“What about the outside ones?”Diana asked, training her mouth into a straight line.
Lady Tascott blinked, the gears in her head whirring.“I, well… you might be right.We should have those removed.”
“See what you’ve done now, Di,” Apollo said, finishing off his wine.“She’ll have every damn footman out there, plucking individual blades of grass.”
“If you think it would help us maintain the dignity of our station.”Lady Tascott could look like an owl—eyes wide, hair ruffled like feathers.
“No, no, aunt,” Diana said.“Please, no.I was teasing.”Apollo was right.His mother would pick each rogue flower herself until the dirt sullied her gloves, then she’d oversee the servants, pointing out each undesirable blade of grass that dared touch St.James.
St.James.A tomb.A specter looming in the distance.
“It is not only the flowers,” Lady Tascott wailed.“It’s you, Diana!”
“Me?”Diana looked down at her serviceable gray gown, dog hair scattered across her skirts.“What about me?”
“Your grandfather worked hard your entire life to keep you glamoured, and now look at you!”
It was still odd to see herself without the glamour.It had been one of the first of grandfather’s illusions to flicker out.And when she wasn’t alarmed by her changed appearance, she rather… liked it.Much better to know that people saw her as she really was.That way, when men looked at her as Lord Knightly had, she knew he looked that way because of her.Of course, if Apollo were casting the same glamour over her their grandfather had, no one would look at her at all.And, of course, Lord Knightly had only looked at her like that because of the potion.
“I think… one day… I might like the way I look,” Diana grumbled.When it stopped feeling odd, when it stopped feeling like someone else.Her glamour had always appeared so… small, helpless.But the woman she saw in the mirror now didn’t look meek at all.
“It’s unseemly,” Lady Tascott said.“You havehips.”
“Most mammals do, aunt.”
Apollo snorted, winced.“God, my head.”
“Do take this seriously, Apollo.”Lady Tascott looked ready to melt into the floor.“There’s already rumblings about Diana not having a glamour, about you not wearing the traditional glamour of your title.”
Every Marquess of Fordham since the second one glamoured himself to look like the first and never went into public without the glamour in place.
Apollo massaged both temples.“I’ve told everyone I’m much more handsome than the Fordham glamour.Everyone understands why I wouldn’t want to look like a short frog from another century.And I’m not about to marry a scarecrow, which is exactly what Diana’s old glamour made her out to be.Not only does everyone of my set understand, they think me rather dashing and dangerous.I’m a trendsetter.Besides, it’s all true.I have no desire to make myself less attractive with a centuries-old and out-of-date illusion.”
“But it’s tradition for the Marquess of Fordham to wear it!”
“Fuck tradition, Mother,” Apollo grumbled.
His mother gasped.
Diana closed her book.“Aunt… you do not think we should postpone the wedding?Or call it off entirely?”
Apollo looked up, eyes suddenly clear.
The older lady paused in the middle of slathering jam on a point of toast.“Why would we do that?It was your grandfather’s dying wish.And who knows, it’s possible we’ll be blessed once you wed.It ispossiblehe’s withholding his talent from beyond the grave.Until you comply.”
“It is only that things, with the family, are so very precarious right now,” Diana said.“If anyone discovers Apollo did not receive grandpapa’s?—”
“Shh!”Lady Tascott dropped her toast.“Shh!Do not even think those words.Do you wish to lose everything?The power of your cousin’s title?Our home?”
“N-no.”
“That is what will happen,” Lady Tascott hissed.“If the king discovers Apollo’s predicament, he will strip us of everything.Only the transcendent des?—”
“Deserve titles, I know.”Diana glanced at her cousin.
He’d gone pale, and he stood slowly, using the table to push upright.
“Pollo, dear, are you unwell?”his mother asked.
