"'Tis done. Though I doona ken whether to offer my condolences or my congratulations."
Ramsay's gently delivered pronouncement stirred nothing inside of Chandler.
It should have. The newly appointed Lord Chancellor was, after all, conveying the news that
Kenway's death sentence had been carried out.
Chandler was now the ninth Earl of Devlin. A disgraced lord. King of the ashes.
Earl of emptiness.
Disgusted by his own melancholy, Chandler couldn't bring himself to face the man he'd come to
know and respect over the past two months of pure, unmitigated hell. So he simply nodded his head
curtly to signal that he'd marked the words. He remained at the window of his study, looking down
over Harigate Square, from one of his father's—no—one of his many West End properties.
One he'd never lived in as a child.
"I was surprised not to see ye at the … event," Ramsay admitted. "Ye attended every session of
the trial, staring at him or, rather, staring through him. I thought ye'd want to see him along to hell."
"He'd have wanted me to watch him die," Chandler explained dispassionately. "I wouldn't dream
of granting him the satisfaction."
"I ken that." After a hesitant silence, Ramsay asked, "So … what now?"
Chandler tossed a droll glance over his shoulder. "What do you mean, what now?"
"What will ye do next?" Ramsay gave the impression his question was laden with more meaning
than mere idle curiosity.
Chandler knew they were skirting the subject they'd studiously avoided these past weeks while
they worked together to put the Crimson Council to death forever.
Francesca.
His eyes immediately locked onto the black oak tree in his garden, its foliage ablaze with the
vibrant scarlet of autumn. He couldn't pass that tree and not think of her.
Not burn for one more taste …
He'd always had a well of darkness in his chest. A fathomless bit of emptiness he knew made him
incomplete. Other men with this same void sought to fill it with vice or power. Drink or danger.
Chandler had attempted all of these at one time or another and had learned early on the futility of it
all.
As petite as she was … Francesca had filled that emptiness for a while. Filled his life and his
heart to overflowing, in fact. With the threat of happiness. With hope.
Until Pippa had ripped her out, leaving an unfathomable chasm in her absence. Some bottomless,
swirling, arctic abyss that seemed as if it would yawn open and swallow him whole.
He rather wished it would hurry.
He stared at his ghostly reflection in the window. His skin had lost any hint of sun; his eyes were
bruised for want of sleep. His muscles ached all the time. He'd lost maybe a stone. A shade gazed
back at him. A husk crafted around naught but sinew, bone, and blood with a heart that no longer beat.It merely ticked away the minutes of his increasingly unrecognizable life.
And for what? So he could spend the rest of his days tortured by loss?
By her loss.
"Will ye go to her?" Ramsay murmured the question. "Francesca."
At the mention of her name, something within him stirred to life. A dormant and hungry beast.
Prowling the cage of his ribs, roaring with possessive hunger. Growling in tormented captivity.
Something like a tiger.
Would he go to her? His heart leapt and his stomach twisted.
"Would you?" he asked Ramsay. Or maybe the ghost in the window.
"Pardon?"
Finally, Chandler spun to face the Viking-sized Scot who leaned on the high back of one of his
chairs, testing its mettle. "My first instinct was to mistrust her. To not believe her. And she convinced
even me, possibly the most credulous man alive. After such a cracking wallop of a lie, would you go
to her?"
Ramsay shrugged. "I did. I have."
That stopped him. "What?"
"Cecelia kept her identity as the Scarlet Lady from me well into our acquaintance," the man
recalled. "And aye, I was angry upon first discovering her deceit, but in the end I realized the faults of
her secrets were not only hers, but my own. I didna make the truth a safe thing to tell, and in doing so I
perpetuated her dishonesty."
"This is different," Chandler insisted, feeling itchy and restless, as one often did in the presence of
the truth.
"How so?"
"Because … you can be certain of Cecelia's intentions now that the truth is out. Whereas I have no
measure of this woman. I do not know if her intentions are selfish or simply for survival."
Ramsay scratched at his jaw, looking as if a slew of words tumbled into his mouth and he could
neither swallow them nor spit them out. "Forgive my asking, but what exactly about her actions
causes ye to question her?"
"You must be joking. I knew her as a child, yes, but look at what she's done." He threw his arms
out, opening them to encompass all of his doubt. "She claims she took upon herself Francesca's
identity for the purpose of justice. But would she have done so if Francesca was born a peasant rather
than a countess? Sure, she investigated the deaths of her family, but she's also enjoyed a fortune and a
place in society that never belonged to her. She knew how I felt about Francesca. She knew because I
bared my fucking soul to her. I never would have had I thought she was anyone else." He raked
trembling hands through his hair, wondering why his reasoning suddenly felt thin. Why his anger
seemed to be pointing in the wrong direction.
"Furthermore, she claimed to love me as Francesca. And I can't stop wondering, would she ever
have revealed her true identity to me if my father hadn't exposed her? Or would I have walked around
a blind fool for the rest of our lives?"
Ramsay chewed on that question for a moment before he answered. "Tell me this, would ye have
been a happy fool?"
"Don't be ridiculous." He swatted the question away.
"I'm lethally serious. If ye'd never known the woman's secret, would ye have claimed her as yourown? Would ye have happily loved her for the rest of yer days?"
A yearning rose within him with such ferocious potency, he had to lean against the desk lest his
knees give out. "I never would have even looked at another woman."
Ramsay visibly tried, and failed, to keep a smirk from twisting his lips. "Then … did ye ever
consider that ye're being a bigger fool right now than she could ever make of ye? Ye love her, not the
memory of a poor girl some twenty years dead."
A well of ire seized him, and Chandler had to turn away to keep from striking the Scot. "You
speak of what you do not know."
"Perhaps," Ramsay replied with a newfound sobriety. "But I'll tell ye what I do know. Ye'll never
find a more honest and honorable soul than Francesca. She's like a sister to my wife, and I've heard
every conceivable story, and a few I cannot fathom. She's stubborn, argumentative, crass, bossy, and
a pain in my arse most days, but damned if she wouldna rip her own heart out and hand it to those she
cares about if they asked it of her. She buried the bodies of Alexandra's enemies, and she's protected
both Cecelia and my daughter with her very life. She went to war for the mere memory of ye,
Chandler, and I doona ken if I've seen any man so courageous, selfless, or resolved as she. So ye
intimating she might have intended to take the identity of a murdered countess to enjoy her luxury
makes me want to laugh, or maybe weep at yer sheer stupidity."
Chandler whirled, his fists clenched and his rage sparking beneath his skin.
But when he saw the equal parts fervency and understanding in Ramsay's hard features, he
realized who truly deserved his anger.
Himself.
Ramsay shook his head as if the entire business were a damned shame. "There are few people in
this world that I tolerate, and even fewer I can claim to care about," he concluded. "But the woman
has something that's almost impossible for me to give. My respect."
The hairs lifted on Chandler's flesh, vibrating in the presence of such truth. The last walls around
his heart threw up their fortifications against the onslaught as his own truth rose to the surface. "She
could destroy me, Ramsay," he breathed.
"She could save what's left of ye, and ye know it." With that, he plunked his hat on his head and
reached for the door, pausing to say one last thing. "Love has made fools of ye both."
"How so?" Chandler queried, suddenly alert. Concerned.
Alive.
"It's making her do something I'd never have guessed in all my days on this earth." He sighed,
pausing for dramatic effect, the bastard.
"What?" Chandler demanded. "What is she going to do?"
"She's running away.It was time for her to leave. Past time, Francesca supposed, but she'd waited long enough. For
consequences. For a miracle.
For a word.
Leaves crunched loud enough to sound like bones beneath her boots as she climbed the stone steps
that had once been the entrance to Mont Claire Manor. No stately home waited on the other end of the
archway, only the crumbling skeleton blackened by long-ago smoke.
Autumn was always a bit melancholy, but none so much as this. At least not in many years. In the
frozen cold of the November day, her breaths created a mist that she parted as she walked over what
was once pristine marble. Grit champed beneath her footfalls now, the inlays of artisans of the past
covered with nigh twenty years of dirt as the place had been exposed to the elements for want of a
roof.
The Crimson Council had certainly loved to set fire to fine houses. First Mont Claire, and then
Cecelia's manor in town.
They wouldn't be doing that anymore, now that they didn't exist.
She'd not come back here before. Not since that fateful day, and she didn't want to now.
But it seemed apropos to say goodbye, and the graveyard in which she'd set stones for her mother
and father and even the Cavendish crypts felt empty.
No, all their ashes were here: Ferdinand, Francesca, her parents, the staff she'd been fond of and
the few that she hadn't. Their dust was here, and their memories, too.
Francesca relived so many of those memories as she strolled through what was once the kitchens,
promising herself she'd only visit the good memories.
The stove remained, of course, and she ran her finger through the grime of it before wandering
down the halls past white stone pillars that held up nothing but the sky.
Enough of the grounds had been reclaimed by ivy and other flora, she felt like she might have been
walking into a relic of a bygone age, not merely one from her own past.
A past she needed to leave behind. Permanently, if she was to do anything else with the life she
had left.
After Chandler had stormed out of her life some months ago, Francesca had barely spent a day
alone. Alexandra and Cecelia were constantly at her side, in her house, inviting her to functions and
doing their best to distract and divert her. The love and care and concern of her friends was more
abiding and all-consuming than she'd ever realized.
She loved them so dearly.
And they were driving her barking mad. Bonkers. Because they reminded her how sad she was.
How pathetic and alone. Seeing their happiness illuminated how empty her life would be now that she
didn't have vengeance to fill it.
Now that she didn't have someone with which to share it.
No, best she moved on for a while. She'd go back to the Carpathians maybe, in the east. Get awayfrom the noise, stink, and glitter of the city and lose herself to a place both primal and private.
And maybe find herself, too. Whoever she was now.
For days after their falling-out, she'd waited for Chandler. When he never came, she waited for the
officials. To be stripped of everything. Or arrested.
It was likely she deserved it. A sin committed with good intentions was still a sin, and a lie was
still a lie.
Chandler proved himself a good man, she thought. Or maybe he was just that indifferent to her,
now. She couldn't be sure. He could take everything she claimed, after all. It was technically his.
Because of his father's machinations, he was her heir. Well, the Mont Claire heir. He could be an
earl twice over.
Suppose she just … gave it to him? She could renounce her title and claim to the Mont Claire
lands. She didn't want to be mistress of the ashes. There was no reason for it anymore.
She'd closely watched the very public, very accelerated trial of Luther Kenway, hoping for a
glimpse of Chandler. And she'd done so a few times in the courtroom, though he apparently still
couldn't bring himself to look at her.
She'd watched him, regardless. Drank in the sight of him like the condemned might search for a
glimpse of the sky, or the faintest hint of kindness.
After Kenway was hanged, Chandler had, indeed, claimed his title as Earl of Devlin. Cecelia had
revealed that he didn't take up residence at the London home, however, and Francesca understood
why immediately.
He didn't want to live with ghosts.
She found herself in the Mont Claire library, staring out a window that had no glass, looking down
the hill toward the hedge maze that was no longer. Her childhood refuge.
Refuge.
The word drew her to the chimney, the stone hearth still relatively in one piece. She heard the
frightened voices of children, a boy and a girl, echo from bricks inside. Memories, of course.
She had to duck, now, beneath the mantel she'd once thought as tall as her father. Standing in the
chimney, she could barely lift her arms. How small they'd both been back then. How frightened and
brave.
How insignificant she felt now.
Here was the first place she'd ever heard Chandler's beating heart, where it soothed and
comforted her. Newly orphaned, traumatized, and terrified.
And still … regardless of all the pain she'd felt over the years, it didn't come close to touching
his.
The first time everything had been taken from him, it had been with water.
The second had been fire.
She didn't blame him for his distance, for his antipathy toward her … because the third time he'd
had his hopes taken from him, it had been with little better than breath.
She'd given him hope and love and the tender starts of trust, only to crush it.
"I'm sorry," she whispered to no one. To everyone. To the children who had once been right here.
The whinny of a horse preceded the galloping crunch of frozen grass beneath trotting hooves. That
would be Ivan. She should go. Her goodbyes didn't have to be protracted. She'd said she wouldn't
linger, and she shouldn't be late for the train.But when she would have left, something kept her here. A soft little brush at her heart, the tug she'd
felt whenever Francesca had taken her hand as a child.
A gentle pull encouraging her back from doing something reckless or foolish.
Stay. The whisper echoed through her memory. Just a few moments longer.
She stayed, humming a little song she'd loved from the nursery as she wrote all their names with
her fingertip in the soot of the chimney. FRANCESCA, FERDINAND, PIPPA, and …
She paused. Certainly not Luther; not Declan, either.
CHANDLER. He'd always be Chandler to her.
The sound of boots on the gritty marble filtered through what was now a very short chimney,
perhaps only twice as tall as her, the second and third stories of Mont Claire having collapsed in the
fire.
She took a bracing breath, wishing for longer. "I'm sorry I dawdled, Ivan," she sighed. "I'm
just … saying goodbye."
Impulsively, she drew a heart around Chandler's name, and ducked back out of the fireplace,
batting the soot from her dark traveling kit.
"Where are you going?"
She froze, her lungs seizing in her chest and her heart diving out of its cage in her ribs to land in
her stomach.
There he stood, the Earl of Devlin.
His hair was longer, a bit more fashionable perhaps, and he was leaner, too, as if he'd not been
eating.
He still radiated primal, masculine energy, and his form was fit as ever, draped in an
extraordinary suit the shade of grey that brought out striations of gold in his darker locks.
Shadows lurked in the hollows of his cheeks, and smudges darkened the skin beneath his eyes.
Eyes that pierced her like the point of a rapier, pinning her where she stood.
"What are you doing here?" she asked, suddenly breathing as if she'd run a league.
He just looked at her, his eyes raking down her body in such an inscrutable way she couldn't tell if
he was undressing her or sizing her for a coffin.
"H-have you ever been back?" she asked, desperate to fill the silence, to make him say something.
Anything. "This is the first time…" She trailed off as his eyes left hers to touch the stones, searching
the shadows created by the gloom of the overcast sky. "I couldn't, before. But it felt as though I
should say goodbye."
His gaze returned to her, lingering on the smudges of soot at her bodice and hem. For the first time
in forever she felt self-conscious, wishing she didn't look so windswept, soiled, and dowdy when he
appeared so fine.
Was he angry to find her there? Or had he come after her? Dammit, why didn't he say something?
Do something. Kiss her. Throttle her. Murder her, she didn't care at this point.
He just stood there, his hands fisted at his sides, and let his cruel silence unravel what little
composure she had.
Apropos of nothing, she blurted. "It's yours. Mont Claire. Legally, I mean. You're the heir to the
title and holdings and fortune and I want you to have it. I'm—I'm going away, maybe for good. But
before I do, I want you to understand something about this place … about me."
She took off her riding hat so she could see him better, or perhaps to be respectful, as one did atchurch. "Pippa … she died the moment you were shot … No. No, that's not entirely true, and I've
promised to tell only the truth from here on out." She began to pace a little a few steps this way and
two steps back.
"The only thing about Pippa that survived that day was her love for you. I became Francesca not
only because you loved her but because I loved her, too. I've lived longer as Francesca than I ever
did as Pippa, and after a great deal of consideration, I've come to the conclusion that I'm not sorry—
that is—I'm sorry you were hurt," she hurried to amend. "But I'm not sorry for what I did. It was my
responsibility to my friend. And I know … that both of us loved you. Francesca and … and I." She
tugged at the cuffs of her sleeves. "And, well … I love you still, and it doesn't matter to me if you
know that because my love feels like it might be maintained not only by my heart, but also by hers.
Her memory."
She pressed a few fingers to her brow, below which her nose was beginning to burn with the threat
of tears. God, his very presence laid her bare, raw, stripped her of everything, even her pride. "What
I'm trying to say is we loved you, and each other. If there's nothing else, there's that. I never lied
about that—"
Suddenly he was in front of her, his gentle finger pressed against her lips to silence her.
"I did," he said simply, his voice hoarse and raw, as if he rarely had reason to use it anymore. "I
lied."
"What?" she asked from behind the pressure of his finger.
He removed it, his hand falling back to his side. "I always thought my love was a precarious thing
meant for a fragile girl. That being a hero meant saving the damsel and proving my worth to her. I
thought … love was honesty and purity and all the things you and I never had. I believed that trust,
once broken, could never be regained and then … I remembered something."
Francesca waited. Hesitated. Wondering if he was being cruel, or just saying goodbye.
Wondering if she had a reason to hope.
He looked down the green expanse of the estate as though he was looking toward the past. "The
day I arrived here at Mont Claire, you and Francesca were having tea in the garden. I remembered her
face, so perfect and clean. She looked at me with … disgust. Not compassion, not kindness, not even
pity. She saw a filthy, soiled, freezing beggar and recoiled from him."
"Well, she was young and well brought up," she rushed to defend. "She changed her mind about
you, obviously."
He seemed to lose a battle with himself, lifting his hand to touch her mouth again, this time with his
thumb. It caressed the sensitive outline of her lower lip as his features finally melted into something
she couldn't define; it was so beautiful. It went beyond tenderness, to an aching, longing adoration
that threatened to turn her into a puddle.
"You ran to me, your hem already dingy from where you'd been chasing frogs earlier. You took me
by the hand and pulled me inside. Fed me your tea, and then dragged me to the kitchens, where you
commanded your parents to feed me and take me in. You bullied a footman into giving me his son's
trousers and then you bullied me into bed."
She'd rather forgotten that. Not the first sight of him, but everything after.
His other hand joined the first, cupping her face as if it were a delicate thing. A treasure.
"When I look back now, you're all I can remember," he said. "That girl in the fireplace, clinging to
me. She ran by my side. She took a bullet in the leg, meant for me. She always tried to save me, evenif it was just from the dark. She set aside an extra peppermint from her father's pockets, or an extra
hour of work by laboring at my side, knowing I despised the fountain. That the water made me
miserable.
"She spent her entire life trying to avenge my memory, and theirs." He gestured to the ruins around
them. "And … when I thought I'd found my damsel again, she tried to save me from her loss a second
time."
Her breath hitched as her heart began beating once again.
"I never stopped to consider how much a secret like that must have weighed year after year. How
oppressive and frightening it would be."
The weight of it pressed on her now, pressed her throat shut against any reply.
His eyes, full of his heart, glimmered down at her. "That is love … I know that now."
Did he? Was it possible that he finally saw, that he understood the depth of her devotion? She
curled her fingers around his wrists, keeping them there. Wanting to reply but not being able to. Not
yet.
He seemed to understand. "It took me too long to do this, I know. I … I was humiliated by my
father and he used you to do it. I couldn't come to terms with that until he died, and then after … I
couldn't imagine that you'd want to give me another chance. I've been setting my house in order, and
finishing what we started. And the entire time, I wanted you there with me. I realized you were right,
that you have been by my side from the very beginning, and when it was my turn, I failed you."
She shook her head, wanting to say that she wasn't angry. That she was so happy he'd come to this
conclusion, but it had taken so long. Almost too long. He'd almost missed her.
"And then Ramsay told me you were leaving…"
She nodded. How did she tell him? How did she say that she couldn't abide in the same city, the
same country with him and not be at his side?
His eyes became pools of sentiment, his face softening. "I haven't stopped thinking of that girl, the
one who clung to me in the fireplace … I … have a proposition for her. For Pippa, for Francesca, for
whoever she wants to call herself. I'll be whoever she wants me to be. Whoever she fell in love with.
Because it is impossible to be worthy of such a woman, but I can try. All I know is that if I am a spy,
a scoundrel, or an earl, none of it matters. I am no one if I am not hers. And I have nothing, if she is
not mine."
Francesca surged forward and collapsed into his arms, not sobbing this time, but simply breathing.
Taking in deep lungsful of his wonderful scent, and releasing months of pent-up misery.
He petted her hair with one hand, smoothing his other down her back. "I'm sorry. I'm so fucking
sorry. I was a stupid, angry, blind fool—"
Still unable to say all the words that leapt to her lips, Francesca she did what she always did in
these desperate situations. She drove her mouth against his.
The kiss opened her heart and her soul, released pain and fear and sadness and torment like a flock
of dark and awful birds to dissipate to the sky. He tasted good, like forgiveness and pleasure and soft
things neither of them had allowed themselves.
Like home.
Finally, after they did their level best to devour each other, she pulled back, finding her words.
"I … I did hate keeping anything from you," she said, shaping her hand to his jaw. "You are the
only person alive who can shame me. Somehow my love for you gave you that power, and I'll confessI was a coward, unable to give you the truth to whip me with."
She dragged a deep breath into her nose and blew it out in a puff of cold steam against his coat. "I
cannot take back what I did … the lie I told…"
"Neither can I," he said soberly.
"Is it possible we can love each other enough to trust?" she asked—the last question weighing on
her heart.
He looked pensive for a moment, before his eyes alighted on hers. "Trust mirrors life, I'm coming
to understand. Some get to build on pristine new ground, and others … have to sift through ruins and
rubble. Our path might be more fraught with the later, but if anyone has the grit to do it, it is us.
Wouldn't you agree?"
She looked at the ruins of her childhood home, her heart swelling to encompass her entire chest,
beginning to crowd out the fear that this wasn't real.
"Tell me you want to," Chandler said, pressing a kiss to her forehead, her brows, her fragile
eyelids, her temples, before working lower between his words. "Tell me we can build a new life
together on top of the ruins of the old. Tell me it's not impossible. What can I offer to entice you to
share your life with me? I'm a very wealthy man now, you know."
Before he could claim her mouth again, she gave him a halfhearted shove. "I would live in the
roots of a tree with you, you know I would. But you can tell me one last thing."
He seemed to brace himself.
"What do I call you during this life together?" she asked. "Surely you don't go by Luther. And you
never seemed to quite take to Declan."
His eyes brightened, and a smirk pulled one side of his mouth higher. "Oh, didn't you hear? I
officially changed my name to Chandler. Chandler Beaufort de Clanforth-Kenway, the ninth Earl of
Devlin."
"You didn't!"
"I did."
"Why? What significance does that name have to you? I never knew."
"Chandler was your and Francesca's favorite pony in the stable, if you remember. He died before
either of you saw ten."
"Yes, but … surely you told us your name before then."
He shook his head. "While you were feeding me, you and Francesca were both chattering so much,
and you mentioned the horse in passing. I fell asleep before really having to explain myself to anyone.
And when I woke the next day, I sort of just … made up a name when I was asked."
"How … utterly unromantic," she teased, kissing him tentatively, then with more confidence.
"I took the name Chandler officially because I was always Chandler to you. Declan Chandler or
Chandler Alquist, you knew me by that name."
She nodded, changing her mind instantly about the romance of the gesture. "I've lived as Francesca
longer than anyone else. A part of me wants to keep her, to live the life she never was able to, and
marry the boy we both loved. Would you be amenable to that?"
His dark brows climbed high on his forehead as he cast her a scandalized look. "Francesca
Cavendish, did you just propose to me?"
"I believe I did," she said, rather dazedly. "Wait. No." She lowered to one knee. Taking his hand
in hers, she turned it over and kissed it over his scar. "Chandler Beaufort de Clanforth-Kenway. Willyou make me the happiest woman in the world and marry me?"
"I would say yes but…" He placed a rather scandalized hand over his chest "Where's the ring?"
Before she could retaliate, he pulled her up and lifted her into his arms, kissing the wits right out
of her. Once they were both breathless again, he pressed his forehead to hers.
"Is this what life with you is going to be like? You always one leap ahead of me and me trying to
clean up the chaos?"
"Probably."
"Good. I think that anything else for us would be boring, don't you?"
"We can't have that." She pressed her ear to his chest, sliding her hands inside his coat and around
his middle as she listened to his heart.
Their smiles collapsed as they looked out over the place that had forged them in fire.
"What would you like to do with Mont Claire?" he asked. "Do you want to rebuild?"
Francesca listened to the birdsong and watched a bunny disappear into the bramble that was once
a well-manicured maze. The ivy-choked fountain still mirrored the sky, and the arborvitae lined the
edge of the abandoned drive.
Was this home?
She looked at Ferdinand's tree and could have sworn she saw a little leg swinging there. Her heart
ached, but not with the pain it once had.
"There's a big world out there, a great deal of which I still haven't explored," she said. "So many
places that hold no memories or sadness, nothing but potential."
"Where would we go?" he asked.
"I would like to take a dogsled and touch the northern lights one day, and to race Arabians over the
golden sands of the desert. I want to visit pirate wrecks in Antigua and volcanoes of Hawaii." She
looked at him. "What about you?"
His expression was carefully blank, and then a look of wonder stole some of the cynical age from
his bones. "I never really thought in terms of the future, but all that sounds like an extraordinary life
we might have."
"So … we will sell this place, then, so we never have to look back, and let it finance a great many
of our adventures."
He nodded, bending over to select a silver rock from the fireplace and slipping it into his pocket.
She tilted her head "A memento?"
"A keepsake." He pulled her to his side and led her toward the hallway they'd once used as an
escape. "I love you, Francesca. But I want a reminder of Pippa, of that wild, willful little girl who
promised me she'd steal my heart someday."
"You're never getting it back, me hearty," she said in her terrible pirate accent.
"Good. It's yours. Forever."