don’t imagine.”
“What was he like?”
“Percy?” She smiled fondly. “He was a good man. You would have liked him. He and Donovan were childhood mates, and he brought Donovan into his household when things began to be said about him. But Percy never had an unkind thing to say about Donovan. I think he loved him like a brother, and Donovan the same. Percy was also very curious by nature. He was the one who established the gazette. But his gazette was about very serious things, such as politics and economics.” She gave him a very pert little smile. “It was not as popular as my version.”
Marek laughed at that. “It’s truly remarkable what you’ve done.”
“Not really,” she said breezily. “I had help. And what else did I have to do? I meant it as a way to honor his memory, but now—now I...”
She looked away, as if trying to find the right words.
“Now what?” he prodded her.
She turned her gaze back to him. “Now I need more. That’s it. I need my life to mean something. I can’t spend the rest of my years honoring a dead man, no matter how much I loved him. I have...wants,” she said, her cheeks flushing. “I want to live. I don’t want to live to mourn.”
Those words struck a chord in Marek. He didn’t want to live to mourn, either, and maybe that’s what he’d been doing all this time. He sat up, leaned across the table, and took her hand in his. “I understand.”
“Do you?”
“Better than I can convey. I have wants and desires, too. I think I can’t live my life without being discovered, and yet, I want meaning, just like you. I don’t want to live to mourn—I want to live to live.”
Her eyes turned luminous. She turned her hand beneath his, palm to palm, and wrapped her fingers around his. “Would you ever want to be king?”
“No,” he said instantly. “I am not prepared for that sort of life and have no wish to be. I have two half sisters who are prepared for it and I have no wish to take that from them. No,” he said again, as if she’d challenged him. “That has never been my intent. The only wish I’ve had at all was to see my father. But if he were to see me for who I really am? I think it would do more harm than good.”
“You can’t be certain of that.”
“But think of it, Hollis. Even if he were to believe me, he would naturally face the dilemma of what to do about me. What the discovery of me would mean to everything that had gone before and to every decision he’d made and would make. I couldn’t do that to him.”
Hollis slowly nodded. “I see your point.” She pressed his hand between both of hers. “You’re a good man, Marek. I would think that most people in your situation would want whatever their true birth could give them. Riches, titles, power.”
He smiled. “I suppose I’d rather be a good son than a king.” The words sounded sad to him. A man resigned to his circumstances. Of course, there was part of him that imagined the riches, the titles, the power. But it was all too fraught. He liked his little patch of this world and he was not in danger of losing it. His father was in danger of losing something every day of his life. “How is it possible I found you in this storm, Hollis?”
“I found you, remember?”
Something seemed to shift in the air around them. He could feel a charge, a change in temperature, a glow. And as he sat there, his gaze locked on hers, she lifted his hand and tenderly kissed his knuckles. “I’m so happy you are here.”
She said it every time she saw him, and Marek believed it was true. He was happy he was here, too. He pushed away from the table, took a few steps to her seat, and pulled her up and into his arms. He roughly smoothed her hair, still damp from the rain. He ran his thumb across her bottom lip. “I don’t know what to do with you.”
“Come upstairs,” she said.
He wanted more than anything to go upstairs, but that wasn’t what he meant. He didn’t know what to do with his esteem for her. He didn’t know how to fit it into his life, but he was desperate to find a way. “Hollis.” He pressed his forehead