Chapter 8 Almost
ALMOST
Temple should have guessed courting a lady in hiding would be rather difficult.
But he’d pushed that tiny fact out of sight in his enthusiasm for having finally found a potential bride who could look at him without sneering.
That the only thing progressing with ease.
No sneering. Everything else… He swallowed a sigh.
She was rather distracted at the moment. They’d walked three times around Finsbury Square, and three times, Miss Chester had looked longingly at the bookshop across the square from Lady Guinevere’s.
“Would you like to go in?” Temple asked as they passed the green door.
“Oh, no. I cannot.” She tugged her straw bonnet lower. “Someone might recognize me.”
“Should I go in for you?”
“No!” She flinched, her hand flicking out as if she might touch his arm. But she didn’t.
She never touched him, not in the seven days they’d been walking together in the evening hours. She folded her arms primly (and surely uncomfortably) behind her back and ducked her head low. Her conversation came from the shadows of her bonnet and was directed at her feet.
Had she used up all her courage in her escape?
Each night spent watching her bow herself ticked Temple’s irritation higher.
“I’ve hired a runner,” he said. His voice was too rough, but he was too frustrated to care.
“A runner? What for?” Finally, she peeked up at him, but the bonnet kept her expression too much hidden.
This courtship was not going the way he’d planned.
He’d been patient and kept his distance, giving her the freedom of inching closer in her own time.
A woman like her, scared and careful, would need delicate handling.
Only there had been no inching. Closer at least. Farther away, oh yes, plenty of that.
“To follow your cousin.”
“No.” She stopped at the corner of the square, her spine stiffening.
There was some fight in her after all. Damn, but he liked to see it. “Yes. Every evening you walk me round this square like a dog asking about him, and every evening I can provide no answers. But now, hopefully, I will be able to.”
She started back up again, an irritated clip to her steps. “Bow Street has more important things to do than follow my cousin about.”
He followed along, staying behind her this time.
Quite the view from back here, the sway of her hips hypnotic.
He should have been two steps behind her the entire time.
“Bow Street is a dying organism, and Mr. Squires, the runner I hired, jumped at the opportunity. I have information. Already. But I see you do not want it. I’ll leave early this evening to speak with him and tell him his services are no longer—”
“No!” She spun about. “No, no. If you have the information, you might as well share it. And if Mr. Squires needs the work, I would hate to deprive him of it.”
He grinned, offered his arm.
She refused it.
He’d never unhinge his jaw after this. Jaw too tightly clenched.
She needed a protector. He needed a wife.
A convenient arrangement. He was attracted to her.
Even more convenient, that. God, how he’d wanted to kiss her in the roof garden a week ago.
She’d been like a flower in that yellow gown, skin rosy and neck healed.
Hell, how he wanted to kiss her now. The impulse grew stronger with every denial.
They folded their arms behind their backs in such synchronicity it could have been practiced, and they made it a quarter way round the square once more before Temple spoke.
“Squires has been following your cousin for three days now. Fordham drinks. Often. No matter the time of day.”
“That is not unusual. He began drinking to excess after my grandfather’s death.”
“He has also begun to visit potions rats. In the worst parts of town.” Though no shop but Lady Guinevere’s existed in London for purchasing potions, there was an abundance of shady personages who sold their wares in back alleys.
Potions rats who scurried in the muck and led others into the sewer, charging exorbitant prices for unsafe elixirs.
“D-do—” The word like the stutter in her steps—sharp and throwing the world off balance. “Do you think he’ll come here?” She threw a glance over her shoulder at the potion shop.
He steadied her. “It doesn’t seem like he’s looking for anything legal. He’s been seen with dozens of unmarked bottles. Squires can’t figure out what it is, though. And it’s hard to catch a potion rat, apparently.”
“I don’t understand.”
“That makes three of us. Squires and I are perplexed as well.”
“Anything else?”
“Not really. Squires offers a collection of personal observations with each factual observation, so if you like I can give you a very vivid account of the runner’s opinions on your cousin.”
She huffed a laugh. “That might be interesting.”
If he stole her bonnet, would he see her smile? That would be interesting. His fingers twitched. “First, he thinks your cousin a peacock. Spends all his time looking at his reflection. Thinks maybe the potions are to stop early hair loss.”
Her hand flew up to cover her mouth, smothering a laugh.
That enough encouragement for Temple. “Early hair loss is no laughing matter, I assure you. Especially not for Squires, who possess not a strand of hair on his head. I’ve been given to understand the ladies find it dashing.
I believe it. Second, Squires wonders if the potion might also be for…
” Should he say this part? If it made her laugh, yes.
“For a limp cock. That is not a problem Squires has, so he tells me. And I believe it. But having overheard your cousin with his mistress, I do worry about his fish cock.”
She whipped her head around to stare at him so quickly, her bonnet flew back. Her eyes were glowing and merry.
And her hair was pink.
“Damn it to hell, Miss Chester, what’s that about?” He flicked at a curl hanging across her temple.
“What is what about?”
“Your hair. It’s pink.” Or was it? It wavered like… a glamour.
Her eyes flew wide, and she ran a few steps to a shop window, peered into it, her gaze not going farther than the glass she used as a mirror.
“Oh. Oh no. I… I… It—” She closed her mouth and yanked her bonnet back on.
“A potion!” She tucked every visible curl up into the straw.
“I tried a potion today to hide my identity. I did not think it had worked, but I see now it did. Oh, how humiliating.”
That explained it, the unsteadiness of the hue. It was likely fading more and more by the moment. “You made the potion yourself?” He took a risk. He touched her, soothing her fluttering hands away from her jaw and nape and holding those little frantic wings between his hands until they calmed.
“I… um… yes. I am not very good yet. I meant to change my hair yellow.”
He pushed the hat backward off her head.
“No.” She reached for it.
But he clucked his tongue like his mother always did and continued on as he pleased. “It does not look bad, Miss Chester. I’ve heard some women used potions to color their hair, but I’ve only ever seen it done with a glamour.” His eyes narrowed. “Or—”
“Lady Guinevere says the potion acts like a glamour.”
“Does it?”
“Yes. She says you can never truly change the real, only hide it.”
That made sense. Potions and illusions were deceptive things, not like metals.
Those were real and could be shaped and could shape the world, too.
Once set, they could last forever. “Pink suits you. Though I must admit, I rather prefer your natural color. Such a rich brown, like soil, so many different shades. Can’t count them all.
Even a strand or two of auburn to burn a man’s eyes with. ”
Her inhale was ragged. “How do you know? You’ve not had time to study it. Too dark the night we met.”
“In the roof garden, I studied it thoroughly, and… I can see it even now, coming through the pink, the same as seeing through a glamour.” He brushed a lock of it off her forehead. Silky, slippery, soft. He closed his fingers into his palm to keep from burrowing more deeply into the strands.
She batted his hand away and tugged her hat back on. “What do you mean? About the glamours?” She set her steps about the square again, slow ponderous strides.
Should he tell her? He was trying to earn her trust, but that iron alchemists could see through glamours was information that went no further than another alchemist’s ears.
It was something he could only tell her if she was to be his wife.
And he knew the dangers of speaking secrets of the forge out loud.
He’d paid handsomely for it. So had everyone he loved.
“What do you mean by the potions working like glamours?” She peeked at him, irritation and caution banished in the search for knowledge.
He liked his women with fight. And with bright curiosity. And hell, how much more trouble could he get into? Besides, he planned to marry her.
He leaned close so that his lips brushed the edge of her bonnet closest her ear. “I can see through glamours.”
She tripped.
He steadied her. “Careful.”
“How? No one can! But I do not think you would lie… How?”
“You know how glamours work, yes?”
“Of course. Our bodies produce so much magic, it must be used, so we expel it by casting glamours. I found a biology text in my uncle’s library after his death.
It said the magic is carried in our blood, and that we must be careful of potion mistresses because they are likely to drain our bodies of our blood to get at our magic.
I think that’s a bunch of nonsense, though.
Lady Guinevere does not seem the sort to go about”—she shivered—“draining blood from bodies. It also does not fit with common medical practices. Why would leeches be an excellent means of healing illnesses if loss of our blood is harmful?”
He laughed. “That’s nothing but a story.” Propaganda. “No science there. And I don’t trust leeches, either.”
“Hm. I read another book.”
“Naturally.”