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After weeks of hard missions and even harder conversations, d'Artagnan had been hesitant to go through anymore strange doors. Then he'd passed by one left slightly ajar and he'd heard music...smelled wonderful things, and curiosity had gotten the better of him. Luckily, going through the door had resulted in nothing but delight. It apparently passed through to something called an amusement park and d'Artagnan was amazed and definitely amused.

First had been the colorful spinning horses, then the wheel that went up into the sky, and then something insanely exhilarating called a roller coaster. D'Artagnan had ridden several of them more than once, only stopping when hunger sent him to the food stalls and toward something called a funnel cake.

And then, he had found something called the paintball range. Immediately, d'Artagnan was signing up for the next session.

[[He went through the amusement park door. Catch him at any point in his adventure!]]

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As she had only visited Paris a time or two before her marriage, Constance had never seen the Carnival unmarried. After her marriage, she had never been able to do more than watch from afar, held back from following the glittering spectacle and wild colors by Bonacieux's admonitions that such things were neither respectable nor civilized. It had not mattered to him that it was a sort of pressure release for all of Paris, but seeing only the thefts and the brawls, had done all he could to keep her from watching its parades and examining the offerings of those temporary market stalls.

The thought of her freedom then buoyed, rather than weighted her. She could see the Carnival the coming year. Could play the games offered at this strange pocket of a world and not feel guilty over it.

"A date?" she asked, unfamiliar with that word applied to more than the calendar or an exotic treat. "Is that something like courting?" She considered that for a brief second before she answered, unthinking of how he might take it, but honest all the same, "I've never been courted before."

If Constance but said the word, d'Artagnan would rush to find a door to Carnival for her. Someplace wild and extravagant for both of them to enjoy themselves in ways that their Paris would never allow them.

"Yes, I think so. Though the rules of courtship for this time seem like there aren't any rules at all." People court for only a short time, enjoy one another, and then separate. He would not do that to Constance. All those months ago, he spoke the plain truth when he said he would marry her the second he could.

That Bonacieux had never courted his wife did not surprise him but the thought still curdled in his stomach. He had treated his wife with all the courtesy of a mule and spared her very few kind words.

"We could be courting here."

Due in part to the rushed way that life had come crashing down around her, never seeming to give her a second's breath after the day of the eclipse, and in part to the guilt she had carried with her for what she had believed to be her part in it, Constance had not paused to consider how the world opened up to her with Bonacieux's death. With or without the inheritance of his property (and whatever debts he had left behind), she had a stable employment with the Queen and, equally important, the right to control her own life without the interference of any paternal figure. For the first time in the whole of her life, she was able to make her own decisions and be beholden to no one other than who she chose to be.

What little mixing she had done with the other residents of the hotel had offered up a similar view that the rules of protocol had seemingly dissolved away in the intervening years, or across space and worlds. As disorienting as it was to discover that she did not have familiar old patterns to fall back on in addressing new people, the freedom she had found in speaking on equal terms to both strangers and the Musketeers was one she cherished. Reminding her of how little she wanted to be shoved back into the same constraints she had lived under for so long.

Her fingers curled against his bicep where her arm was in his at his offer, her steps slowing enough to allow her to light the fingers of her free hand beneath his jaw and press a soft, fleeting kiss to his mouth. She remembered how it had been to have gone from the distant sort of knowledge that she had been engaged to a clothier in Paris to feeling rushed up the aisle to an impatient groom and a solemn small crowd at her back. She remembered it too well not to fall in love with the idea of indulging in an actual courtship, there in a place where how rushed and tumultuous life could be could pause to allow them whatever time they needed or wanted.

"I would like that," she told him when she drew away, her hand falling briefly to his chest before she tucked herself again against his side and gave him a smile. "Now, are you going to show off and see if you can win me a trinket, or not?" Her words were teasing and her smile bright, and if her cheeks were a little flushed in her approval, then so be it.

If anyone cold adapt to strange worlds and changing times, d'Artagnan thought it was Constance. Given a real chance, he thought she would have thrived in Paris, but instead she'd been smothered by a dull, stingy man without a shred of imagination. D'Artagnan had grown up on tales of adventure and chivalric honor. Bonacieux seemed to have fed his imagination on sawdust.

Constance, however, was all bright copper like her hair. Full of suppressed ambitions that should have been turned free. He would never cage her, never, d'Artagnan swore. He couldn't know the irony of his own declarations when he'd had his share in pressuring Constance to make or break her choices.

But here, he could do it right. He would make it wonderful for her, starting with the kiss they were sharing right then. It was only the start and he would make her happy.

"What trinkets would you like?" he asked, casting a hand around at the many stuffed toys to choose from.

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