20. Soft Days and Worrisome Sighs
SOFT DAYS AND WORRISOME SIGHS
Guin was on her knees, elbow deep in a bucket of flower petals and rainwater when Bran appeared at one end of the conservatory, a parcel under one arm.
She’d felt him first, feeling only that she must look up, and when she had—there he’d been, wearing the glamour but watching her with warm green eyes.
He started toward her with a steady, loping stride.
“Who is this?” he asked when he reached her. His eyes were golden now, to match the glamour.
“Braxton,” Guin said, standing and drying her hands on her apron, “meet Lady Maryville’s granddaughter, Lady Sophia.”
The little girl blinked up at Bran with big brown eyes, then she popped to her feet and performed a perfect curtsy. “Your Grace.”
Bran dropped to his knee. “No graces here, little one. What are you making?” He peered into the bucket.
“Potion.” Lady Sophia was missing a front tooth, and she smiled around it.
“Petals and rainwater,” Guin said, “to make the world pretty.”
“It must be working,” Bran said. “I’ve never seen two such beautiful ladies.”
Lady Sophia giggled. “It’s not even done yet! I have to stir it all together, but it’s an awful lot.” She narrowed her eyes. “You have terribly big arms. You should help.”
Bran laughed, handed Guin the packages (now she saw it was two) and rolled up his sleeves. “That I should.” Over the top of the little girl’s head, he winked at Guin, then chatted with Lady Sophia as Guin joined the other women.
“He’s good with children,” the baroness said.
He was. She’d not known that. In their years together, they’d never had cause to interact with children, but clearly he knew what he was doing.
He’d called Artemis over and was letting Sophia pet a sleek wing, and some of his true face showed beneath the glamour.
He never could hold it well when he wasn’t trying.
His eyes crinkled at the corner, and she wanted to trace the delicate grooves.
“Are you barren?” the dowager asked.
Guin’s hands fluttered to her belly. “I… no. I do not know. That is a rather forward question.”
“Then beneath the glamour the man’s a frog face?”
Guin laughed. “No. He’s better under there.” She put a palm to her cheeks. They were so very hot.
The other women turned to look at him. A raven on one shoulder, elbow deep in water, a little girl pasting a pink petal to each of his cheeks. They sighed.
Guin realized she had too.
Panic hit like a sledgehammer, and she dropped the packages he’d given her on the worktable. She steadied her racing heart with purposeful breaths. The curse was a chemical reaction, a problem she could solve. She was trying to believe it, but the fear was decades deep and held on with cruel claws.
“Your Grace!” The words tumbled out of her like gunshots.
Bran looked up.
“Is there a reason you came to visit me?” she asked.
He tapped Lady Sophia’s nose and stood, shaking the water off his arms as Artemis flew away. “The one package is from the Biiras. Your requests, I assume.”
She picked up the smaller package shaped like a box and unwrapped it. “It is, and so soon. It’s not even been a week.”
Bran slipped the other package off the table. “They must have found something useful for you in the warehouse.”
“What’s that?” she pointed to the package he held.
“From your friend the Marchioness of Fordham.”
“Diana? What could she send you?”
“A book. On curses.” He lifted a hand to the other women, who Guin only now remembered were present and likely eavesdropping. “Good day, ladies.” Then he left.
She wanted to follow him, to explore with him the problem they shared, a clue to which he might carry beneath his arm.
But her guests were in the middle of a lesson, and she couldn’t abandon them yet.
She was rather absent-minded the rest of the afternoon, though.
She’d not even been able to focus on Madame Poppy’s potions, which she was decomposing in order to discover their contents, a process easier to focus on in fits and starts as she tended to the others.
When they left a few hours later, she’d only uncovered two ingredients, so she applied herself more firmly.
She emptied another red bottle into a silver bowl and set it aflame. The colors came quickly—pink and purple and yellow and finally a deep, deep red like the color of their attackers’ eyes.
She wrote down her observations and flipped through one of her many recipe books.
They’d been one of the few things she’d been able to save from the fire.
They still smelled faintly of smoke. Her eyesight grew blurry, and she could barely make out the handwriting.
What ingredients burned pink? Which burned purple, which yellow?
And what combination of them ended in red?
She made a new page with columns for every color, then flipped back and forth between the pages of her books, adding ingredients to each column until Bentley brought her a plate of food, then continuing on until her eyes burned.
Enough. How late was it? The day had surrendered to night, and clouds covered the moon. She’d not heard the clock chime, but that meant nothing.
She hung up her apron and made for Bran’s study.
She found him in his bedchamber, sitting in a large wingback chair in front of a roaring fire, one large, shoeless foot propped on a tufted ottoman.
A book rested in his lap, and he looked up when she crossed the room to him.
He smiled, and when she reached him, she took up his book and replaced it with herself, sinking into his lap as his arms came around her.
She read the spine. “Debrett’s?”
He nodded. “I have been tracing the history of your family back to the countess who ‘cursed’ you.”
“Any discoveries?”
“Not yet.”
“You are so very diligent.”
He stroked the side of her face with his knuckles. “It is my purpose to protect you. And the curse is a threat. One I can’t see. One without a neck to cut, no pulse to stop.”
“The queen did not command you to protect me from a curse.”
“She didn’t know about it. I’m confident she would have had she known.” He dropped his hand to the side of the chair.
“I wish I had the recipe my ancestor used to stifle her husband’s glamour.” Guin chuckled. “I suppose I won’t find a family heirloom outlining the ingredient.”
He kissed her temple. Together, they listened to the crackle of the fire, the fall of the dying logs in the grate.
Then he said quietly near her ear. “Did you eat the food Bentley brought you?”
Of course Bran had been the one to order it. “I did.”
“Good. Are you ready for bed?” His hand had snaked around her waist, and he smoothed it up her ribs now to cup her breast. He swiped his thumb over and over across the curve of it, somehow immediately finding her nipple and caressing it into life.
He scattered hot kisses across her neck, and her thoughts scattered, too.
“Yes,” she breathed. She’d stayed with him every night since he’d carried her to bed.
This time, he carried her to his bed, set her on her feet just before it, and stripped her slowly, placing lingering kisses across every inch of skin he uncovered.
But never on her lips. She’d taught him well, and he’d not ventured that way since he’d learned the lesson that first morning.
She undressed him, too, glad to let her mind rest in Bran’s constant care, in his pleasure-seeking hands.
When they were fully naked, he stood her on the mattress so she was taller than him for once in her life, her hands resting on his shoulder, his hands lightly gripping her waist. For a flicker of a moment, the pose felt like adoration, an eternal configuration of man and woman that curled around her soul and softened it.
She swallowed through thick desire and shook her head. “I think I’ve figured out one of Madame Poppy’s potions.”
His eyes went blank, and his hands tightened on her waist. “Oh?”
“One of the ones I stole was an inebriation potion—immediate drunkenness, no unwelcome consequences the next day.”
“I know what an inebriation potion is, Guin.”
“Of course.” An awkward laugh. “The one I almost cracked tonight might be a sleeping draught of some sort. I’m not entirely sure.”
“No pain reducer?”
“There’s still three more bottles to investigate.”
“Are you done talking of potions?”
“Oh, I don’t kno—ack!” She clung to his shoulder as he lifted her off the bed then swooped her down to the mattress, resting his big body over hers. His shaft pressed against her hip, hard and throbbing.
“Now are you done?” he growled.
“Yes.”
And when he sank into her who knew how many minutes and climaxes later, she wasn’t even sure she remembered what potion meant.