She paused, let her fingers linger in the slight curl of the hair at the nape of his neck. “You’re planning something, I can see it.”

“I am.” His eyes were sparks.

“Tell me.” Her heart was a fire.

“I’ve been waiting for this moment for months.” He tucked a stray hair behind her ear. “It was so hard not to write about it in our letters. But I wanted to see your face.”

She raised a curious eyebrow.

“I’m building a railroad.” And as if those words had a broken a dam, the rest of his plans spilled out. He told her about his vision for a connected Habsburg, for faster food distribution, business expansion. He described the contours of the countryside the rails would cut through, the people they’d serve.

“No one will ever have to be separated as long as we were.” He kissed the words into her neck, her jawline.

“Then our suffering will have been worth it.” She ran two fingers along his hairline.

“Imagine how much more connected the world will be.” His voice was breathless.

Her imagination soared with it, with the vastness of Franz’s vision, the vastness she’d have her whole life to explore.

He was a marvel. Her mind wandered to one of her poems, and she recited it aloud:

And were it in my power,

I would carry you to the sea;

Then you would finally see

Your splendor …

The North Sea would be the reflection

For you to look at yourself

Where, in waves high and wild,

You are building a new empire.

The words were so true. He was doing it, really doing something new. Building a new empire. It was an echo of what he wrote to her in his letters—a man finding his values and standing for them. She smiled up at him, moved her hands to his chest, against his heart. “I love it.”

She could see Franz’s whole body exhale, shoulders dropping, expression gone perfectly light. He bounced on his heels, then laughed at himself. Giddy. Boyish.

“The whole plan was inspired by you.” He blurted out the words and then laughed again.

She raised her eyebrows, teasing. “Ah, so when you think of me, you think railroad.”

“My love,” he teased back. “You don’t think thousands of miles of steel beams represent you?”

“Well, I am both reliable and fast.” She kissed his bottom lip.

God, she wanted him. She wanted every part of him. His mind, the way he met her jokes with subtle ones of his own, the way he was when he stood firm in his convictions. And his body, so close to hers and yet so far away, kept back by her thousand layers of fabric. Damned Paris fashions.