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“Is this what you brought to win me over?” Manuela was now grinning too wide for there to be any doubt that she was thawing just a bit.

In Manuela’s hand was a very poorly hand-drawn picture of two stick figures standing on a giant lily pad, holding hands. One was taller and had very straight black hair falling down her shoulders, the other plumper and shorter, with a riot of curls that floated around her like seafoam.

“Everything I need to be happy is in that picture,” Cora said, gasping when she lost her voice.

“Are you going to be content with just me?”

“With just you?” Cora exclaimed, genuinely flabbergasted at the implication that life with Manuela could ever be boring. “You are enough of a handful to keep an army occupied just picking up stray charcoal pieces and getting smudges off the mirrors.” That earned her another smile and she was granted a few more inches of closeness.

“I am done measuring my success with a ruler that was made to strike me down.” Merely repeating the words Manuela had said to her that morning made her feel lighter, more powerful than she’d ever felt. And she knew she had the woman in front of her to thank for it. “I was waging a pointless war. You forced me to look at myself, to find a purpose beyond this thirst for power. All I ask is that you give me a chance to be by your side as you make the world more beautiful and give those who want to do the same a chance at doing it with dignity.” The words felt like a vow, her chest was full, her mind brimming with images of their future. “The only legacy I want to be known for is that of a woman who, when the time came, was brave enough to change the course of her life for love.”

Hands pulled her tight, and their lips met, and life shot into Cora forcefully. Her limbs straightening, alive again. She held on as the woman she loved slid back under her skin, filled her to the marrow of her bones. The mingled breath of their kiss rushing through her veins, strong, vital, an undeniable reminder of what she’d almost lost.

“I love you,” Cora said, her forehead pressed to Manuela’s, and their smiles molded into each other. “I hope someday you can believe it.”

“I believe,” Manuela said a little breathlessly, as Cora squeezed her tight. “People will talk when they hear the Duchess of Sundridge has gifted a building to her sapphist lover’s cause. This place will be crawling with opinionated women in trousers. It will be quite the scandal,” she said defiantly, even as she tipped her head to look at the vaulted ceiling and the vast space that now belonged to her. “Will you be able to live with a building attached to you being a hotbed of rabblerousers?”

This Cora could do, she was being tested, and she’d always excelled at those. Especially when the stakes were high.

They’d never been higher than at this moment.

“Only if you let me build a men’s entrance in the back of the building,” she countered, and watched in wonder as her lover’s lips tipped up, just a little vicious, and absolutely perfect.

“Your Grace,” she cried out with feigned shock, then bent down to lick into Cora’s mouth. “If you continue to talk like this, I might begin to think you are trying to get me caught up in another scandal.”

Dios, but she loved this woman. Her mere presence filled her with happiness. “Scandalisone of our greatest talents,” Cora said, before taking her lover’s lush bottom lip between her teeth.

The news of her involvement with Manuela had been the talk of Paris for weeks. It seemed every day there was another more outrageous account of how Cora had stopped the wedding. That she’d turned up at the church with a sword in hand, that she’d shot Felix, that she’d shot the priest.

Her greatest fear had come to pass, the gossip hounds once again had a field day at her expense, but this time she had more important things to worry about than parlors and drawing rooms. No, she would not be receiving invitations to society balls any time soon, but from now on, she’d only be dancing in places her lady was welcome. If her lady would have her.

“You’ll have to remind me what our other talents are.” Manuela shifted and pressed her heat right into Cora. She took that overture as an invitation and hastily found a place to better reacquaint herself with this treasure in her hands. Within seconds she was sitting on an armchair with Manuela astride on her lap, kissing hungrily, that rump moving like the tide. “Mm, we are still quite good at this one.” That low, throaty purr. Cora would spend the rest of her life coaxing it out of this woman at every opportunity.

“I mean to spend a long time going over each one,” Cora promised, sliding a hand under Manuela’s skirt.

“And then what?” her princess asked, her hands cupping Cora’s face before placing a sweet kiss on her mouth. “What happens after that, Corazón?”

“We live happily ever after, princesa,” she answered instantly, her heart full of this wild, untamable love, and she believed every word.