Lio shook off his melancholy mood. “Is it everything you remember it to be?”
“Paris has not changed,” she concluded with a sigh. “I’m the one who’s different.”
“A princess, you mean?”
She pinched his arm lightly as the carriage turned onto rue Dauphine. “Not a princess.” Belle’s refusal to take the title marriage to Lio would have afforded her was a touchy subject between them.
He mercifully let it go. “But certainly not the girl you were then.”
She turned her attention to the wallpapered panel of the carriage, tracing the embossed flowers with the tip of her finger, unwilling to let him see her smile falter once more. She didn’t know how to explain that she would always be that girl, that no titles or fine clothing would change her. In her bones, she was a poor, provincial peasant who had risen far above her station. Sometimes she worried her life was made up of illusions—to Lio, she was a girl worthy of a prince and a kingdom, and to herself, she was a girl who could tame her restless spirit and be happy with stillness. She wondered which of their illusions would shatter first.
She buried the unpleasant thought as Lio changed the subject. “Should we go over everything again?”
Belle grimaced. Visiting the court of Versailles was not something either of them wished to do, but it was a necessary evil. Aveyon was a principality, and its rulers had sojourned at the French court for centuries at the will of the king of France. It was a mutually beneficial relationship that Lio wished to restore. But he had been absent from court for ten years, bound by a curse that erased him from the minds of those who once knew him. Neither of them knew where he stood with King Louis—he might be irreparably angry with Lio, or have forgotten him altogether. But ignoring the problem solved nothing. They would have to face the king of France eventually.
She could tell her husband was nervous, so she tried for levity. “To begin with, we do not speak to someone of higher rank unless they have spoken to us first. Which reminds me, where does a prince étranger fall in terms of rank?”
Lio shrugged. “Well below a prince légitimé or a prince du sang, but above most nobles.”
“And what about the wife of a prince étranger?”
Lio cocked a brow at her. “That would depend on whether she took the title of princess, which would have afforded her a great deal more respect than if she hadn’t.”
She refused to take the bait. “So to be safe I just won’t speak to anyone.” Lio rolled his eyes, but Belle pressed on. “Are you sure your cousin can secure us an invitation?” The court of Versailles was a beast of protocol and etiquette, and Belle was certain she would never fully understand it.
Lio waved a hand. “He’s a duc, Belle.”
“And you’re a prince,” she replied flatly.
He pressed his lips together. “He’s a duc who has ingratiated himself with the court of Versailles for many years. He knows the ins and outs, and if anyone can get us an audience with the king, he can.”
A younger, more naive version of Belle would have assumed that the prince of Aveyon would have had no trouble securing an invitation to court. But the older version of Belle understood that the court of the king of France was mired in layers of complexity and convolution designed to control the very noblemen who made it up. There was a chance that even with Lio’s cousin’s intervention, they would be barred from it. The rules of Versailles had been laid down by King Louis’s grandfather and could not be discarded. They had to behave impeccably, lest they be turned away for good.
She voiced their most pressing concern. “Are we prepared enough for your cousin’s questions?”
When Lio at last shed the curse that had bound him, his kingdom awoke to a world that had forgotten its existence. Lio’s staff had returned to their true selves and found their families, who resided outside of the castle, had not even noticed they were gone. Mostly they wove back into their normal lives without having to explain where they had been for so long. It was as though the curse had covered Aveyon in a blanket of forgetting, and when it was gone, the blanket had simply been lifted. Mercifully, it seemed that the world outside of Lio’s castle was willing to accept them back into it without question.
But despite how relatively easy it had been to craft a story believable enough to satisfy a kingdom, Belle and Lio worried his cousin—once as close as a brother to him—might prove to be an exception.
Lio kissed the back of her hand in a show of confidence Belle wasn’t sure she believed. “Of course we are, and once this business with the king is sorted, we’ll be on our way, I promise you.”
Belle looked at her husband, studying the face she had only known for a few months. She nestled her head against his chest and listened for the heartbeat she had known a great deal longer. “It shall be our first test.”
If they could lie convincingly to Bastien, duc de Vincennes, perhaps it meant they stood a chance of doing the same to the king of France.
The carriage rumbled into Paris’s richest enclave, and Belle’s breath caught in her throat. Nothing like it existed in Aveyon, where you’d expect to find the manors of Aveyon’s nobility dispersed throughout the countryside, small islands of opulence, isolated and surrounded by modest villages. France’s nobility resided mostly at Versailles. To try to live separately from the king’s court or even leave it briefly spelled disaster for lesser nobles. Only the richest and most powerful of France’s nobility maintained homes in the city, which they visited sparingly. Each one was larger than the last, squatting like miniature castles on the clogged streets of Paris.
“You know, I thought the mansions in Saint-Germain would seem smaller now that I’m older, but somehow they’ve only grown in their intimidation.”
Lio looked out to the row of hôtels particuliers that passed in a blur. “Yes, but to hear Bastien tell it, you’d think he was living in a hovel rather than a townhome.”
Belle sat back and looked at Lio. “Was he always so—”
“Spoiled? Arrogant?” Lio fidgeted in his seat. “Truth be told, we were a lot alike as boys. Growing up together made us rivals, and my uncle only encouraged that. I hope we’ve moved past it.” A darkness took over his features as he remembered the cruel boy he had been before. No matter how many times Belle reminded him of his changed heart, Lio let years of guilt weigh down upon him, bearing it like Atlas bore the heavens on his shoulders.
Belle tried to reach through the shadows of his past. “How long were you fostered in your uncle’s home?”
“Some five years, beginning when I was six.”
Belle paused. “Six is young to be taken away from your family.” Belle couldn’t imagine ever having left her father’s care. After her mother died, they only had each other. She and Maurice had been forced to learn how to live without her, and their relationship was stronger because of it.
Lio adjusted his collar, a finely embroidered thing. “My father insisted I be raised closer to Versailles. I think even then he was concerned about Aveyon’s relationship with France. He was trying to make me into someone who felt at home in King Louis’s court, instead of someone who felt at home in Aveyon. And then…” He trailed off, and Belle knew better than to push him. “And then my mother died. She was gone before I even knew she was sick. I returned for her funeral, and when my father tried to send me back, I refused. At least in Aveyon I could walk down corridors we had walked in together, I could go to her chambers and run my hands over her gowns. I abandoned the name my father had given me, refusing to be addressed as anything other than Lio. Did I ever tell you why she called me that?” Belle shook her head. “From birth my mother called me her petit lionceau, her little lion cub.” His expression was half a smile, half a grimace. “Only my father ever called me by my real name. Over time it was shortened to Lio. To go by anything else felt like I was dishonoring her memory. It seems insignificant now, but I was more connected to her after she died than when I was away in Paris. I knew I would lose that if I went back to my uncle’s home. My father was desperately angry with me, but I thought we’d have years to repair our relationship.” His gaze drifted back to the homes they passed. “I didn’t think I’d be made an orphan within the year.”