Epilogue
CONTROL OUR FUTURES, brEAK OUR CURSES
A week later, Guin met Diana and Sybil in front of Buckingham Palace.
“Are you ready?” Guin asked.
“Yes.” Diana straightened her bonnet.
“Absolutely.” Sybil smoothed her skirts.
“You three,” Guin said, looking over her shoulder, “are staying right here. Understood?”
“Can’t you change her mind?” Apollo asked. He stood on one side of Bran and punched Bran’s bicep, made a face, and shook out his fingers. “Holy Hades,” he hissed.
“They don’t need us,” Temple drawled from the other side of Bran, arms clasped behind his back so his jacket strained across his shoulders. “Not for this.”
Bran nodded, held Guin’s gaze until she felt that flutter low in her belly. She’d always felt it. Now she could embrace it.
“We’ll be here if you need us,” he said. He wore black head to toe, no glamour. The Duke of Braxton never hid his face. Or his love for her.
Guin turned back to the palace and took a steadying breath. “Very well, then.” She led first with her walking stick, the old raven shape a comfort to her, and Diana and Sybil kept pace beside her.
Through the palace to the back gardens, to the conservatory, they met the queen where she always was—sitting in the sunlight.
She cocked her head to one side when they appeared. “I am all curiosity to know why you have requested this meeting. Is it the potion?” That question for Guin. “Or the transmutation device?” That for Sybil. “Or have you learned something new from your studies?” That for Diana.
Guin stepped forward. “Unfortunately, I do not yet have a potion for you. But I have made clear strides toward finding one. I come here today, we come here, because we wish to speak with you in private.”
“Very well.” The queen lifted a hand, and footsteps echoed across the floor. The door of the conservatory opened then closed. She’d ordered her glamoured invisible guards gone. She gestured toward the round table where Guin had joined her previously. “Sit.”
They did.
And Guin told her about the curse, the lie, the generations of women manipulated into marriages because of it. Queen Victoria’s face blanched, and she gripped her hands tightly together.
When Guin was done, she said, “That is awful.”
“But it is not rare,” Diana said.
The queen lifted her chin, cleared her throat. “I, too, find myself at the middle of a marriage storm. They all know best who I must wed. And each suitor is a political choice, not just a matrimonial one. I wish… I wish it was all a lie I could disregard, too.”
Guin reached across the table, palm up, an offer. “We will support you, whomever you choose, as long as you are happy with the choice. As long as you support our causes, too.”
The queen lifted a brow. “And what causes are those?”
“A woman as Master Alchemist,” Sybil said.
“Women allowed into Oxbridge,” Diana added.
“Potion laws created equitably,” Guin suggested.
“Consider it.” Sybil leaned forward, her voice charged with energy. “We are, arguably, the four most powerful women in London. There are hundreds of men beyond that door who think themselves more powerful. Isn’t that tediously infuriating?”
The queen shook her head. “Politics is not about brute force. It is about, more often than I would like, manipulation, compromise. It is choosing who I allow to tug my puppet strings.”
“Why not pull them yourself?” Guin asked. “Let us control our own futures, so we can break our curses, and our children may live happier lives.”
Guin’s hand still remained palm up on the table between them, and the queen regarded it like a snake or a treasure she dared not believe in.
Then the queen’s little hand shot out and grasped Guin’s. She shook it with a strong grip and a cunning smile. “Very well, ladies. I look forward to our future… ventures together.”
They left the queen in the conservatory and found their husbands across the street. Apollo lounged against a tree, and Temple paced back and forth.
Bran stood tall as an oak, steady as one, too, and he saw her as soon as she saw him. She ran into his arms and hugged him tight.
“Well?” he asked, holding her at arm’s length.
“It’s the start of something.”
The others were walking down the street ahead of them, and Guin used the private moment to kiss him, a short, sweet thing that made her heart sing.
“Yes,” Bran said, kissing her knuckles and pulling her along to catch up with the others, “I think it is. You have my voice in parliament.”
“I know.”
“And you have my blades in the streets.”
“I know.”
“You just have me, Guin.” He pulled her tight against his side and said so low only she could hear, “I love you.”
“I know.” She buried her face in his chest and said so his very heart could hear, “I love you, too.”
Thank you for reading The Duchess Curse
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