27. The Shadows of It, and the Light
THE SHADOWS OF IT, AND THE LIGHT
They stayed in one small room atop a set of rickety stairs overlooking a coaching yard for three more days.
The Duke and Duchess of Braxton mainly took meals in that room but ventured out once every day to walk in the snow or sit by the fire in the dining room, and when the manager of the inn tried to give them a set of rooms befitting their station, they declined the offer.
And they kept each other warm with words and bodies in that one small bed in the middle of four close walls.
They rode to Bath on muddy though passable roads with the sun shining, an early promise of spring.
When they were close to their destination, Guin’s hands began to fidget. She was nervous, and Bran decided to distract her. They were sitting across from one another in a private rented carriage, and he stretched his legs all the way out, propping them next to her skirts, crossed at his ankles.
“Did you really give that woman your shop?” he asked
She was looking out the window, but she turned to him, eyes cloudy. “What? Oh, my shop. Yes, I did.” A small, sad smile.
“Why?”
“It didn’t feel like mine anymore. It is all the same, exactly as it was before, but I… I was different. She needs it more than I do.”
“We know nothing about her.”
“I know she’s lonely and clever and worryingly talented.
She could get herself in trouble with that kind of talent.
And she’s desperate, which causes trouble, too.
I figure if she has an entire shop to run, she can’t spend so much time trying to have people killed.
And if I’m going to produce a potion for the queen, I don’t have time to run a shop.
Bran… I think I might need to travel. I do not have everything—knowledge, ingredients—to do what the queen wishes, but I think it can be done.
Eventually. And the answer to the queen’s potion and the tainted talent in my blood may be the same thing. ”
“Hm.” He tapped his toes against her thigh. “Sometimes a new perspective is necessary. We’ll travel, then.”
“But Bran…” Her voice was smaller now, and he moved across the coach to sit next to her, wanting to cradle whatever hurt was rising to her surface and kiss it away. “I don’t know if I want to travel. I think… Well, have you ever considered… children?”
His heart stopped, and when it started up again, it beat a frenzy of happiness through him. “Not until recently. Have you?”
“Not until recently.” She pressed a palm against her chest as if by force of will alone she could reach through skin and muscle and bone to catch up her heart. “I’m terrified. If there is a curse in my blood, I will not pass it to child.”
“There’s not. I know Diana told you what she discovered. It seems to me evidence that something is deeply odd in your family, and I don’t think it has anything to do with magic.”
“What Diana showed me is why I made for Bath to begin with. If there is any evidence of… something, it’s at the family seat.” After a moment, she added, “I still think the simplest answer is we’re cursed.”
He kissed the back of her hand. “If there’s a curse, we’ll find a cure for it.”
She made a little pleased sound in her throat, and he was almost asleep when she whispered, “An heir to the Duke of Braxton. You would trap yourself more deeply in the transcendent web of inheritance. And there might be a second son…”
Their conversation was structured by the depth and breadth of each hesitation—hers and his and, it seemed, the sometimes-bated breath of the world itself.
“Do you think it will be fine?” he asked. “Do you think the children will be… happy?”
She lifted her face to the ceiling with closed eyes, every line serious and straight, her eyelids fluttering as she thought. Then she melted, the lines lushening, curving soft and sweet. “I will do everything I can to ensure they are.”
Running through the conservatory, stirring petals in rainwater, playing hide-and-seek in the shadows, and learning glamours in the early morning light. Magic would not be inherited. It would a learned pleasure and privilege, a duty, too, to use the right way.
“I will, too,” he said, kissing the top of her head.
“So… it will be fine?”
“We’ll make sure it is.”
She stiffened and looked out the window. The Cairnsbury estate right outside Bath waited at the end of that long drive. “I don’t feel fine right now. Could we return to London and face a hired assassin?”
“I wish, lass. But I’m afraid we have to face your parents.”
“Of course.” She sat up straighter, and by the time the carriage stopped, she was fully in possession of the sort of steel spine she fought attackers with and that he so adored.
The old house was long and sprawling and well-kept though cold. Each brick perfectly placed and clean, even though it daily contended against weather, and each window sparkling. But empty.
Her parents were surprised to see them, standing in the open doorway, the butler shuffling off behind them.
“Who’s that?” Lord Cairnsbury demanded, pointing at Bran.
“I’m Braxton,” Bran said. “No glamour.”
“Why the hell not?” Cairnsbury studied Bran with something close to disgust twisting up his features. “A brute like you should always wear the glamour.”
Bran shrugged. “This is who I am, so this is who the duke is.”
Guin hooked her arm through his, and he could almost feel her small smile in his very soul. Fuck. Doing the difficult thing felt good when it made his wife proud.
Lady Cairnsbury gave them a warmer welcome, prepared them rooms, gave them time to freshen up, and it wasn’t until dinner that they could all talk. They sat at a formal dining table much longer than necessary for four people, and a meal had been prepared that was lavish enough for the queen.
“What is it that brings you here?” her mother asked, voice pitched high enough to cross the long table.
“I have questions about the curse,” Guin said. A blunt blow, a direct hit. A courageous woman facing what she’d always feared.
Lady Cairnsbury’s silverware clashed against her plate.
Lord Cairnsbury cursed.
“W-we prefer not to talk about it,” Lady Cairnsbury said. Her face had drained entirely of color.
“Why would we?” Cairnsbury asked, rage lifting his voice. “There’s nothing we can do about it. You are our only child, and we’ve done right by you. You married well twice! Neither man you’re likely to fall in love with.”
Guin’s arm froze, halfway to bringing a goblet of wine to her lips. “Why wouldn’t I love Bran… Braxton?”
“Because he’s a backup for a backup.” Her father waved a fork in Bran’s direction. “He’s so far down the ducal tree, he’s basically common. Why would my daughter love a man like that?”
Well, that was lowering.
After a moment, Guin laughed loud and long. When she was done, she wiped a tear from her eyes and looked at Bran. “I think my father lacks imagination.”
Her mother had gone pale. “It’s not funny! If you are in love, you’ll die soon!”
“We did not mean to upset you, my lady,” Bran said. He needed to lower the temperature of the room. He pulled the shadows close, and the fire in the nearby grate died a little. “You must understand why Guin would want to know more about the curse. Her entire life has been dictated by it.”
Guin calmly folded her serviette and placed it next to her plate. “Are there any family heirlooms or documents that might give us some clue as to the curse’s nature?”
“The witch’s belongings were burned,” Cairnsbury said.
“But you’re welcome to rifle through the attic.
I’m afraid you’ll find nothing but dust and decaying furniture.
Even the paintings of my great, great grandmother were burned.
Though if you ask me, she was this family’s savior.
” He took a long swallow of wine and slammed his glass on the table as he stood.
“Excuse me if I do not join you for after-supper drinks. I find myself rather bored by the conversation.”
His wife watched him walk away, lips curled into a disgusted sneer. “Do forgive him. He’s never possessed good manners. I have a megrim. My apologies. Good evening.” Then she left too.
No love was lost between Guin’s parents. Another arranged marriage that benefited the family’s connections more than the people bartered away in exchange for it. Perhaps the curse had saved the family, but it had broken those belonging to it.
“I assume,” he said, “you want to explore the attic now?”
She nodded. “I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep otherwise.”
He grabbed a bottle of wine on their way out the door and followed Guin all the way to the top of the house.
The attic was dusty and disorganized. It looked like the place where unwanted things went to die.
He and Guin brought glamoured fairy orbs to light at the same time and set them bobbing in the air.
“Where should we start?” he asked.
“I’ve no idea. The trunks are the most likely places?”
He began to haul every trunk littered about the place closer to her. After that, he gathered books from cobwebbed shelves and piled them up neatly where Guin sat in a circle of bright peacock-colored skirts.
The first trunk was filled with a child’s clothing, old bonnets and gowns and shifts. Guin remembered them all. They’d been hers. And something about these pieces of her locked away made Bran want to roar.
The next trunk was legal documents pertaining to people who’d died long ago. And the one after that seemed to be a trousseau that had never been used in a fashion out of style at least fifty years ago.
Bran drank the wine, passing it off to Guin, as they rummaged through every trunk.
Surprisingly, it didn’t take them terribly long to find something interesting—several journals belonging to her great, great grandfather. The man was an avid recorder of his life.
And most of it was tedious. They flipped through each bound volume, searching for the word curse in his slanted, narrow script until the wine was gone and the words began to melt together.
“I think we need to sleep,” Bran said. He stood and held a hand out, and she took it, gathering up every book she could hold.
Bran picked up the rest of the books and helped her carry them to their room.
They made love slowly until their limbs were slick with sweat, then fell asleep quickly. They fit together like a bit of alchemical silver—sharing heat and shaping themselves into something new.
When the sun woke Bran once more, he was alone in bed.
“Not again,” he grumbled, sitting up and rubbing his eyes.
“Oh, you’re up. Good morning.” Guin sat in a puddle of dawn light, surrounded by a circle of books. One was open in front of her, and she looked almost terrified.
He jumped out of bed and wrapped himself around her, cradled her in his cross-legged lap. She wasn’t gone. He inhaled the scent of her, held it tight in his lungs. She’d stayed with him.
“I found it,” she whispered. She pointed at the open book.
“How long have you been awake?”
“I don’t know. But I”—she yawned, and it quaked her body—“found it.”
He picked the book up with one hand and read as she collapsed against his chest, an armful of sunfire curls and muscles and curves.
Negotiations with The Earl of Hemlock are going smoothly.
Cassandra cries herself to sleep most nights, her mother says, but she has offered no actual resistance to the match.
She fears the curse. Stupid girl, to believe in fairy tales, but her stupidity is my gain.
The more she believes she’ll be killed for marrying young, penniless Baron Archibald—or believing he will be—the more she adheres to my edicts.
She’ll sacrifice herself to save her love.
My mother truly did me a good service when she poisoned father.
Telling Cass the poison remains in our blood keeps fear in her heart.
Fear is a powerful tool of manipulation.
I think we’ll have a house party in the spring to celebrate her nuptials…
“Fucking Jupiter.”
She was crying in his arms, little tears that ripped him apart.
When she finally quieted, she wiped her nose on her sleeve and said with a small, bitter laugh, “The answer, the solution has been in this attic my entire life. I have believed a lie for so long, even when it made no sense. I never even went searching for the truth. I must be just as he said, a stupid girl.”
“No. No, no, Guin. Never. He was right. Fear is a powerful means of control. And they sent you away when you were old enough to begin asking questions.” Old enough to climb a set of stairs and read a trunk of documents.
She huddled deeper against his chest. “All the loneliness and loss—so much of my life wasted to it.”
“No more.”
She looked at him, every feature in her face firm and resolute. “No more.”
She pushed out Bran’s embrace, but he felt closer to her than before. She laughed and seemed surprised by the airy sound of it. A real smile stretched across her lips. She hid it behind a hand, embarrassed almost, by it.
“Well,” she said. “I guess I was wrong. There is no such thing as a curse.” Another chaotic bubble of a laugh that lifted his heart higher. “But there is a lie, Bran.”
“There is. One that stretches across too many years. I know how you feel about lies.” He lifted an eyebrow.
She laughed.
“Do you want to leave?” he asked.
She nodded, stood, held out her hand. “Let’s go home. I have much work to do.”
So did he, as her guardian, as her husband, as the man who loved her with all his heart, the shadows of it, and the light.