Chapter 18 Discovery #2
“That’s not fair, Stone,” Nico said. “You were courting Sybil. She’s a lovely woman. And you dropped her with the first whisper, married another woman not a month later. How can you—”
“Because she’s an apple from a tree I cannot stand. You’d do well to keep your distance from it, too.”
Diana jerked away from Temple, stepping to the side, arms ready to swing if they must, to defend those who had given her highness. In this Stone’s voice was the same disparaging venom she heard from Apollo. She wanted to strike this man down, and she felt heat gathering in her palms to do so.
But an arm yanked around her waist. A chain, anchoring her in the shadows. And instead of doing something to the man called Stone, she watched him march down the Hall of Alchemy and into the darkness beyond.
“Twat,” the other man hissed.
Temple was shaking. With laughter. “Do you have what I came for, old friend?”
“That you, Temple?”
“Yes. And I’ve brought someone to meet you.”
The other man stepped fully into the hallway, closing the door behind him.
“Thank Juno. I almost pissed my trousers.” He wandered closer, and in the faint light from the large hall beyond, she saw him now.
Tall and broad like Temple, but slenderer, too.
He had rich red hair, and the kind of mouth that seemed to want to smile.
“Watch your tongue, Nico. My wife dislikes vulgarity.” Temple nudged her in front of him.
“Truthfully, I have no opinions on curses. And I agree. If someone spoke to me from the dark, I might piss my trousers as well. Or skirts.”
The other man dropped a courtly bow. “My pleasure, Lady Knightly. I am Sir Nicholas Bowen. Nico to my friends. And I am at your service.”
Diana dropped a curtsy. “You are the first of Temple’s friends I’ve met.”
Nico winked. “I am Temple’s only friend, my lady.”
Temple wrapped an arm around Diana’s shoulder and steered her back into the main hall of the museum. “Don’t believe a word he says.” When Nico followed them out into the light, he said, “Do you have it?”
“Right here.” Nico pulled a large book from a bag thrown over his shoulder and handed it to Temple. “They’ll boil me in liquid silver if they find out I gave it to you.”
There it was again. A truth she’d not seen, never would have guessed. One Temple had hidden from her? Perhaps. But then she’d not asked him about it, either, so mired in her own miseries and fears. The scandal that had catapulted Temple into his current position had severed his ties with the Guild.
“They won’t find out. Diana will have the entire thing read before we reach Hampstead.”
Nico whistled, turning his face up to the vaulted ceiling above. “She’s too good for you, Temple.”
Was she? She’d clung to him when she needed safety, and what had she given him in return? He needed a wife to please the king, and he must please the king or… Or what? She must figure that out.
“You have a new wife?” Diana asked.
He nodded, puffing with pride. “She, also, is much too good for me.”
“I would like to meet her.”
“Not yet,” Temple said.
“We could come to your terrace.” Nico hitched the bag onto a different spot on his shoulder as the three of them stepped into the sunlight.
It seemed too much to leave behind. An entire unknown library beneath the British Museum. And she couldn’t get to it. Worse yet, her husband, who had once possessed access to it, was barred from entry.
She swallowed hard to keep the tears away.
Temple made a thoughtful little humming noise. “That might work.”
“Or,” Diana ventured, “we could all walk together. In Hyde Park. Tomorrow.”
Temple stopped abruptly, as if his feet had taken root.
“We could.” Diana kept her voice steady, kept her determination firmly fixed in place.
“Jane would like that,” Nico said.
“We cannot.” Temple grasped the hood of her mantle with both hands and pulled it lower. “You cannot. You know that, Diana.” He faced his friend. “Thank you, and I’ll send round an invite when we’re ready to accept visitors.”
“Of course.” Nico tipped his hat at Diana. “Wonderful to meet you, Lady Knightly, and I look forward to introducing you to my Jane.” He set off down the street with a strut and a whistle.
And Temple bustled Diana into their waiting carriage. He sat next to her so naturally, the bulk and heat of his body locking into place at her side, pulling her toward him. He was, and had been, a safe harbor. What was she to him? A drop of love potion he’d never wanted?
The book he placed in her lap was heavy and warm from the heat of his body, and she could only just read the title on the spine when she picked it up. The Myth of the Forge.
“What is it about?” she asked, though it felt a silly question.
“Our secrets.”
Yes, that made sense. Myths built men. They threaded every culture with ideas and images, fears and hopes that could not be disentangled from leaders and movements, art and politics.
To understand the transcendents, one must only look to tales of Arthur and Camelot, to that great wizard who first passed down the spark of magic, the talent, to the transcendent ton.
She barely knew the alchemists, but once she read their lore, she would understand them better.
Understand her husband better. The book was a key to a locked door, and she hugged it tight. “Thank you. You’ll have to return it.”
“Nico will do it for me.”
She was about to step on thin ice. But she could not stop herself. “Why is the king’s alchemist banned from the Guild Library?”
Temple relaxed into the squabs, but his voice sounded like cracking ice, breaking, cavernous, echoing across a cold gray sky. “Because he is a traitor.”
“No. No-no, that’s not right.” Too many reactions bubbled up inside her. Disbelief, anger, sorrow.
“Do you know that train engines explode from time to time?” he asked, as if inquiring about the weather.
“I have read reports of it. Always a tragedy.”
“My father and I were working on a project that would eliminate explosions entirely. We developed a new alloy that absorbs excess heat and energy and diffuses it slowly, safely.”
“I think I read something about that in the papers.” Not much. A small article only remarking on the increased safety of travel by train.
He nodded. “It’s remarkable you saw that.
The papers preferred to slander my father instead, to call me a social climber.
Rotting idiots.” He mumbled the insult then cleared his throat.
“The prototype had been extensively studied in our forge, in others, but it had not been approved for dissemination by the Master Alchemist. All alchemist inventions must be approved for release by him. I discovered Mr. Stone—the current Master—had been purposefully refusing release of the heat diffusor. Apparently, the Earl of Shoffly was paying Stone a significant amount of money to kill it. He’d recently invested in a railway and did not want its opening delayed. ”
“He was going to run it at the risk of an explosion?”
Temple nodded. “He did not believe my father’s claims that the old engines would explode, argued that my father and I were trying dupe him and all the other investors out of their money by inventing a problem so we could demand a hefty price for solving it.
When not an alchemist or a transcendent investor would listen to us, I went to the king.
It was the only way to get the others to listen to us.
And it worked. But the Guild called us traitors for not following the rules, and the transcendents spun stories about my father being raving mad for yelling about explosions. ”
“The king listened to you, though.”
“Yes. He forced the alchemists to approve our invention, and he forced the transcendent investors to use it. It cost everyone a great deal of money but for me. I earned a new title and a new position. Baron Knightly, Royal Alchemist. The King’s Lapdog.
My family lost most, though. Barred from the Guild and all its benefits, including the library.
My mother lost friends. My sisters lost suitors.
My brother Hesperus is apprenticing in Germany because no British alchemist will have him.
No apprentice will work for the Grants either.
Tim is an orphan with no other options, and we are grateful to have him, to give him a home, but he’s not enough help for my father.
My father is strong still, but… it’s not enough.
We used to have five apprentices of various ages and abilities.
Now we have a small boy, just learning.”
Temple spoke every word with the still calm of a lake on a windless summer day. She guessed the placid surface hid troubled waters deep below. All this, and he’d taken her on, a woman who could give him nothing but more trouble.
She leaned into his shoulder and hugged his arm. “We won’t give the book back.”
“Diana.”
“They don’t deserve it.”
“You wicked minx.”
She looked up at him. Could he see everything she felt for him in her eyes? It must all be laid bare there—the beating of her heart, the aching of her soul, the need of her body. All for him.
When he dipped to kiss her, she tried to tell him without words that she was grateful for all he had given her and sorry that she had nothing to give him in return.