The carriage tore down the cobblestones at speed.
Safe with their feathered and furry clients, the trio looked at one another and burst into laughter.
“Put it in your report,” Graham suggested. “‘Security so lax, I entered the Jewel House and walked out of the Tower of London with an eagle and an antbear.’”
She chuckled. “No one will believe me.Idon’t even believe me.”
“Have Marjorie sketch a picture of you to immortalize the moment,” Jacob offered. “Something to remember today by.”
“I don’t think I will ever forget today,” Kuni answered. She sneaked a glance at Graham.
His fingers brushed against hers. He knew exactly which moments she would relive whenever she thought back. Not the eagle. Not the antbear.
Training together in the garden. The kiss they’d finally taken. The heat of his embrace.
She swallowed hard and forced herself to pull her hand away. She could not fall for him. Shecould not. As he’d pointed out repeatedly, they already knew when and how their flirtation would end.
They could never share more than kisses.
20
Although Kuni ostensibly spent most of the next day in reconnaissance for her report to the Balcovian king—then at her escritoire, filling intelligence albums with pages of detail—her mind would not stop replaying the events of the previous night.
Not just her mind. Her entire body remembered how it felt to have Graham’s mouth pressed against hers.
She also relived how boggled she had felt to discover the abducted child was a baby antbear, and to rescue him anyway. How free it felt to flee across cobblestones with a sleeping antbear swaddled to her chest and tumble into the Wynchesters’ carriage with all the humans bubbling over with laughter.
It was unlike anything she’d ever experienced before. And the opposite of being a Royal Guard. Instead of standing still, staid and stern, facing forward, spine straight, silent for days, weeks, months…It had been a full hour of nonstop fun.
She was no longer surprised. The Wynchesters were like that.
Every moment scouting estates with Elizabeth was full of high jinks and hilarity, as were the long evenings sparring with swords. Marjorie was just as funny, with her secret projects and paint-streaked everything. Their many conversations ended as often as not with tears of laughter running down both women’s faces. And every unforgettable minute she’d shared with Graham…
The problem wasn’t that Jacob’s suggestion to ask Marjorie to commemorate a favorite moment in a painting was abadidea. It was that Kuni wanted to keepallthe moments.
Like the one unfolding before her, for example. Philippa was currently hosting what she referred to as a “reading circle” but which appeared to be an excuse for two dozen ladies to set their books beneath their chairs and fill their hands with food and wine. There was even a plaque on the door that read:
THEAGNES &KATHERINELIBRARY
FOR WOMEN WHO CAN ACCOMPLISH ANYTHING
The gathering was marvelous. Kuni had never seen anything like it.
When the ladies glimpsed her peering at them from the corridor, two of the women dragged her into the sunny library. A third handed her a glass of Madeira as if they’d been waiting for Kuni to join them all along.
The rest of the young ladies were seated in a large oval. Most appeared to be aristocratic, white, and wealthy, like Philippa, although there was one whose skin was a beautiful tawny brown. They were all clearly delighted to be in one another’s company. There were so many conversations going on at once, Kuni gave up on following the threads and just watched.
This, too, was the opposite of the formal gatherings Kuni accompanied the princess to. Oh, to be sure, Princess Mechtilda had a naughty streak and a wicked sense of humor, but she wasn’t allowed to display it publicly. Kuni suspected the princess would have sold her best tiara to spend a single afternoon in company such as this.
The fashionable young lady with the pretty brown skin and freckled cheeks bounded up to her. “I’m Florentia. Where’s yourVindication?”
“Uh,” Kuni stalled. “My what?”
“A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, by Mary Wollstonecraft.”
Kuni cleared her throat. “Mary…who did you say?”
The conversations closest to them hushed.
