to him, and he tasted her: salt and sweetness, warmth and sunshine. "I want…" He lost himself in another kiss.

"Mmm?" It was as close to an answer as she could give, chasing after his mouth.

But that was all that emotion was: a want. A want so deep, so much a part of him, that he ached. It was a want he had borne for years and years and it was only that: a want. His feelings were real; they consumed him. But at the end of the day, they amounted to no more than just a want.

Still, they felt like years of need held back by a thread, finally breaking through his control like a great wave.

He kissed her with the ferocity of all his pining. He stripped himself of all the doubt, the hanging back, the I can'ts and the I mustn't . He let all the dreams he had pushed away come to the forefront, and he kissed her with the covetous hunger he'd always harbored in the dark of his mind.

When he felt his cock growing, he did not pull away. He let her feel it. He let himself taste her gasps. And then she moved against him, coming closer.

Desire and need merged. He guided her to a chair and had her sit. "I have been trying, ever since I crept into your room like a villain and stole the logbook, to not think about what else you had in the drawer. To not think about how often you might read it."

"Oh?" She peered at him. "Really? But it was just put there as a decoy so that nobody would wonder why I was hiding books in with my underthings."

"So you would have had it out with the rest of your books?" He snorted. "A believable story."

"It should be," Lily said. "I translated it when I worked at the print shop. It's my work. I read it enough times while translating. I don't need to do it again."

Andrew coughed. "And you have so many copies?"

"It was standard practice to give the author a few copies upon a printing! I didn't realize there would be so many printings—it turned out that every profession demanded it in different bindings. What was I going to do? Waste them?"

"Instead you carted pounds and pounds of illicit material halfway round the world."

"Why not?" Lily frowned at him. "You never know when a beautifully bound volume containing a well-translated story focusing on a women's pleasure will come in handy."

"Really! Name one possible instance. Please. I'm all ears."

She looked up, her mouth pressing together, a finger tapping her cheek thoughtfully.

"Never mind. We have been sidetracked."

"Yes," she said ruefully. "Printing often does that to me."

"I was going to make another point. I saw one thing in that book—one thing, before I slammed it shut—you really translated the whole thing?"

"Of course!"

"I saw this particular thing," Andrew said, "and I have been trying my damnedest to not think of it—and you—ever since."

She looked up at him with questioning eyes.

"And so I wanted to ask." He swallowed. "If you would let me try."

Her eyes grew wide. "Which one?"

"This." He sank to his knees in front of her. "I want to try this." He set a hand on her gown just above her thigh.

"I don't know what you mean." She exhaled. "It hardly matters. The answer is the same. Yes. Always yes."

Carefully, he lifted her gown, sliding his hand up the fabric of her stockings. Carefully, he inched up her thigh, up the simple muslin of her drawers. The last time he'd touched her underthings, they had been folded in a drawer, cold and empty. Now, they were warm, given shape and firmness by Lily's thighs.

Up until now, Andrew had never met a serious, sober occasion that didn't demand some humor. It wasn't until this moment that he understood that such a thing could exist: that serious did not always mean grave . That joy could be sacred; that he could be stripped bare and seen, and that he might let it happen.

"Lily," Andrew said softly. "I want to worship you."

She let out an exhale. "What do you mean by that?"

"I'm not sure. I've never done it before." He bowed his head. "I only know that what is between us… It feels sacred. It feels like something I've never experienced before. And I want to let you know." He could feel his fingers digging into the flesh of her leg.

Lily had never been one for artifice. Her eyes widened; she melted against him, opening up. "Yes," she breathed. "Yes."

And then she was lifting her hips so that he could shimmy her drawers down to her ankles. Her eyes were on his, dark and blazing, and he smiled up at her.

He'd wanted to protect her, but he could see now that everything he'd done had been a mistake. One didn't protect an eagle by caging it. He longed to see her soar.

Slowly, delicately, he brushed her skirts up, up to her thighs, revealing paler brown scars on sun-gold knees. These were the marks of a girl who had always been first to run and play, and what did she care if she skinned her knee doing so?

This one, on the left knee—that was when they'd been climbing a tree, and she'd slipped and dug her knee in to keep herself from falling. It hadn't worked, and she'd scraped her way down. He kissed that scar, the proof of Lily's determination. On the right knee sat white gashes, gouged out from a time she'd tripped and fallen while running through a quarry.

He kissed up her inner thigh. He could smell the salt of her as he grew close.

"Andrew?" Her voice had grown higher. "Andrew, what do you mean to do?"

He grinned up at her. "Isn't it obvious?" He pushed the final inch, kissing the dark curls between her legs, letting his tongue flick out.

It felt electric, the moment he made contact with her outer lips. She made the smallest noise in the back of her throat, then spread her legs wider, opening to him.

"Good," he murmured. "Beautiful."

She let out a moan. He could feel the noise go through her. A tremor, starting with her toes, rising through her thighs where his hands spread her apart, through the slick heat of her opening, up her core, until the sound came out of her mouth, full of wanting and desperation.

She was precious. She was needy. She was giving him her trust after everything he'd done, and if he meant to protect her, it would start with this: with his taking the trust she had given him and returning it to her twentyfold.

He laved up the slit until he found a little nub just above her passage.

"Oh!" Her hands fell on his shoulders. "Oh, Andrew."

"There?" he asked.

"Yes—almost. Oh—that. That."

He let himself fall into the rhythm of it—into the taste of her, the scent of her heady around him, the sheer desire for her that took him over. He wanted to feel her, to taste it when she came. He could sense her getting close by the grip of her hands in his hair. The way she threw her head back; the way her thighs began to clamp around him, the way her hips came up to meet him.

She was close. So close.

Her body grew rigid around him, tensing, her back bowing. She keened sharp and high. The sweetness of her pleasure colored his tongue, and her ecstasy rushed through him as if it were his own.

His hands gripped her thighs, trying to contain the feeling. He had never been so hard in his life.

Her breath shook. Slowly, her muscles relaxed. She straightened, pressing a hand to his cheek.

"Andrew." Never had Lily sounded so warm. "Tell me. What can I do for you?"

He shook his head. He was hard. He wanted with a desperation that left him almost unable to think.

But no matter how desperate, it was only a want. A want so deep, so much a part of him, that it had grown into his soul. It was a want he had borne for years and years and it was just that: a want. It didn't matter how real it felt, didn't matter how much it consumed him. It was just a want.

She sat, looking down at him with wide eyes, and for the first time in his life, Andrew wished he could be more like his father, thinking of nothing beyond his own pleasure. He wanted to take and take.

"Is there anything I can do for you?" Lily asked again.

"I'm sorry." He pulled away. "I want everything. I can't accept anything."

Lily's mouth was still kiss-red. She looked at him in confusion.

"I cannot," he repeated. "I promised myself I wouldn't be like my father."

"Andrew. You will never be your father."

There was a certainty in her voice, one that he didn't understand.

"You will never be your father." Lily smoothed her skirts back into place. She was flushed with what they had just done, and he wanted to hold on forever. "I know you will not, because you are too good for that."

He'd promised to trust her, and so he tried to believe that.

"I want to be selfish. I want everything. But it's not just about this moment. It feels as if I'm making a choice for all the future, and I don't know what the future will bring." He looked away. "It sounds ridiculous."

She reached out and took his hand. "There's nothing ridiculous about what you're saying. Every woman understands that choices about intimacy can alter the course of the rest of our lives. You are allowed to feel the same way."

He turned roughly, trying to hide the tears that threatened at the corners of his eyes.

"You are allowed to make a choice," Lily said, "and if you are not ready to do so, you are allowed to wait."

He took a breath in, and tried to trust in that—that he could make a choice. That he didn't have to do so now. That he could want and want and want, and continue on wanting.

"There is one thing." He looked down. "One thing I want. One thing I will never let go of, no matter how much else I might have to relinquish."

"Yes?"

He took a few steps away. The volumes she had bound were still sitting on the table.

He picked one up. "Is it too late to make changes to the cover?"

For a long moment, she didn't say anything. "What sort of changes?"

See this volume? Andrew's dream echoed. It was translated by my wife.

"I understand why you've invented a princess," he finally said. "But you did this, too. And—you don't have to oblige me, but I wish your name was also on it. That it said, with assistance from Lily Bei."

"Do you really think so?" He could hear the doubt in her voice, could imagine the little wrinkle of her nose. "Who will care about me?"

"I will," Andrew said. "When I tell everyone I can about the volume." The vision seemed so real in his head. "I want to be able to say…"

He half turned. She had come to stand beside him. He could see the three freckles on her nose.

He could envision himself standing in the inn beside her, overflowing with pride as he presented her poetry to friends, family, or complete strangers. She'd be faintly embarrassed.

More than faintly embarrassed, if he had the praising of her.

"I want to be able to say, ‘see this volume here? Do you know who assisted in writing it?'"

She looked at him.

He could also see himself in some other future—one where he had to leave England, one where he might never see her again. He could imagine himself searching bookstores the world over just so he could find her name on a cover.

"Whatever happens," Andrew said, "I want to be able to point to a name, and I want to say…" His voice broke momentarily on the word. That was all he could ask for now. "‘This name on the cover here.'" He tapped the empty spot beneath the princess's name. "‘She's my dearest friend.'"