“Good.” Emma bounded out of the courtyard, seeming so much brighter than when they’d first met. Her cheeks had taken on more colour these days, her clothes no longer hung limply from her slender fame, and her smile sparkled with ease. Love looked good on her.

Vic followed her out of the inner courtyard and across the grassy bailey before she remembered her way around her own home. “Um, the guest hall is over by the west garret.”

Emma stopped, then laughed, the sound so light and airy. “Can you speak that in American?”

Vic pressed her lips together as she tried to translate things that came naturally to her but virtually no one else. “There’s the Barbican, and the Ravine Tower, and . . . I’m not making this any better, am I?”

Emma shook her head, then grabbed her hand. “Show me.”

Her breath caught at the contact, and she hoped she managed to act cool as she closed her fingers around Emma’s and walked under a large stone archway into a more open parade ground. Only a few landscapers were present this early in the morning. The main gates wouldn’t open for another hour, and many of the seasonal help wouldn’t even recognise her, much less care if she held the hand of a beautiful and very-much-spoken-for American, but none of those facts stopped her from glancing over her shoulder as she passed a young man with a wheelbarrow full of sod.

They skirted an outer wall until it flared into a low building. She used her free hand to pull open the door, but she hadn’t needed to worry about being the one to break contact because as soon as Emma saw Talia, she bolted across the room.

Talia, for her part, saw Emma coming and squealed as they collided into a massive, rocking, clutching hug. The embrace was so unrestrained, unencumbered, and seemingly endless that Vic looked away from such an American display of emotion. Only, when she did, she found herself staring straight into the dark eyes of Sophia LeBlanc.

She stood atop a pedestal only a few meters away, presumably in a costume fitting. Either that or she’d added another, much poofier layer to her character acting, as the period dress she wore swept down from her voluptuous hips in a flowing, ruffled, floor-length skirt and up into a much more form-fitting bodice. The entire ensemble was hued in a deep, shimmering maroon with black accents that clung to some of her finer features and revealed a few others.

Vic mentally chastised herself for allowing her eyes to linger, but Sophia’s expression held no such decorum as an almost impish quality radiated from the upturned corners of her tightly pressed lips. Honestly, the hint of a smile did more to Vic’s heart rate than the corset had.