4. Familiar #2
She pinched off a leaf of some long-tendrilled plant. He never could learn all their names and applications. She picked up a pouch and spilled its contents—seeds—into a bowl.
He pushed off the door, yanked it open. “I’m going to speak with Ned and Grant.” She didn’t even look up from her work. “You stay here.”
That got her attention. She glared over her shoulder. “I shall do as I please.”
“Not today, Lady G.” He shooed Artemis from his shoulder, and she flew to Guin. He shut the door behind him with a wince. Not because it reverberated in the thin walls, though it did. Because Braxton had never called her Lady G before. But Bran had.
His accent, his mannerisms, his little quirks she was so damn acquainted with.
He needed to be careful. He’d not had to been so careful four years earlier when he’d stepped into her office to interview as her guard.
No glamour, no pretense. He’d been himself alone.
Brandon Lennox. To her only and always simply Bran.
The small shop in Finsbury Square was neat and busy, and the maid wearing yellow and white with a gold chatelain swinging at her waist led him to the very back and knocked on double doors.
“Lady Guinevere,” she called, “your next interview has arrived.”
“Come in.” The words muffled but confident.
The maid pushed through the doors, and he trailed behind her, feeling free without his glamour.
He paused in the doorway, ready to flee.
Gabriella wouldn’t recognize him. She couldn’t.
He’d always worn his glamour, keeping his grandfather and uncles and cousins and father and brother alive in at least that small way.
She had no idea what he truly looked like.
And now she looked her fill, studying him from the top of his head to his booted feet.
He studied her, too. She sat behind a large, dark oak desk, free of everything but for a little golden cage, open, and the bird inside it, black of wing and sharp of eye. She’d acquired a pet.
Two years since she’d left their marriage. She looked good, better than before—her curves more pronounced, her face pinker, her eyes glittering with a merry purpose he’d never seen there before.
Fucking Jupiter, she was gorgeous.
“Thank you, Mercy,” she said, “that will be all.”
The maid, Mercy, left, shutting the doors behind her.
“Mistake number one,” Bran said, allowing himself the use of his natural accent and slipping his hand between his body and greatcoat, reaching for the blade behind his back.
“Mistake?” Her eye twitched. “I make plenty of those, but if you are one, I will be sure not to make you.”
“You shut yourself alone in a room with a man you do not know.”
Her gaze flicked to the doors behind him. “Ah. I see.”
He prowled closer to her desk, and she did not shrink from his approach. “Second mistake.”
She folded her arms atop the desk and leaned across it. “Do tell.”
“You are not wary of me.”
“Oh, I am. I am merely choosing not to show it.”
Hiding fear could confuse a predator, turn the tables. “Good.”
“Are there any other mistakes I should be aware of?”
“Not hiring me.” A mistake for her. And a sorrow for him. His Shadow training still fit him perfectly, felt damn good to be a soldier instead of a duke. Felt good to use his own fucking voice and body for once. Felt right. And damn it, if his wife got to do as she pleased, so should he.
“You are confident, aren’t you?”
“I’ve earned confidence. Now… Mistake three.”
“Two, actually, because the second was no mistake at all. Remember?”
He slipped the knife from its holster and threw it. It landed point first in her desk with a thunk, handle vibrating.
She gasped and jolted backward, the legs of her chair screeching across the wood floor. “I… I didn’t even see you move.”
“There are those trying to kill you, I hear.” His initial reason for plotting this mad scheme. Someone had to make sure his wife didn’t die. And the fool bodyguards she’d been hiring kept getting themselves killed or running off with their tails between their legs.
“Are you one of them?” Her voice didn’t waver, not even a little.
“No.”
“You’re from Scotland. But you sound educated, too… Who are you?”
“Your new bodyguard. You can call me Bran. But what should I call you?” Wife.
“What everyone calls me now. Lady Guinevere.”
He found Ned and Grant outside, one guarding the front entrance of the building, the other the back. Bran gave Grant orders then left him to carry them out. The queen trusted him, so Bran would, too.
Ned he lingered with. The big man had been Bran’s right hand before the fire. A friend. Or as close as Bran ever came to it.
They stood side by side at the entrance, both lounging in the late afternoon shadows as if they meant to have a casual chat. They looked everywhere but at each other—the faces of passersby, the faint twitch of shadows in corners, the sweep of curtains in a window. Ned hadn’t forgotten his lessons.
“How many have there been?” he asked.
“Five this week, Your Grace. Are you really her husband?”
“Yes.”
“No disrespect meant, Your Grace… but why did Her Majesty put a… man like you in charge?”
“I’m not what I seem.”
Ned nodded. “A bit like Lady G, then.”
“A bit.”
“A duchess.” Ned whistled. “We all knew she was someone. Never suspected that.”
“This changes your job not at all, Ned. You still protect her with your life.”
The other man scratched the back of his neck. Bran had never seen him… sheepish? Hesitant? What had Guin said about him? Oh, yes.
“Ned”—Bran cupped the other man’s shoulder—“if you tire of the job, the risks, you quit. If you’re hoping for a family, you find other ways to provide for them.”
Ned’s jaw twitched. “I can’t now that Bran’s gone. Do you know about Bran?”
He almost laughed. “Yes, I know about Bran.”
“If he were still here, I’d have quit already. Mercy and I got married a month ago, and… she wants a baby.” Ned blushed. “So do I.”
“You’ll make a good father. I’m here now. You can go home to her if you like.”
“What? Now?”
Bran nodded.
Ned’s eyes narrowed and he shook his head. “Nah. Can’t trust you to do the work. I’ll probably have to protect you as well as Lady G.”
It took more energy than it should have to pull the shadows from all their corners and gather them around Ned’s eyes, but Bran did it, pulling the knife from his back hip at the same time.
And before Ned could take another breath, Bran had him pinned against the wall, had his knife to the other man’s throat.
Behind the shadows, Ned’s eyes widened. He clutched as Bran’s arms, struggling to escape.
But Bran held fast. “Oh, I don’t think you have to worry about me. I can take care of myself. And Guin.” He released Ned. “Go home, be with Mercy. Make a baby.”
Ned rubbed his throat and backed away from the building, grinning, then frowning, his thick brows pulling together. “Odd. He could… he could do that, too.”
Bran pretended to straighten cuffs that were too fake to be crooked. “Who?”
Ned shook his head. “Never mind. I’ll be back in the morning.”
“See that you are.” He almost called out for Ned to give Bran’s greetings to Mercy as the big man slunk down the street but stopped himself just in time.
It had been easy being Bran in a world where no one knew the Duke of Braxton. But being Braxton where everyone knew Bran— Fucking Jupiter, that was going to be much more difficult.