Chapter 14 One Foggy Morning #2
“No.” Mrs. Grant’s voice peeled like a bell through the fog, and Madeline froze, a scant inch away from the ring. “No.” Mrs. Grant sounded softer this time. “Only those bound together may touch them.”
Yes, that felt right. Temple should have told her last night. Diana slipped her glove back on as Madeline yanked her hand away.
“Apologies,” she mumbled. “Didn’t know.”
Sybil offered a smile. “It’s quite all right. No harm done. I’m Sybil Grant.”
“Madeline Maple.” Madeline bobbed a curtsy.
Diana gestured to her employer. “And this is—”
“A friend.” Lady Guinevere curtsied.
Diana looked to Madeline for an explanation, but the other woman merely shrugged, and what did Diana care, after all? She, too, hid who she was.
“Everyone inside,” Mrs. Grant boomed. “No use torturing poor Temple any longer.”
Everyone filed in except for Diana, who suddenly worried lightning might strike her down if she stepped foot over the threshold. She’d always believed, been taught, that transcendents had a divine right to their powers, but she’d not been selected by any divinity. She was a thief.
“Is something amiss?” Mrs. Grant asked softly from the doorway.
“No. Yes. I… Is this moving too quickly?”
“Oh, yes, probably so.”
Diana clutched her flowers to her chest. Tiny pink petals and flat yellow ones. The ribbon binding them a deep blue. The pink meant to give her hope. The yellow meant to tell her something of love.
What were the flowers for secrets and lies?
Beneath her glove, her ring heated, a soothing warmth that gave her strength.
Mrs. Grant took Diana’s hand, tugged her inside.
“We alchemists are a practical sort. There are metals and elements that go together and those that don’t.
We know the fire cools quickly, so we must complete our work with speed.
We also know that a fire can be kept low and hungry for quite some time, and we can use that heat with patience to make something, too.
We know when to strike fast and when to wait. ”
“You’re saying this marriage is a strike-fast situation.”
“Do transcendents move slow or fast? Or somewhere in between?”
“I’m not sure they move at all. They spend much of their time keeping things exactly as they’ve always been. Old bodies glamoured into youth. Dilapidated houses glamoured into former glory. They are not fond of change.”
“They? You don’t consider yourself one?”
Mrs. Grant had used we, even though women didn’t build. “I… I don’t know.” But unlike those she came from, she did want change. She craved it, and stepping down that aisle, meeting the man at the end of it—what greater change than that?
“Thank you,” Diana said. “I’m ready now.”
Mrs. Grant patted her cheek. “When in doubt, think of your ring. It will give you Temple’s certainty, and his strength. And it will give him your strengths as well. And… for the right two people, it will reveal so much more.”
Did Diana have strengths? If she did, they were well hidden from her. She was unlikely to be the right person, so that “so much more” Mrs. Grant spoke of… it was not for her.
But she pressed the pad of her thumb against the hidden side of the iron and opal band.
Warm, confident, excited, reassuring. Did those emotions come from Temple?
Or did thinking of Temple as she rubbed the ring help her imagine what he might be feeling?
No matter. She clung to that reassurance, that confidence, and she opened the door.
As she stepped into the back of the nave, Temple was storming down the aisle, dark brows drawn together.
He must have worked the iron out of his body because his body was not as big as it had been the night before.
But that scowl, the purpose driving his limbs—he was more beautiful than ever.
More intimidating. A dark storm promising to consume her.
He stopped before her, blinked, the scowl melting away. “You’ve not run away?” He made a fist of the hand decorated by his alchemist’s ring. Had he felt her doubt, her fear? She must reassure him.
She held out her hand. “I’ve not run away.”
He grasped it and pulled her down the aisle. She had to lift her skirts to keep up.
“We’re ready,” he said with a stiff nod at the clergyman.
And as the clergyman began a soft litany of questions, Temple faced her.
Without taking his gaze from her, he slipped a finger beneath the wrist of her glove, tugged.
Her pulse exploded at his touch, pounding to get to him.
His touch scorched the back of her hand as he freed it from her glove, shoved that slip of lace in his breast pocket like a handkerchief.
She raised a brow, a question.
He raised a brow too, an answer. He never wore gloves. Perhaps now she shouldn’t either.
In the pews, every gathered eye burned hard on the scene they made. The clergyman stumbled over his words.
But Temple, still holding her gaze, tugged off her other glove, folded it as well.
Then he put it with its mate in his pocket.
The grin that slid across his wicked lips should have brought God from the heavens to smite them.
It didn’t. But, God, it promised heaven right here on earth. More precisely in Temple’s bed.
He threaded their fingers together, and their rings rested side by side.
They seemed to pulse to the same rhythm, and that rhythm invaded her, reset her own body’s beatings and patters and shushes.
The rings were not done binding them. She felt the multi-colored light prodding with little sunlight tendrils, wanting everywhere.
For the right couple, the binding would go bone deep and ocean wide, wrapping every inch of them up in the other, a golden twine that would never break, no matter how far life forced them from one another.
How far would this binding go? Until there were no dark spaces left only to her, until he invaded every inch and corner?
No. She couldn’t allow it. There would always be one corner he could not get to. It must be that way.
The clergyman asked them to repeat their vows, the same words she’d heard over and over again in transcendent weddings. They felt meaningless now compared to the ones she and Temple had exchanged last night.
But her vow… My loyalty is yours until I die. That was the one without meaning.
The clergyman pronounced them man and wife, and Temple kissed her as if he’d been born for it, leaving not an inch of himself back as their small audience roared their approval.
Diana locked her tears away with her secrets.
Because she’d just married the one man she wished to share them both with.
But never would.