Chapter 15 Found
FOUND
Temple stood before his parlor fire at his Bloomsbury terrace and let the quiet settle around him. His terrace had been filled with happy noise all day long, and now it had drained away with his family out the front door.
Diana waited for him abovestairs. In their room. And now he would go to her, strip her bare, and make her his. He took one last swallow of whisky and untied his cravat. His skin burned for her touch.
“Temple.”
Hell. That not Diana’s soft huskiness. He faced the doorway with a forced grin. “Father. I thought you’d left.” Translation: You should leave now.
“I will, I will. Do not worry. I merely wanted a quiet word with you first.”
“If it is about what happens on a fellow’s wedding night, I’m aware.
” And aching to get to it. He’d done his family duty with the breakfast, more than that when the entire lot of them had stayed the whole day and on into the evening.
He’d wanted to kick them out. But Diana had seemed too happy surrounded by them, so eager to know her new family.
“I should hope so, but, erm, your bride… she might not be. Those transcendents aren’t always the most forthcoming about things, particularly with women.”
“And we are?” How many secrets was he keeping now? Those from his family, those from his king, those from wife.
“True, true. Let me come to my point.”
“Glad there is one.”
His father settled at the fireplace across from him, one large shoulder propped against the mantel, his arms crossed over his barrel chest. He studied Temple’s face, though what he searched for there… damned if Temple knew.
“Diana is a lovely woman. But she’s, eh, not who you say she is.”
“No.” No use keeping a lie once you’d been found out.
“Is the marriage legal? Her name in the registry—”
“Is hers. Her real one. Everything is legal.”
“Why?” A single word that asked more: Would giving her the Grant name imperil the family in any way?
Hades’ hellfire, Temple hoped not. “She needs protection.”
His father’s gaze settled on Temple’s ring. Another question there.
“I want to protect her. I would not have married her if I thought her situation would harm the family.” Everything he did for them, for the man standing before him now.
His father nodded, a solid sort of thing Temple had seen many times in his life. It meant the man’s mind was settled so firmly, there was no changing it. Like a set and polished metal, there was no more twisting and shaping it.
His father slapped him on the shoulder. “Well, no matter what her name once was, it is Grant now. Any union that begins with alchemist rings is a union that will serve you well.” He stepped away from the fire but paused, the motion of his body held steady on a precipice.
“You did not have to obey the king. We would have stood by you.”
“I know.” And he would stand by them, twist his life until he didn’t recognize it to build back what his actions had broken. “Do not worry, Father. This is what I want. Diana is what I want.”
“Mmm. We are not a forthright people.”
“I’m aware, Father.”
“But between an alchemist and his wife—”
“Father,” Temple groaned.
“There should be no secrets. There. Now. Done with the lecture. Go get her, my boy.” He swept into motion once more, a fire raging back to life, and then he was gone.
Temple stood in the silence of his father’s absence for several quiet breaths. He grabbed the end of his cravat and tugged it slowly off his neck.
The ring burned. His wife wanted him, called for him, whether she knew it or not, and the ring bound him to her desires.
His desires, too.
Yet… he could not move. He’d wed for the wrong reasons, and those reasons crowded round him, chain-shaking ghosts who wanted him to know the error of his ways.
He pushed into the hallway and up the stairs. Her damned cousin wanted her dead. Her aunt did not seem to care she was missing. Where were her friends among the transcendents? The ones to push at Fordham for answers, to go looking for her in the country where Fordham said she’d retired.
Temple seemed to be her only friend.
No, there’d been women from Lady Guinevere’s there today. The famed potion mistress herself had attended, sitting tall and inscrutable near the back of the church, Mr. Bran curiously absent. Diana had friends, allies. Only none in the class she’d been born to.
She didn’t belong to them anymore.
She belonged to him and to those who saw her strength and to herself. But where did he belong? They were both travelers, weren’t they? Exiled from their homelands and navigating the new streets of foreign lands.
He might not have achieved what he’d set out to achieve by marrying her.
Didn’t matter. Not tonight. Tonight was about him and her, and all those others be damned.
The door to his bedchamber gave easily beneath his touch, and he slipped into the room quietly. She was not sleeping. His ring told him that much. The iron buzzed, too lively, too excited.
She was not even in the bed, though. She stood before the looking glass in the corner, her hair tumbling down her back, wearing only a sheer shift. The nearby fairy orb drenched her form in light, outlining the curves that awaited beyond the thin linen.
She had not seen him yet, and he leaned against the doorframe. What an oddly satisfying feeling, to watch a wife. An unknown benefit of the married state. Such a domestic moment. It hummed his body into a state of oppositions—satisfaction and anticipation, relaxation and arousal.
No need to rush. They had all night, all morning, the rest of their lives. What a satisfying—
Diana… changed.
Between one breath and the next, she slipped into a different body—smaller, thinner, hair duller, face sharper. Her but not her. This the woman he’d first seen the night they’d met. And beneath that wavering, starlight image—the real her.
Diana wore a glamour.
* * *
It was odd to look at her old reflection in a looking glass that reflected her new life.
The glamour felt clumsy and ill-fitting.
Diana had not seen this glamoured face of hers since her grandfather’s death.
A stranger to herself back then. It had made her feel sick to know she was not as she’d thought herself.
But eventually she’d gotten used to her new appearance, her true appearance, and come to…
love it. Her ears might be too big. Her nose a bit too sharp. But it was her, no masks, no hiding.
She hated the glamour. She had no use for it tonight. Had never had any use for it, actually. It had been entirely for her grandfather’s benefit.
Tonight was for her and her husband, the man who’d dragged her down the aisle, held her hand and kissed her hard in front of everyone she knew in this new life.
He’d claimed her, and even though she’d never had a wedding night before, was rather a novice at the whole thing, tonight she would claim him.
Wearing this glamour right now—a final farewell to her old self.
“May we never meet again,” she whispered.
Her ring glowed, the constant soft hum of warmth around her finger shifting higher. It burned a little.
“Ow.” Dropping the glamour, she lifted her hand and… something felt wrong. The ring, but also the air in the room.
She was not alone. Out of the corner of her eye—
Her husband stood in the doorway.
Oh God. She reached for the nearby post at the foot of the bed and held fast because her body had gone numb, her legs collapsing. The last time she’d been discovered casting a glamour by a man, he’d tried to squeeze the life out of her.
“T-Temple. How long have you been there?”
He seemed a creature of the night, dark hair blending with the hallway shadows behind him, strong, corded throat bare above a rumpled shirt and unbuttoned waistcoat. He leaned against the doorframe like a lazy beast of prey. Muscles long and loose. But ready.
Fear coiled tight in her belly.
Apollo had tried to kill her.
But this man, her husband with his forge-built body, he could kill her.
Eyes cold steel, he straightened and took one prowling step toward her. “Do it again.”
“D-do what?”
“Do it again, Diana. I want to make sure I saw what I saw.” Another step like danger itself, slicing away at the distance between them.
No escape from this. She was too high off the ground to climb out the window. And his massive body blocked the door. Two options: deny or comply. God help her. She closed her eyes and made a choice.
And the footsteps stopped. His breathing stopped. The ring’s temperature cooled.
She dared to open her eyes, found a storm of shock in Temple’s gaze, a hint of curiosity like the peek of sun behind the clouds that comes after.
“Who is this?” he asked, circling her, his gaze raking across every inch of her.
“Me.” Good. Her voice didn’t shake. “No, not me. It is how my grandfather wanted the world to see me.” Without thought, she’d restored the last glamour she’d brought to life, the face she’d worn before her grandfather’s death. “I wore this face until his death.”
Still he circled. “Most glamours… improve a person’s appearance.”
She snuffed the glamour, pushing away the light that had helped her cast it. The world slipped into shadows. She’d pushed too much light away. Good. Easier to hide.
And beyond the darkness, Temple’s lips parted in a surprised inhalation. He reached for her but didn’t touch her, his fingers slipping into her shadows.
“Why?” he asked.
“He never said. I assume it was because he didn’t want me tempted to leave him.
I thought he loved me, but”—she swallowed hard, inhaled deeply, clung to the shadows that gave her power because she needed every bit of it—“he only wanted to control me, to keep me as his nurse and maid. There were always men about the house—his friends and allies from parliament. Apollo’s cronies.
I used to wish one of them would see me, give me a new life.
But that would have inconvenienced grandfather. ”