NOTHING AND SOMETHING #2
Ned tried to join her, one arm already out of his greatcoat, but the servant stepped in front of him.
“Your guard must remain outside, Lady Guinevere.” The servant lingered on the lady, clearly distrusting the moniker. And Ned.
“Ned comes with me everywhere.”
“Only you were invited into Her Majesty’s presence. He must remain outside.”
“S’alright.” Ned stepped backward into the cold, slipping back into his greatcoat. “I need to walk the perimeter.”
“If you’re sure.”
Ned nodded, hunched deeper into his popped lapels and began his inspection of the gardens.
“This way.” The servant strode off without her.
The air was heavy with heat and the bite of citrus, and Guin had to push back branches to follow the servant deeper into the conservatory.
At its heart was a round table with four chairs, one of them larger than the others.
“You may have a seat,” the servant said as she busied herself with a tea cart. “Her Majesty will arrive shortly.”
Guin sat and smiled when a steaming cup of tea was set before her. “Thank you.”
The servant set another cup before the chair opposite Guin, then disappeared into the foliage.
Quite literally disappeared, faded from existence one body part at a time as another body faded in. Short and pretty sitting straight as a poker across from Guin.
Guin jolted to her feet and dropped into a deep curtsy, stayed there. “Your Majesty.”
The queen’s laughter reminded Guin how young the monarch was, still a girl in many ways. But terribly powerful.
“You may rise. And join me.” The queen gestured to the empty seat.
“Yes, ma’am.” Guin sat, more conscious of her posture than before.
Queen Victoria’s eyes glittered below dark brows and hair parted sharply down the middle. She had an imp’s grin. “I am delighted to finally meet you, Lady Guinevere.”
“And I am honored to be in your presence, ma’am. You’re rather different in person.”
“As are you. I must say the newspapers are not kind to you. Your nose is a perfectly fine size. As are other bits of you.”
Guin raised a brow. The other bits the newspapers’ caricatures of her liked to embellish were currently modestly covered by a high neckline. “The press adores depicting me in a rather harsh light.”
“Hmm.” Queen Victoria sipped her tea, contemplated the glass roof of the conservatory. “Are you at all worried, Lady Guinevere, about why I’ve summoned you?”
The continued emphasis of her self-styled title certainly worried her. Of all her sins, she’d not thought to be raked over the coals for that one. “I admit to some anxiousness.”
“You have, after all, provided the ton with a highly potent love potion and not been, if rumors can be believed, particularly cautious in your selling of it.”
If she’d known she would be arrested today, she wouldn’t have worn her best gown. Guin raised her cup to her lips and said just before taking a long sip, “When laws are unfair, caution matters less.”
“Ah. I thought we might come to that. I happen to agree with you. It is unfair that men can dose women with love potion without their consent while the reverse is not true. As you know, the law is meant to keep our titled gentlemen free from… influence.”
“Influence comes in many forms, Your Majesty. At times it is poured from a bottle and at other times it is found in the crook of a finger, the lifting of a skirt.”
The queen’s brow wrinkled. “You speak of… temptations of the flesh?”
My, she was young, wasn’t she. After three decades of living, Guinevere could not even remember what that was like. “Precisely, Your Majesty.”
“Yes, I see. But then, a man knows what he’s up against when he’s being… seduced.” The queen threw her chin into the air as if saying such a word were defiance itself.
It made Guin want to hug her. “True.”
“There is a man in the House of Lords who has been lobbying for you, attempting to drum up support to change the law, the same man who got you out of trouble two Seasons ago.”
Guin’s hands tightened around the teacup. Her pulse jumped into her fingertips, which were pressed breakingly tight against the china.
“The Duke of Braxton.”
“Yes.” The only word Guin could manage. The steam rising from her cup seemed to spell the duke’s name in sinuous, dissipating curves.
“I support his cause and yours. And I will be happy to organize a meeting between yourself and Viscount Melbourn.”
Guin’s head snapped up. “The prime minister?”
“Mm. It would help legitimize your cause.”
“I would be much appreciative of your support, ma’am.”
“You shall have it. If…”
Elation deflated. Of course there would be terms. She should have expected it.
“If you consider joining my little… salon. It is composed of a select group of women, all with rather fascinating… talents.”
Talent. A word usually reserved for the titled transcendent class. What did this little queen know? “I should be honored, Your Majesty. May I… know a bit more about the nature of this salon? What is the topic of conversation?”
“Science. Magic.” Queen Victoria lifted her hand and a flower bloomed on her palm.
Guin forced steady breaths into and out of her lungs. “Ah. I am afraid I must disappoint you. I possess no significant magic. Only knowledge of herbs and their uses.” Partly true.
“Is that so, Your Grace?” The queen grinned.
And Guin stopped breathing altogether. “I… wh-what did you say?”
“Will you deny your true identity to your queen, Gabriella Guinevere Lennox, Duchess of Braxton?”
Guin licked her lips. They’d gone dry. So had her throat. Her brain, too, really. Nothing but sand up there, clogging the gears. “No, Your Majesty. It is simply that I have not answered to that name in quite some time.” Not in six years.
“Well you will have to answer to it now. No more hiding, Lady Braxton.”
Duchess of Braxton. The title had never fit her right. “I have not been hiding so much as… living a life of my own. Redefining myself.”
“That is all well and good, but I need your help, and you will be able to help me best if you use your title from here forward.”
“Help? In what way?” This was clearly not about a gathering of intellectuals.
The glamoured flower on her palm was flickering, and the queen frowned, looked up. A cloud had rolled across the sun, and shadows thickened around them. “I need a potion to increase the power of my talent when”—she glared at the offending cloud above—“reserves are low.”
When light was low.
But the queen couldn’t say that. The transcendents claimed their talent for illusions was born from a divine spark rich in their blood. Nonsense. Light gave them power, whether they wanted to admit it or not. The queen clearly did not wish to admit it.
“I know of no such potion, Your Majesty.”
The queen made a fist of her hand, banishing the fading bloom. “Then you will discover it. Only you cannot if you are dead, and I have heard, you’re having a difficulty remaining alive at the moment.”
“No difficulty at all, Your Majesty.”
The queen raised a brow and handed Guin a serviette. “For your cheek.”
Guin pressed her fingertips to her cheek and pulled them away. Blood, dried and rusty. She’d forgotten about that. “It was nothing. A small altercation near Finsbury.”
“Be that as it may, I’d like to take precautions. Until you produce what I’ve asked for, you’re to have the benefit of increased protection. All day and night.”
“I already employ a small army of guards, and they are well trained.” By her now-dead head guard. And friend. Good Gaia, she was not supposed to be thinking of Bran! She cleared her throat and blinked several times, clearing away the moisture.
“I’m sure. But you shall have one more.”
“Oh?” Irritating, but she could not decline a royal command. “And who is to be my newest shadow?”
The queen chuckled. “Funny you should use that word. Shadow.” Another chuckle.
“Your Majesty…” Dread curled tight in Guin’s belly. “Who is it?”
Those glittering eyes, so young yet so cunning. “The Duke of Braxton.”
Guin felt like she’d been hit with a hammer.
Several. One to the head, another to the gut.
If she didn’t want to think about her dead guard, she certainly didn’t want to think about Braxton.
He was currently, as far as she knew, alive and well, and…
Damn it! She was trying to keep him that way.
Husbands were, after all, usually the first to die when it came to the duchess curse.