9. Gold Eyes and Green
GOLD EYES AND GREEN
On day ten of her self-enforced isolation, Guin stepped into the wardrobe in her bedchamber and upended a bottle of potion into her mouth.
The concoction of sunflower, iron, and devil’s ivy she’d acquired for Apollo’s shop oozed down her throat, coating it.
Hard to swallow, and she’d not tried at all to sweeten it. No use if it didn’t work.
Somewhere in the Mayfair mansion, Braxton prowled, awake because she was, but keeping his distance.
As she was.
She was not thinking about Braxton. She’d been steadfastly not thinking about him since the kiss.
She was, however, making limited strides with the queen’s request. Too limited, considering Braxton and the kiss. She needed out of this place. She needed a new shop and her old guards and more distance than even a London mansion allowed.
In the dark, she conjured a floating light in the palm of her hand.
Easy enough. She knew how to call the heat of her own body to do her bidding, as alchemists did.
She’d learned that from Handsford’s cook at the age of thirteen.
She’d learned she could use it to cast a small glamour at the age of fifteen.
Oh, the things young girls could get up to when left alone in isolated castles.
But the glamour didn’t last. With no clear light source, it dimmed and faded entirely. She’d try again in a half hour. Perhaps the potion had not taken effect yet. She could not yet guess its qualities; clarity on those would come with further testing.
But a half hour later, the glamour wouldn’t even come. Damn.
She needed a walk. She’d not been out of this house in ten entire days, and she’d been going mad before this latest failure.
Now something close to despair buzzed through her limbs.
If she didn’t move, she’d fall apart. She opened the wardrobe and donned a mantle, grabbed her walking stick, and made it downstairs without encountering anyone.
She was one foot out the door when he caught her.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Braxton said behind her.
“I need exercise.” She grasped the handle of her cane so hard her knuckles blanched white.
“Excellent. So do I.”
“Can you do without?”
“You know the answer to that.”
She whirled around. The dim sunlight of a dying day spilled onto the black-and-white squares of the marble flooring. And Braxton stood on the edge of the light, hat pulled low, obscuring his eyes, the collar of a greatcoat pulled high, hiding his jaw.
“No one knows I’m here, Braxton.” She kept her tone brusque, calm, as she focused on neatening the line of her gloves along each finger. “There have been no more letters, no attacks—”
“Because you haven’t left the house in ten days.”
“Because no one expects a notorious businesswoman to be living with a duke. I’ll just take a little walk around the square. It’s still light out.”
“Not for long.”
He wasn’t going to let her go alone. Of course he wasn’t. But she couldn’t remain here any longer. So she marched out the door. He closed it behind them, and instead of setting her steps around the square, she headed west to Hyde Park. She walked briskly, but so did he, keeping up with ease.
“I’m going to be out for a while,” she said.
“Then so am I.”
“I can fend for myself. I have this lovely sword stick Bran made for me.” It clicked on the street with each step. “You’ll be bored. I’m going to spend quite some time gathering plants.” Sometimes the time of day a plant was plucked impacted a potion’s strength or effect. “Ned can follow after me.”
He swung around in front of her, the hat obscuring his face, a nearby building casting the rest of him in shadow. “Your cheek was cut.”
“It’s better.”
“There was poison on your doorstep.”
“And now there’s not.”
“You are too glib about your own existence.”
She picked a careful way around him. “I wouldn’t say that.”
He didn’t lose a single step, walking beside her this time.
As they crossed the street toward the park, she said, “Are you going to apologize?”
“For?”
“The kiss.”
“No.”
Once in the park, she strayed from the path immediately, her boots sinking into grass. The sky was turning velvet blue at the very top, like the stars were drawing a curtain over the day.
“You’re my wife.” The words curled like a cat around her.
But she had no use for soft things. “And we decided long ago that meant nothing.”
“Why? Why did we decide that? I always assumed you hate me. But you claim you don’t want me dead. And you respond to my kisses. But you run from them, too. I know there is no hope for us. But after six years, at least let me know why.”
“I…” She shook her head
“You expected to marry a real duke. Not a second son of a second son whose entire family had to perish for him to have power. I am not what you wanted or expected. I always knew your parents looked down on me, found me unsophisticated and… lucky.”
“No. That’s not—”
“It’s fine,” he said gruffly.
“No, no. No.” Each word quieter than the other.
She’d never told him why she’d left. She’d been too panicked, made him promise not to come after her, promised in return she would not besmirch the Braxton title with her chosen lifestyle.
But perhaps he should know. Yet it was hard to say.
So terribly difficult because she knew how ridiculous it would sound to him.
But if it would make him understand, make him leave her alone, she’d humble herself a little.
“I left, and I will leave again, because… ofthecurse.” She rushed the last three words together.
“Curse? As in something a witch does to someone she does not like?”
She nodded.
“You and I both know witch is merely a pejorative for a woman who dabbles in potions. Many have called you witch.”
“It’s true.”
“Why didn’t your parents tell me of it when they arranged our marriage?”
She shrugged. “They always told me never to speak of it. I always thought that unfair.”
“Why tell me now, then?”
“Because you’re like a dog with a bone. You won’t let go with those sharp teeth until you’ve torn all the way through me. I know it sounds like a fairy tale, but my family is cursed. If we succumb to… softer emotions, the person we love dies. We die.”
“You believe falling in love will kill you?” His usually smooth stride broke into jerky steps like a puppet master controlled him with strings.
“Yes.” She whipped her cane up behind her and held it across her back with both hands. “Do you remember what I told you about my first husband?”
“He was a friendly old man you liked a great deal.”
She nodded. She’d told him that on their wedding night. “And what I said about the other man?”
“The one you were in love with? During your engagement to your husband?”
Tommy had worked in the stables, and Edward remained in London most of the time.
She’d spent the first eight years of their engagement in his house, alone but for servants.
He’d returned when she was eighteen to marry, and by that time she’d been in love with Tommy and ready to prove the curse was nothing more than a myth.
Youthful folly had concocted a plan, an escape that had led to a rainy night and wild hopes, the smell of wet horse, the feel of wet leather, the shadow of her beloved riding ahead of her through the storm.
The flash of lightning.
The scream of a terrified horse.
The thud of Tommy’s skull hitting the ground.
His eyes had already been blank by the time she’d gotten to him.
“Guin?” A voice like warm, rich chocolate on a cold morning and very much alive.
She shook off the nightmare. “Yes. I loved Edward and Tommy in different ways, and they both died.”
“There is no such thing as curses, and you know that.”
“I’ve lived otherwise. The Pottingers die when they fall in love. The ones they love die. And… I liked you too well to want you dead. I… I still do. That is why you must convince the queen to assign another Shadow to guard me. You are too at risk.”
“Is that a declaration, Guin? Do you love me?”
“Stop! I’ve known since I met you that I did not want you to die. I have worked hard to keep that from happening. Do not mock me!”
His gaze swung away from hers, and he grunted, hands deep in his pockets. “I do not believe in curses.”
“Alas, that will not keep you alive.” He would not take her seriously.
No use continuing the conversation. She peered at the sky, still permeated by light, though the dark was encroaching, and when she knelt to test the grass between her thumb and forefinger, she felt a cloud move across the bright line of the horizon.
Or Braxton. Yes, him because she could feel his warmth, smell the leather and steel scent of him. Dukes should smell of expensive cologne, expensive brandy, or expensive cheroots. Simply expensive. But even in Mayfair his scent was less refined.
She wandered away from him, toward a line of trees bordering the park. The shadows there would be deeper, and since the fairy orbs had not yet flickered on, this liminal space between night and day, light and dark, might prove a productive sliver of time to pluck a few specimens.
She reached up to twist a leaf off a branch and didn’t see the man until he had a pistol aimed at her belly.
“Don’t scream,” he demanded.
“You should follow your own advice,” she whispered.
Braxton appeared like a wraith behind the man, his eyes glowing golden beneath the brim of his hat as he squeezed a point on the attacker’s neck.
He dropped to the ground, the gun thunking with his thick skull against a tree root.
Braxton stepped over him and wrapped a hand around Guin’s upper arm. “We’re leaving now.”
She no longer possessed the desire to fight him. His arm curling around her waist, she let him guide her out of the park and onto Upper Grosvenor Street.
Where three men were waiting for them in the gathering gloom, a different weapon in each hand, twisting their human forms demonic.