4. Familiar
FAMILIAR
Bran felt like whistling as he followed Guin out of the hackney and into the flat she rented on a side street off Finsbury Square. He scanned every face in every direction, his senses opened fully to every shift of shadow and light. It was good to be back.
Only this time she hated him. This time he hadn’t earned his spot by her side. She’d been given no choice in accepting it. A lack of trust would make his mission more difficult.
So would this stuck glamour. It threw off too much light for him to see shadows clearly.
Light was necessary. Without it there were no shadows.
But an overabundance of it banished shadows entirely.
He couldn’t hide like he used to, couldn’t see into the dark as he should be able to, couldn’t gather the shadows to drape about her like a cloak, hiding her from harm.
She wasn’t as safe as she’d been before. He should have mentioned it to the queen, but this was his one chance to remain close to Guin until he could be Bran again.
At least she couldn’t send him away. Not now. Fucking Jupiter that felt good.
Since he couldn’t see, let alone gather the shadows, he counted doors and floors. Her flat was up four flights of stairs, and there was one more floor above her. There had been two tenants below her and likely the same number above.
“Does Ned live across the hall from you?” he asked.
She looked over her shoulder as she took a key from her pocket and slipped it into the lock.
“Of course not. He has a wife. They live together. They want to start a family. No one lives across the hall. Those rooms are empty at the moment. But when I moved in, they were occupied by a young gentleman. Very pleasant.” The door swung open and she disappeared into the flat.
He followed her inside, trying not to think about the pleasant young man who could have actually been a knife-wielding assassin.
He’d tried to follow her about after the glamour stuck, but he’d been too conspicuous.
He’d given up, trusting Ned and the others to keep her alive until he could return from the grave.
“There’re two rooms,” she said. “One bedchamber and one sitting room. But it rather acts like everything all in one. Quite different from your Mayfair mansion. Artemis!”
A fury of flapping wings from the other room, and a dark shadow even Bran could see swept toward them and landed on Guin’s shoulder.
“Hello, darling,” she cooed. “Someone has followed me home. Feel free to peck his eyes out.”
Bran grunted, and the raven narrowed its eyes. Before Artemis, Bran would have said that was impossible, after… she was one odd bird. And she was studying him like he was a shiny thing she intended to catch up and stow away in her nest.
In one fluid movement, she hopped into the air and glided toward him before settling on his shoulder. Artemis chortled, fluffed her wings, and settled into the curve of his neck.
Fucking Jupiter. The bird recognized him.
As if entranced, Guin walked toward him, hand outstretched toward her feathery friend. “She never takes to anyone like that. Not until she knows them.”
He shrugged. “Animals have always liked me. She’s a beauty.” And her little head nestled against his neck was turning him to mush.
Guinevere snapped her hand to her belly and took off across the room, mumbling, “Traitor.”
When she’d disappeared behind a door, Bran stroked Artemis’s head and whispered, “Good to see you again, girl. But you have to pretend you don’t know me.”
The bird opened a very suspicious eye.
“Just for now. I’ll be back as myself soon.”
She chuffed and settled into his neck again, and when it became clear she wasn’t leaving any time soon, he wandered around the sitting room with her little weight comfortable, and comforting, on his shoulder.
Guin had not done much to decorate her new abode.
Of course, she’d lost everything in the fire, but…
he’d thought she would have replaced much of it by now—the lace tablecloths and oil paintings, the little shepherdess statues and silver candlesticks.
Guin was like her raven companion—quite fond of shiny things.
But her room was bare as a wooden box, plain and cold.
A small table and a spartan wooden chair.
A larger armchair, well worn, and beside it on the floor a pile of old books.
A long table ran the length of one wall—a sort of sideboard—and on it were wooden and quartz bowls, potted plants, and pestles, the tools of her trade.
Everything she needed, but nothing pretty or frivolous.
He rubbed the heel of his hand into his sternum because something behind it squeezed painfully.
“What,” he yelled loudly enough for her to hear in the other room, “are you doing with your—” He cleared his throat.
Each word had been rolling closer to his natural brogue.
His Shadow training made him adept at various accents and languages.
One never knew when the Crown required a bit of travel to foreign lands.
But he’d always struggled to keep the line between British and Scottish.
If he could keep his speech short, he could keep the brogue out of it.
But the longer his sentences were, the more concentration he needed.
He cleared his throat one more time and wrapped his tongue around the right British accents.
“Your allowance. What are you doing with it?”
She appeared in the doorway, the bedchamber a dark void behind her, the sunlight from the one curtainless window at the front of her flat streaming toward her in pale yellow ribbons.
She wore only her dressing gown. No. She must still be wearing her shift and corset beneath because her body retained its fashionable shape—breasts high, waist cinched in, hips flaring out, the red wrapper falling in silken pleats to the floor where the tips of her creamy stockings peeked out from the hem.
His mouth went dry. She was too arousing. He’d been safe as Bran. She’d never removed her clothes around him. Well, there was that one time… But that was the love potion’s fault, and she’d apologized the next morning. Not that she’d needed to.
“Are you afraid I’ll mismanage your money?
” she asked, sauntering around him and plopping into her armchair.
She picked up a book, and her dressing gown split at the hem, the sides falling away to reveal two long, lithe legs encased in creamy stockings below a snowy shift that ended just above her knees.
Fucking Jupiter. He turned away from her.
She’d gained his cock’s attention, and it was quite interested in seeing more.
She was an erotic picture come to life—those legs, those ample curves caressed by red silk, the long kissable length of her neck, her red-gold hair like curls of fire framing her face.
“No,” he said. “It’s your allowance. You may do as you please with it. I only… you’ve been here for eight months and have not yet made this place your own.”
“I do not intend to stay here. As soon as I procure another shop, I’ll live above it again. It’s more economical that way.”
He had to look. Just a glimpse over his shoulder, discovering her head tilted to the side. A thought was forming in that constantly whirring brain, and it felt like she could see right through his glamour.
“Look at Artemis,” she finally said, “curled up on your shoulder. You make quite the cozy pair.”
He’d forgotten the damn bird. He stroked a finger down one wing. “She… senses a friend.” Not a lie.
“Sometimes even the more intelligent of creatures make mistakes.”
“Like you?”
She blinked, and it was like a door slamming in his face.
She could hide herself well without a glamour.
She added the book for good measure, opening it to the contents and running a finger down the page.
“Ah, yes. Plants that require full sunlight. Might be something useful there.” She flipped through the pages, dismissing him.
Trying to. He leaned a shoulder against the door—the better to guard the only entrance—and crossed his arms—the better to show she could not ruffle him. “Our marriage was your mistake, was it not? That’s what you think.”
She flipped through the pages much more quickly than she could read them. She did not look up.
In all his years at her side as Bran, as his fucking self, he’d never been tempted to ask about her husband.
Braxton always seemed a world away, a different life, and he’d not wanted to rip up what was good about Bran’s life—the freedom, the action, the woman—by tossing about a name that would turn Guin to stone.
Yes, he had to slip on the glamour, attend the Lords, speak in parliament, and court those who might support his causes, but that chained life always seemed easier, the fit of it a bit better, when he could slip it off and enter the potion shop in Finsbury Square.
He’d been more master there than in Mayfair where illusion ruled.
In Mayfair, a name was master, a facade, not a man.
“Say it, Guin. You wish you hadn’t married me.” As long as he was the duke, he might as well get answers for yearslong mysteries.
“You were my parents’ choice.” She turned another page. And another. Too quickly still.
“You were… are… still in love with your first husband.”
She snapped the book shut. “He was their choice, too.”
“But you didn’t run from him.”
“Why do you care?”
He lifted a shoulder, dropped it. “Call me a cat. I’m curious.”
“It changes nothing. Marriage for women like me is a means of survival. I didn’t wish to merely survive any longer. I wished to live.”
“I would have let you live.” And kept her in his bed. That one night… Fucking Jupiter, that memory wouldn’t help the situation in his trousers.
“Yes.” She stood and strode for the sideboard, the plants and bowls and pestles. “Well.”
“That’s your answer?”