Chapter 1 #2
“Anyone, really. Anyone but me. Can it be done?” She’d spent the first thirty years of her life with her cousin, Apollo, and she would not spend the next thirty as his wife.
She suppressed a shiver. She could not marry a man she considered a brother.
Never mind making an heir with him. Even if he were kind to her, she’d never be able to look at him without seeing the little boy who’d tried to live in the stables for an entire summer because he’d wanted to be a horse.
The young man who’d spit in her glass of champagne just to be churlish.
The confident rake who ignored her as much as possible.
She didn’t fool herself she could marry for love one day.
Not now. Any husband, Apollo or otherwise, would discover her secret as soon as she lost control.
In the throes of passion, she might… let everything slip.
Diana would not risk it. Sexual pleasure was not worth her life.
Miss Maple snorted. “Can it be done? Lady G can do anything. Le Fay blood in her veins. I still need to know about the fellow. Each elixir is tailored to the victim.” A chuckle.
Victim. Yes. Quite. “He and I… we’ve known each other since childhood.”
“Familiarity. Hm.” Miss Maple began to rattle the bottles on the table, searching, snapping up a small vial, purple and plump. “Ah. Here.”
After a moment of trying and failing to read the minute words inked onto the bottle label, Diana said, “We are set to wed this Season. I have asked him to delay, to abandon the union entirely, but he refuses.”
“Controlling. Yes. Where is…” Miss Maple fingers wiggled above the crowded table. “There it is.” She set a bowl of seeds next to the purple vial. “What else, miss?”
“I tried to convince him he might fall in love one day. Not with me, of course. I tried to show him he would regret shackling himself to me, but—”
“Stubborn arse.” Miss Maple laughed, but there was not even a single note of mirth in it. “I know right where that is.” She reached up and broke off a vine from a low-hanging plant—dark green, thick with large leaves.
“He is, yes. I want to show him he’s wrong. With the elixir. I want to convince him he’s capable of loving.” Maybe if he thought himself in love, he’d second-guess his determination to wed without it.
Miss Maple’s eyes on her were hard and cold, gray, clouded marbles. “Is he in love with you now? Any chance of it? Any at all?”
“None.” As children they’d been friends, playmates. But now he was bitter and dismissive. And some days she saw worse in his eyes—cunning and machinations.
“Then why is he so set on wedding you?” Miss Maple waggled her brows. “Are you an heiress? Are you”—her gaze flew to Diana’s belly—“in the family way?”
“No. It was my grandfather’s dying wish.” You must marry her, Apollo. Swear it! Diana’s future sealed with his final words. No. She’d avoid it if she could and apologize to the man in the afterlife. “Will it work on a man who cannot love?”
Miss Maple gave another snort. “They always say they can’t love.
That’s fear talking. A bad past sometimes that shuts off that bit of themselves.
They can. But it might hurt him. Or he’ll get it wrong, think it indigestion or lust.” Miss Maple searched the table, her hand hovering, then lowering for a grape, green and wrinkling.
“Now, miss, tell me about his looks. That’s important, too. ”
“Tall. Lean. Brown hair, blue eyes. I suppose he looks a bit like me. Our fathers were twins.”
More ingredients gathered and settled in the ever-growing pile. “Anything else?” Said as she perused the table, tapping her chin.
“He’s confident. In an overbearing sort of way.”
“Typical.”
“Preening, too.”
“That all?”
Diana inhaled roughly. Something told her she could not hide the truth here. If she did, this reckless and likely foolish plan would not work.
“Also…” She hesitated. What she wanted to say a mere feeling. He’d done nothing yet. But she needed to say it, to let someone else know.
“I am concerned he might grow violent.” She said it quietly, trying to sound matter-of-fact instead of afraid.
He’d been so wild lately, so unpredictable, chafing as much under his deathbed promise as Diana but refusing to give it up.
He used to be jovial, teasing and droll.
Now he came home smelling of opium, face sunken and shoulders bowed.
Another shiver.
“Ah. I see.” Miss Maple set to work, running her fingertips lightly over the edges of several bowls—stone, wood, silver.
She brushed each aside before moving to a gold one and outlining its edge.
Halfway around, she froze then knocked space on the table in front of her free from clutter and set the gold bowl in the newly cleared center.
Bottles uncorked, leaves plucked, grape smashed between pestle and mortar.
Everything tipped into the dented gold bowl then lit on fire, doused with something that smelled like wine, looked it, too. Ruby red but thicker. Like blood.
Miss Maple dipped a bottle into the concoction, filled it, corked it, dried it off with a nearby stained and wrinkled linen cloth. She did not label it but held it to her chest, clutched in a tight fist as her other hand struck out like a snake, palm up.
“Two pounds,” she said.
“Two pounds! So much?”
“I said what I said, miss. You buy silence with your potion. And more than that. A future of your choosing. Really, it’s worth more if you ask me.”
Diana produced the money then took the bottle, given over with a grin. Amber glass glinted in the palm of her hand. “Thank you. Are there… ah… instructions?”
Miss Maple wiped her hands on her apron and straightened her hair.
“Potions can only work on what’s already in the body.
If he does not have the capacity for love—bunch of bollocks if you ask me—it will not work.
Make sure he’s with a lady he can love when he takes it.
The target must be in sight at the time of ingestion. ”
“I understand.”
“No refunds if you muck it up.”
“I understand. Anything else?”
Miss Maple leaned over the table and laid a warm hand on Diana’s wrist. “You don’t want a man who needs a potion to love you. Or leave you. All it should take is your asking him. Telling him.”
“I know.” She also knew such a man unlikely. More mythical than real. Not even in history books or tall tales did they appear. The hero always thought he knew best. Just like Apollo. Which was why she couldn’t escape him without a potion’s help. “I promise I know.”
Miss Maple sighed and retracted her arm. “I hope that’s true, miss.”
Diana readied to leave, but before her skirts had learned which direction to swing, she surprised herself as she asked, “Do you have a man who loves you?”
A wide grin, a true one, as Miss Maple set her hands on her hips. “I do. One of Lady G’s bodyguards.” She whistled loud across the shop, then raised her hand in a wave. One of two men flanking a back door waved back, winked.
“No love elixir necessary?”
“Not a drop. I recommend that for you, too.”
Yes, well, not everyone possessed a willing bodyguard.
Or choices. “Thank you. I’ll take that under advisement.
” Diana pocketed the potion and left the shop.
Weightless, it seemed to disappear into her skirts.
What had she expected? For it to burn a hole there?
For it to weigh her down like a brick-dead body?
None of that. Its weightlessness gave her wings. The love elixir would save her. She may have to marry her cousin, but she did not have to go to bed with him. If she could keep him randy for his mistresses, he would never bother with her.
Except for an heir.
Blast.
Perhaps by the time he realized he needed one, she’d have another plan, another way to escape. Something more permanent, something that ensured her solitude.
Because that was all she truly wanted, needed really. To be left alone. To run. To hide. To keep the secret that would eventually kill her.