Chapter 26 Meet the Marchioness
MEET THE MARCHIONESS
Diana was a beggar in a palace. She still wore the gown she’d worn the night of the ball, and her hair hung in a messy plait down her back, but the room she sat in was richer than anything she’d ever seen. And she’d grown up in the bosom of a people known for their extravagance.
She swept aside her dusty, wrinkled skirts to inspect the blue silk cushion beneath them. Unblemished by her state. For now.
“You see how it must be.” King William sat in a large and comfortable-looking chair across a low table from her.
The cushions were blue like the cushions on the sofa she occupied, and the wood trim painted in gleaming gold.
How would Temple see this room? Was it truly opulent?
Or was everything visible merely a mask?
Including the king.
“There is no other course of action,” he said, his lips thinned and eyes tired.
What could she say? There was no countermanding her king, no escaping fate. But still, after spending days and nights alone in captivity, she could not remain silent. “I do not want it. I would rather not have it.”
“Nonsense.”
She laughed, a nervous bark of a thing that she stopped as quickly as it had come by slapping both hands over her mouth. “I already have a title. Baroness Knightly, and… no one will be happy about this.”
“My dear Lady Fordham, they do not have to be happy about it. But they must respect it.”
Lady Fordham. The Marchioness Fordham, the first women to inherit the title… ever.
Another hiccup of laughter escaped.
“You are doing me a favor,” he said. “Consider yourself a… test. Of the ton. To see how they welcome a woman such as yourself. You will not be able to join the House of Lords, being a lady. You will merely hold the title in reserve for your eldest son.”
She’d thought to leave that tower only to lose her life. But the king had elevated her instead. Impossible to believe. Her mind couldn’t quite accept it, and her body was buzzing to do something, anything.
No, not anything.
The only thing she truly wanted to do was run all the way to Bloomsbury Square and throw herself into Temple’s arms.
“My niece is young, Lady Fordham,” the king said, “and she will need a confidante. Other than her mother.” He grumbled the last bit.
It seemed the rumors were true. Princess Victoria’s mother had few allies in England.
But the princess herself was loved. Respected, trusted.
And by the king, too. “When I look at her, I wonder if my own daughter would have had her nose or her hair or…” He cleared his throat.
“I should like her to have wise council, as I would wish wise council for my daughter, had she lived.”
“If she wishes me to, I will help the royal princess however she needs.”
“Excellent.” The king’s mouth split into a wide grin. “Excel—”
A clamor outside the window arrested his attention, and he rose—slowly and with a wince—and made his way to the window. A shout, an outcry, the clang of metal against metal. Guards appeared out of the glamour that hid them at the king’s side, and Diana jolted to her feet.
“Bloody hell,” the king mumbled. “What does he think he’s doing?”
Diana’s ring was hot suddenly, burning into her skin. Oh, she had a terrible feeling. She ran to the window then rocked away from it with a gasp. “Temple!”
There he was, in the courtyard below. He swung a rough-looking hammer around his head and stepped calmly toward a guard.
“Open the window,” she cried. “Open it!”
“Do as she says,” the king commanded.
The guards threw the window open, and she almost threw herself out of it.
“Temple!” she cried, “Temple!”
He stopped in the middle of one wide step, and when she screamed his name again, he began to look around.
“Stop!” she cried.
And then he found her, and his eyes were blazing and his muscles bulging, and she knew if she did not stop him, he’d bring the entire building down.
To free her.
“Take me to him,” she demanded. “Now.”
The king flicked his hand toward the doors, and she ran, the guards trailing her down some stairs and a long hallway and toward the front door as it was thrown wide open.
Temple stood between them, a dark and dangerous silhouette against the blinding noonday sun.
His shoulders heaving, his hair a wild dark cloud around a face taut with determination.
He saw her and blinked twice, three times, muscles visibly relaxing.
He stole her gaze and would not return it.
Then the hand holding the hammer tightened, tendons flexing, veins blue and bulging across bloodless, knuckle-tight skin.
“Get behind me,” he commanded, his gaze flying over her shoulder.
The guards were armed and running. They rushed past her, and Temple surged forward, grasping her wrist and shoving her behind him toward the door. Another breath would end in collision, blood, pain.
“Stop!” she screamed. She ran around Temple, slipped in front of him and held out her hands at the approaching guards. “Stop!”
They did, hesitantly, not backing down but also not moving forward.
She could feel Temple’s heat at her back. Oh God, it had been so long. She’d missed him so terribly, and he was here. And he was wild with rage. He’d burn it all down. For her.
She wouldn’t let him. Whipping around, she pressed her palms into his heaving chest. Hard and hot with a heart beating like a hammer behind the muscle. “It’s alright, Temple.” She hugged him tightly. “I’m unharmed.”
Still, he stood his ground.
“You have to listen to me! I’m safe, and you are close to getting yourself thrown in the Tower.” He already may have. She had to stop him before he made it worse. “Please, Temple!”
“Get your husband under control, Lady Fordham, or I will.” The king appeared on the stairs, and around him, over a dozen well-armed guards.
“Take me home, Temple.” She tried to scold him, but it came out sounding rather breathy.
“Can I?” he asked. “No more guards? No more Tower? They’ll not come get you again?” He looked at the king as he spoke, though she could not quite tell who he was talking to.
Surrounded by his guards, the king descended the rest of the stairs and stopped right in front of them. “No more guards. No more Tower. Not unless you refuse to drop that weapon.”
Temple’s arm went limp, the hammer dropping with a heavy thud to the floor. As soon as his arm was free, he wrapped both of them around her, dropped his face to her neck. Inhaled, exhaled, his body shaking.
“What were you planning to do?” she breathed, nuzzling his neck.
“Get you back.”
Her throat closed. She squeezed her eyes closed to hold back the tears. “But your family—”
“You’re my family, too, and it is incomplete without you.”
Never in her life had she loved someone like this, her heart too big for her chest, her arms eager to hold him, her soul sated with only the hint of a smile on his lips, the satisfied glow in his eyes.
“You understand”—the king wagged his finger at Temple—“that I will have to punish you.”
Diana stiffened, whirled in her husband’s arms to face her monarch. Fear a rush of ice through her veins. “What will you do? He didn’t hurt anyone! Did you?” She looked over her shoulder at Temple.
“No.” He would have, though. He’d meant to. Easy to hear that truth in his voice.
“Nevertheless. Some will consider this an attack on me, on the crown.”
“He only did it to save me. He—”
The king held up a hand, silencing Diana.
“I hereby rescind your title, Temple Grant. You are no longer Baron Knightly. You shall have to do with the one now.” He clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth.
“To think, had you not come here hammer high, my Royal Alchemist would have possessed two titles. Shame. I should have liked that.”
“Two…?” Temple’s brows drew together, then they bounced high, as if he’d remembered something. “He called you Fordham, Diana?”
“I seem to have inherited a title with my talent.”
“Bloody hell.” Temple’s body almost collapsed. “You’re the marchioness of Fordham?”
She nodded.
“And you her marquess,” the king said.
“Dear Juno.” Temple pressed a hand to his head. “That’s bloody unexpected.”
“F-Fordham?” The voice came from the side.
It was familiar, and it stopped her breath, made her curl into Temple’s chest. Apollo.
He looked terrible—grimy and skeletal, his clothes tattered and dirty.
He took several halting steps toward them, a trio of guards following close behind with silly grins. “Did he call you Fordham?”
“Yes.” Diana tried to sound confident. “The king has given me the title.”
Apollo dropped, and the guards crouched to pull him back to his feet with curiously gentle hands.
He pushed them away, his face mottled, and his lips thin.
“Congratulations, cuz.” He bowed, a shaky thing, and when he stood upright again, his eyes hollow.
With an almost imperceptible nod of his head, he sauntered away as if he were walking across a ballroom.
Relief to see the back of him? Pity for what he’d become? Fear he would return to harm her? She could not quite identify what she felt for her cousin. But Temple’s arm anchoring around her waist gave her strength to endure it.
With his other hand, Temple scratched the back of his neck. “Apologies, Your Majesty.”
The king gave a rather undignified snort. “Leave now before I decide to put you both in the Tower.”
Arms around each other, they walked outside.
“I came to save you,” he said, seeking out her hand, threading their fingers together.
“Thank you. Was… Apollo with you?”
He nodded. “I’ll explain at home. But are you… really Lady Fordham.”
She laughed. “I’ll explain at home.”
“And you really can come home?” His eyes were oh so gentle, oh so brimming with love.
She smiled, nodding.
And he kissed her. He kissed her like she might break or blow away in the wind. He held her gently in giant arms, his touch feather soft, adoration in his fingertips. He kissed her like—
“I love you.” His words spoken softly, lips to lips. His eyes were closed, and some emotion worked up through his throat.
“I felt it when I was in the tower. That you loved me.” The iron and opal of her ring had warmed with strong and steady pulses of his love.
No careful concoction of herbs and petals and oils could turn a man inside out like this, could put his heart in every line of his face, in his touch, in his willingness to lay siege to a castle. Laughing, she kissed him back.
“I love you, too.” Her words soft but strong, everything she knew as true contained within them. It did not matter how the love had started, only that it ran true. “But I must admit I might love a bath more than you right now.”
He laughed, and when he picked her up, she squealed.
When he tossed her on top of Newton, she cried out, but as they tore off toward home, she welcomed the stares and whispers of those on the street.
Everyone could see her now, just as she was, and no matter what they thought of her or of her alchemist king, she would never hide again.
Never run. Unless it was into Temple’s arms.