7. Quietly, Chastely
QUIETLY, CHASTELY
When Guin slipped into the bathing chamber late that night, she had the ashes of oak leaves burned into the lines of her skin, coal dust outlining her fingerprints, and pollen beneath her nails.
The chamber was located between the duke’s and duchess’s sleeping chambers, a shared room that made her a little nervous, and she pulled the duke’s door closed, leaving the duchess’s door open.
She used her own heat to warm the water and the sides of the large, copper tub and found her usual soap.
Mint, a scent to sharpen her mind more than to relax her.
She’d not been thinking clearly since finding Braxton and Apollo Chester passed out in the plant shop.
Stupid, stupid men.
Braxton had been pale, entirely immobile, and for one horrid moment, she’d thought him dead, another corpse to lay at her feet. Exactly why she’d left him to begin with.
If she wanted to save him this time, she’d have to find answers for the queen. Soon. Or proximity to Guin would kill him because… because she couldn’t help but smile when he said something wry, and she couldn’t help but feel lighter when she knew he was behind her.
It was the same way Bran had made her feel—safe and unburdened by anything but the intellectual. With him nearby, she could think again, and she had not thought that possible.
So very dangerous, that.
She sank deeper into the water, glad she’d only lit a few candles on the sconces on the wall. Their light flickered in the gilt-frame mirror set between them, sparking slender tendrils of light across the room. Reflected light, multiplied and magnified—exactly what she needed for the queen.
Something that would allow her to spark light in a dark room. Crushed mirror shards? Crystals with reflective capabilities?
A sound outside the bathing chamber, on the duke’s side made her lift her head from the oil-slick tub’s edge.
“Susan?” Guin called. “Have you brought me a towel?” Braxton had provided a lady’s maid somehow almost as soon as she’d arrived.
“Not Susan.”
The voice, deep and gruff, made her shiver, made her heart thump once heavily against her ribs. It had almost sounded like…
She dunked herself under the water, shook her head, held her breath. Perhaps the lack of oxygen might force her brain to work correctly. But she couldn’t stay in the sound-muted world forever. She breached the water with a gasp for air and pushed her hair back from her face.
“Braxton?”
“Yes.”
Of course it was. Bran was dead. She kept seeing and hearing him because she missed him.
He’d always been the shadow in the corner, the blade protecting her back, the slight grin to share a laugh with.
And Braxton had stepped into Bran’s boots, protecting her with a single-mindedness that made her feel safe.
She wiped tendrils of water off her face. “Could you… could you bring me a—”
The duke’s door opened, and a linen towel appeared in the frame, attached to the duke’s hand. He stood on the other side of the wall, just out of view, so very close while she was so very wet. And naked.
“I found Susan in the hallway,” he said, “and I told her she could be done for the night.”
“I suppose that is fine.” She could towel off her body and brush her hair and dry it before the fire.
“If you need something, I can be your lady’s maid.”
He could towel off her body, brush her hair, and dry it before the fire.
The bathwater warmed around her, her skin turning pink with the heat. She reached for the towel, her nakedness suddenly unbearable. “I cannot reach it.”
His back appeared in the doorway, big and impossibly broad beneath a naked neck and an unruly mop of dark hair.
She gasped, blinked.
And then he was different—shorter, slender frame, golden hair curling just above the glamour of a perfect collar.
“What?” he barked. “Goddamn it, what’s wrong, Guin? I can’t turn around or you’ll scratch my eyes out.” He shoved the towel at her.
She snatched it. “N-nothing is wrong. Everything just fine. My eyes are… tired. You may leave.”
He paused so long, she feared he would not, but then one lumbering step forward took him back into the dark.
She stepped from the tub, dried her skin, twisted the water out of her hair.
“Have dinner with me?” he asked from his room.
His sudden request didn’t startle her. Somehow, she’d known he was still there, felt the imposing electricity of him even when she could not see him. “I do not wish to dress again, and you’ve sent my maid away.” As if she couldn’t dress herself these days.
“Not a formal dinner. In my room. You may dress in your shift and wrapper if you like.”
“While you’re dressed for a ball.”
“It’s not real. Beneath I’ll be as undressed as you are.”
She paused in rubbing the linen across her abdomen. “You truly cannot banish the glamour?” For a moment, she’d thought she’d seen it drop, seen the real man beneath the magic.
“Sit down to dinner with me, and I’ll tell you.”
“Irritating duke.”
“Impossible duchess.”
She smiled. Then she killed her smile because it might kill him. “I should not.”
“You’re hungry.”
“How do you know?”
“Your last meal was this morning, before we left for the plant shop.”
“How do you… I suppose you know everything.” She spread her towel over the back of a nearby chair, then coiled her hair into a simple coiffure atop her head, securing it with a many-toothed comb.
Then she lifted her shift and wrapper from a hook on the wall and donned them.
Stepping out of the bathing chamber, she said, “I suppose I am hungry.”
He was nothing but a dim outline sitting on the edge of his bed. At Apollo’s shop, a loud thud had brought her and Sybil running. Apollo falling, presumably. Whatever magic he’d done had knocked them both out. Too big. Too much.
Yes, she would like to see the duke in the firelight for a little bit, to reassure her frantic mind he was still alive. She’d not killed him. Yet.
The outline on the bed shifted, stood, and moved across the room toward the fireplace. The shadow bunched toward the floor, then a fire flared to life and limned his standing body in light.
A table was situated close by, laden with various dishes, a bottle of wine.
Braxton’s body was still only dim and vague. He must have gathered shadows round himself because he seemed larger than he was, but then he… he released them, and he shrank, was himself again. His glamoured self.
He pulled out a chair, and she sat in it, then he situated himself across the table from her. The firelight smoldered orange across his glowing skin.
“Your glamour,” she said as he poured them both a cup of wine. “You cannot dissolve it?”
He handed her a goblet and settled into the back of his chair with his own. “I cannot.”
“Has it always been that way?”
He shook his head, rolling the goblet between his palms. “It is a recent development. That is what Apollo was helping me with.”
“Ah.” She sipped from her cup. “How? A potion? You could have come to me for—”
“Not a potion. He has a specialty I should not tell you about. It is his secret to keep or share.”
“That’s hardly fair.”
Braxton heaped food upon a plate then slipped it across the space toward her. “Eat.”
“I do not feel like it. What do you think caused the glamour to stick?”
He shrugged. “Heat. Light. Perhaps potions. An unexpected… conflagration of circumstances.” He studied her over the brim of his cup as he drank deeply. “You were worried for me today.”
“Of course I was!”
“No of course about it.”
“Braxton, I am still so upset, I have not eaten since. I’ve already lost so many I care for. I do not wish to lose another.”
The last leaping flame in the grate died, and the coals were not bright enough to illuminate his face. But she saw the long lines of his body lengthen as he stood, bunch as he knelt by the fire and stirred it back into life.
When he sat back at the table, he said one word. “Bran.”
It felt like a slap. The cup was too heavy to hold, and the weight of it pulled her arm all the way down to her lap. She looked into the small pool of wine there, only barely shining bloodred in the fire’s reflection.
Not that Braxton noticed. He tore off a chunk of bread and bit into it. After swallowing, he said, “Did you love him?”
She tossed the contents of her cup down her throat then refilled her bottle. “That is none of your business.”
“It is.”
“No.” She twisted the ribbon of her wrapper around her finger, unwound it, twisted it again.
He looked at her for a very long time. Beneath his hard gaze, she sat and took another sip of wine and ate a bit of bread herself.
Then finally he repeated, “Did you love him?”
She tossed the bread to the table. “Of course I didn’t. And of course I did.”
He rested his elbows on the table and leaned forward. “Elaborate, Gabriella Guinevere Lennox.”
Lennox. She never thought of herself that way, but she was. His wife. “I wish you would be so irritating more often. It is easier for me to hate you.” She threw a chunk of bread at his head.
Eyes closed, he caught the bread before it hit him, took a bite, and chewed thoughtfully. “Elaborate.”
Why the hell not. “I loved Bran because he was my best friend. My constant companion. I could not love him because I am married to you.”
He jerked backward in his chair, arms straightening, and damn that glamour. She wanted to see his face, his eyes, whatever they looked like. She needed to see the real man.
“I never slept with him,” she said.
“I never said that.”
“You wouldn’t ask. Too much of a gentleman.”
He snorted.
“But I thought you should still know. There was only one time I tried to kiss him.”
Slowly, he drew his arms off the table, taking his goblet with him and drinking deeply.
“It’s quite funny actually. It was when I was fine-tuning the love potion.
I accidentally imbibed quite a bit, and he was there, of course, and”—she laughed, just a little thing, then something much heartier—“I chased him around the shop, trying to kiss him, and—” Now she was laughing too hard to speak.
And oh it felt sublime.