And then he found her, and his eyes were blazing and his muscles bulging, and she knew if she did not stop him, he’d bring the entire building down.
To free her.
“Take me to him,” she demanded.“Now.”
The king flicked his hand toward the doors, and she ran, the guards trailing her down some stairs and a long hallway and toward the front door as it was thrown wide open.
Temple stood between them, a dark and dangerous silhouette against the blinding noonday sun.His shoulders heaving, his hair a wild dark cloud around a face taut with determination.He saw her and blinked twice, three times, muscles visibly relaxing.He stole her gaze and would not return it.Then the hand holding the hammer tightened, tendons flexing, veins blue and bulging across bloodless, knuckle-tight skin.
“Get behind me,” he commanded, his gaze flying over her shoulder.
The guards were armed and running.They rushed past her, and Temple surged forward, grasping her wrist and shoving her behind him toward the door.Another breath would end in collision, blood, pain.
“Stop!”she screamed.She ran around Temple, slipped in front of him and held out her hands at the approaching guards.“Stop!”
They did, hesitantly, not backing down but also not moving forward.
She could feel Temple’s heat at her back.Oh God, it had been so long.She’d missed him so terribly, and he was here.And he was wild with rage.He’d burn it all down.For her.
She wouldn’t let him.Whipping around, she pressed her palms into his heaving chest.Hard and hot with a heart beating like a hammer behind the muscle.“It’s alright, Temple.”She hugged him tightly.“I’m unharmed.”
Still, he stood his ground.
“You have to listen to me!I’m safe, and you are close to getting yourself thrown in the Tower.”He already may have.She had to stop him before he made it worse.“Please, Temple!”
“Get your husband under control, Lady Fordham, or I will.”The king appeared on the stairs, and around him, over a dozen well-armed guards.
“Take me home, Temple.”She tried to scold him, but it came out sounding rather breathy.
“Can I?”he asked.“No more guards?No more Tower?They’ll not come get you again?”He looked at the king as he spoke, though she could not quite tell who he was talking to.
Surrounded by his guards, the king descended the rest of the stairs and stopped right in front of them.“No more guards.No more Tower.Not unless you refuse to drop that weapon.”
Temple’s arm went limp, the hammer dropping with a heavy thud to the floor.As soon as his arm was free, he wrapped both of them around her, dropped his face to her neck.Inhaled, exhaled, his body shaking.
“What were you planning to do?”she breathed, nuzzling his neck.
“Get you back.”
Her throat closed.She squeezed her eyes closed to hold back the tears.“But your family?—”
“You’re my family, too, and it is incomplete without you.”
Never in her life had she loved someone like this, her heart too big for her chest, her arms eager to hold him, her soul sated with only the hint of a smile on his lips, the satisfied glow in his eyes.
“You understand”—the king wagged his finger at Temple—“that I will have to punish you.”
Diana stiffened, whirled in her husband’s arms to face her monarch.Fear a rush of ice through her veins.“What will you do?He didn’t hurt anyone!Did you?”She looked over her shoulder at Temple.
“No.”He would have, though.He’d meant to.Easy to hear that truth in his voice.
“Nevertheless.Some will consider this an attack on me, on the crown.”
“He only did it to save me.He?—”
The king held up a hand, silencing Diana.“I hereby rescind your title, Temple Grant.You are no longer Baron Knightly.You shall have to do with the one now.”He clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth.“To think, had you not come here hammer high, my Royal Alchemist would have possessed two titles.Shame.I should have liked that.”
“Two…?”Temple’s brows drew together, then they bounced high, as if he’d remembered something.“He called you Fordham, Diana?”
