Chapter 25 Strange Bedfellows
STRANGE BEDFELLOWS
Lady Guinevere’s Potions was busy as usual, and Temple hunched lower into the greatcoat, pulled his hat over his brow to hide his face.
He was all too recognizable since Diana’s arrest five days ago.
Both her likeness and his had been plastered all over the papers.
But he could avoid this visit no longer.
Diana needed him. The king kept her in limbo, still.
Unsure what to do about her, refusing to let Temple see her.
The king’s guards still hovered behind Temple.
He’d tried to lose them. Failed. Dogged devils.
How in hell he was going to get what he needed from Lady Guinevere with them breathing down his neck, he hadn’t yet figured out.
A man’s shoulder bumped into Temple’s shoulder. And stayed there. Leaned against it.
“You stink,” Temple said.
“Really? After a few days I stopped noticing.” Chester gazed at the potion shop with not-at-all concealed disgust. Then he looked at Temple, craning his head back. “You’re huge. What the hell happened?”
Temple had spent the last twenty-four hours doing the finest jewelry work in his forge without any release of the iron energy building inside his body. He was ready for the coming fight.
“Why in hell are you going in there?” Chester asked, apparently not needing an answer to his first question.
“Why aren’t you dead yet?”
“You didn’t kill me. Remember?”
“A terrible decision.”
“Clearly. Now why—”
“Why are you following me about? All damn week, you’ve been my shadow. Don’t pretend you aren’t sleeping in my forge. I’ve seen you scurrying out of there in the mornings.”
Chester shrugged. “Hell if I know why I’m doing it. I’ve become, it seems, a glutton for punishment. Some small part of me holds out hope you’ll get angry enough to take a swing at me. With your hammer. Or an axe. I’m not picky.”
“Don’t tempt me, Chester.”
“Don’t call me that, alchemist. Apollo is fine.”
“Losing the title getting to you?” He looked worse every day than the day before. His trousers seemed to be held up with a length of rope, and he clutched his jacket around his skeletal frame. He’d grown a ragged beard, and his eyes were bloodshot.
“You think it’s funny, don’t you?” Apollo sneered. “It’s not. You could never understand what it’s like. I was the Marquess of Fordham. Now who am I?”
“You think I give a damn about your loss of a title? You tried to kill Diana—twice—and losing a title was your only punishment. Diana didn’t ask for this talent. She never wanted it. And she’s locked up in the bloody Tower.” It was unfair. Beyond unfair. It was fucking wrong.
Apollo looked over his shoulder at the guards hovering behind them. “I see your shadows remain. The king hasn’t called them off yet.”
“And he won’t.” Because Temple wouldn’t come like a good lapdog anymore. He’d thrown the summoning stone into the forge fire, watched it melt.
Diana’s summoning stone was still in their bedroom where she’d left it the night of the ball.
He’d tried to pay a guard to give it to her, but he’d refused.
Didn’t matter. She still had her ring, and he knew from the comforting warmth of hers she was alive at least. Sometimes an emotion came through—loneliness or panic.
He had to take to his forge then, swing his hammer at some innocent bit of metal until the mad impulse to lay siege to the Tower dissipated.
“It’s not mad,” he mused. “Not mad at all.”
“What’s not mad?” Apollo asked.
“A siege. But I cannot lose my damn shadows.” He cast a glance over his shoulders. The men behind him looked bored, but as soon as Temple moved, so would they. Damn it. “Could you at least make yourself useful?”
“I’m not at all convinced I can.”
The shop door opened, and two fashionably dressed ladies stepped onto the street. One held up a round, amber bottle, the kind Diana had pulled out of her pocket the night they’d met. The other laughed behind her hand.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Temple mused. “You are capable of more than you think. He stepped toward the women. The guards followed. He had to act quickly. “Excuse me, my lady, but is that a love potion?”
The woman holding the bottle eyed him with suspicion. “It’s legal. I have consent.”
“Of course.”
“What are you doing?” Apollo asked, hovering behind Temple and hiding his face from the women.
“Making you useful. Now smile and do as I say.”
“Do what?”
The guards were almost on them now, scowling.
The ladies tried to sidle away, but Temple followed them. He must act now. “I do apologize, ladies.” He plucked the bottle from their fingers.
“What the hell are you doing, man?” Apollo hissed.
“Making you a few friends. Close friends.”
Apollo’s gaze flew from the bottle in Temple’s hand to the guards moving their way. His brows rose in understanding. “No.”
“You’re following me about because you feel guilty.”
“Probably, but not enough for this.”
“How long do you think the bump lasted on the back of Diana’s head, the bruising, the headaches?” Temple snarled.
“Fuck.”
“Take the damn bottle.” Temple thrust it into Apollo’s hand.
Apollo grumbled but closed his fingers around it. “Get the hell out of here, then.” He marched up to the guards, pulled the cork out of the bottle, and splashed the contents first in one guard’s face and then the other’s.
They rubbed the potion out of their eyes. And licked it off their lips. When their vision was clear once more, it locked onto Apollo.
Who grinned, sly and cunning. “Hello, chaps, can I buy you a drink?”
The guards’ mouths bloomed into wide smiles.
“You’re the fella who was stripped of a title,” one said.
“Cuzza that lady,” the other added. “The alchemist’s tricky wife.”
“One and the same.” Apollo bowed low. “Now listen here, you men have been working hard. How about I treat you to some libations.” He hung his arms around the other men’s shoulders and led them down the street. They didn’t even look up once to see where Temple was. Too damn easy.
Except for the women currently smacking Temple’s back with their reticules. They cursed at him, calling for the constable.
“Here!” Temple shoved a wad of banknotes at them. “Take these.” Then he dove for the shop door. No idea how much time he had. Temple made a quick line toward Lady Guinevere’s study, throwing the door open without knocking.
She looked up, startled, from papers scattered across her desk. The raven hopped on its perch.
“Lord Knightly?”
Mr. Bran appeared from behind the door, hands creeping under the edges of his jacket toward weapons likely hidden there.
“Did you receive my letter?” Temple demanded. He had to peer around Bran because the large man wouldn’t let him farther into the room, but Temple sure as hell wasn’t wasting this opportunity with retreat.
“Oh do sit, Bran,” Lady Guinevere said. “He’s not going to hurt me. He has no manners, barging in like that, but he is rather desperate if the papers are true.” She tilted her head to the side and slid the edge of a piece of paper through her fingers. “Are they true?”
“Depends on which part you’re talking about.” Temple closed the door behind him as Bran stepped aside.
“Diana has talent?”
“True.”
“And she is in the Tower?”
“True.”
“And she glamoured an entire ballroom to think themselves struck by lightning.”
“False.”
“Ah, well, the best stories always are.” Lady Guinevere sighed. “Your letter posed an interesting conundrum.”
Temple flattened his palms on the top of her desk. “I do not have much time. Were you able to brew the sort of potion I requested?”
“It took me some time to figure out what you were requesting. But one of my shopgirls comes from an alchemist family, and she told me you lot write in riddles when conveying sensitive information. I showed it to her, and she helped me puzzle it out.”
“I had no choice. The guards are reading my mail.”
“Free but not free. Not much better off than your wife.”
“Doesn’t matter how you read it, only that you did. Quick now. Were you able to brew something?” He likely had time, though. If the guards felt for Apollo what Temple had felt for Diana after a few drops of the love elixir, they would be easily led into doing whatever Apollo asked them to.
“I was able to brew something up, though”—she opened a drawer in her desk and pulled out a little glass bottle, black and round—“you understand it is likely highly illegal. Metal is set for a reason.”
So alchemists couldn’t meddle with it, open locks without keys, modify coins, or transmute innocuous metal ornamentation into lethal weapons. A small means of keeping them in check, controlling them. “I’ll take the risks.”
“Then take the bottle.” She snapped it down on the desk between them.
Temple grabbed it, replaced it with a large purse, heavy with coins. “Thank you. That’s for this”—he shook the bottle—“and for the woman soon to demand a refund.”
Lady Guinevere’s brow clouded. “Refund? What did—”
“Borrowed her love elixir.”
Settling into the back of her chair, Lady Guinevere regarded him over steepled fingers. “I wish you luck in… whatever it is you plan to do. Do you need Bran—”
“No.” Temple swept out the door and paused next to a potion mistress pouring a concoction into a brilliant amber glass. “This love potion?” he asked.
“Yes, sir, but—”
“Thank you.” He snatched it up and pocketed it then ran for the door. The sun was still high and bright when he stepped back into the bustling square.
“You could have warned me first,” Apollo drawled. He leaned one shoulder against the wall to the side of the shop door.
“Where are the guards?” Temple glanced down the street in both directions, across the square.
“I sent them to a local pub, told them I wanted them to relax since they’ve been working so hard.”
“And that worked?”
Apollo shrugged. “And now?”
“You go away.” Temple strode down the street toward where he’d left his horse. He untethered Newton and mounted almost in a single movement.
“Wait for me!”
“Hey!”