“Often,” Wick said. “But he didn’t break anything. I came to you the moment I felt reasonably certain that I wouldn’t drop you.” He touched her nose lightly. “You are the most precious thing in the world to me.”

The corner of her mouth quirked, and she whispered, “Love you,” then she was asleep.

Wick lay beside her, watching as the sunlight shifted across the bed, making stripes over the bare skin of his exquisite wife. The doctor side of him cataloged the tiny swell in her stomach, and the way she dropped asleep at any time of the day. The man side of him noticed that her bosom was even more enthralling than it had been when they married, three months ago.

And the child side . . . the small boy inside, who was never quite sure of his place in life . . . That small boy had vanished.

He belonged here, next to a woman whom he loved more than life itself.

Though how that happened he didn’t know. In fact, he didn’t really understand his own luck until years later when his eldest daughter Clara grew old enough to discover fairy tales. Then, with stories of knights, dragons, lovely maidens, and magic beans swirling through the house, Wick realized who he was. Not an illegitimate son of a grand duke. Not the best doctor in the country. He was the stable boy who won the princess.

The stories never said much about the stable boy’s birth. They just said that the princess was as beautiful as the sun and the moon.

But most importantly, those stories all end the same way.

They lived happily ever after.

About the Author

ELOISA JAMES is a New York Times bestselling author and professor of English literature who lives with her family in New York, but can sometimes be found in Paris or Italy. She is the mother of two and, in a particularly delicious irony for a romance writer, is married to a genuine Italian knight.

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By Eloisa James

• My Last Duchess
• Say Yes to the Duke
• Say No to the Duke
• Born to Be Wilde
• Too Wilde to Wed
• Wilde in Love
• Seven Minutes in Heaven
• A Gentleman Never Tells (a novella)
• My American Duchess
• Four Nights with the Duke
• Three Weeks with Lady X
• Once Upon a Tower
• As You Wish
• With This Kiss (a novella in three parts)
• Seduced by a Pirate (a novella)
• The Ugly Duchess
• The Duke Is Mine
• Winning the Wallflower (a novella)
• A Fool Again (a novella)
• When Beauty Tamed the Beast
• Storming the Castle (a novella)
• A Kiss at Midnight
• A Duke of Her Own
• This Duchess of Mine
• When the Duke Returns
• Duchess by Night
• An Affair Before Christmas
• Desperate Duchesses
• Pleasure for Pleasure
• The Taming of the Duke
• Kiss Me, Annabel
• Much Ado About You
• Your Wicked Ways
• A Wild Pursuit
• Fool for Love
• Duchess in Love