“Are the undeserving ever well?”His voice was hard as stone.He marched around the table and toward the doors.
“Do come back!”His mother wrung her hands.“We have a fitting for Diana’s wedding gown today.You promised to accompany us.”
He threw a hand in the air as he exited, his voice trailing.“I’ll meet you there.”
“Perhaps you wish I’ll be run over in traffic before then,” Diana spoke softly into her plate.
But Apollo heard her.He hovered in the doorway, his chin touching his shoulder almost as he looked back at her.“That would be convenient, wouldn’t it?”He left silence in his wake.It was the heavy kind you couldn’t breathe in.
But Lady Tascott managed to break it.“You are not to walk into traffic!Do you understand?”
“I’m not planning on it, but Apollo seems to have plans to push me.”
“What utter rot!He’s the perfect gentleman.He’s simply not pleased to be without his birthright.You have no idea how difficult it is for a young heir to be talentless.You could never understand the pressure.We are living with a guillotine blade above our heads.”
“Apollo’s excuse is believable,” Diana said.“He is prettier than the glamour, and he would never consent to marry me as I looked before.”
“It does not matter.Someone will find out soon enough.”Fear had etched itself into the lines of her aunt’s face.
Diana felt her own fear must be etched into her bones.It ran a rhythm through her veins.Beneath her chair, Merlin whined.Her aunt had the right of it.Someone was bound to notice, sooner or later, that the Marquess of Fordham had no transcendent talent.When the old marquess had died, his magic had not found a new home within his grandson, the new marquess.Apollo had inherited everything but what mattered most—magic.
And that seemed to be driving Apollo mad.The opium, the mistresses, the threats against Diana’s life.Apollo might try to actually kill her to keep from marrying her.Surely not.She wanted to believe he would not.Needed to believe it.
Diana reached for her pile of books a little ways down the table and took one from the middle.The Flow of Magic and the Male Line.She’d memorized every word of it since her grandfather’s death, but still she had no answers.It was possible the magic had skipped Apollo because it should have moved from their grandfather to Apollo’s father before coming to him.Or because her own father had been older than Apollo’s.But the transfer of magic from a man to his grandson had always succeeded in the past.
Diana shut the book and reopened the one in her lap.The Rise and Fall of Greek Sorceresses.A folded bit of newspaper she’d used to mark her spot fell out, and she unfolded it.The date revealed it was two months old, but the subject of the article that took up most of the pages had yet to be resolved.King William IV had heirs, none of them his own children, and the most direct heir—a woman.A young girl, the Princess Victoria.Gossip said the king liked her but planned to make her cousin his heir.Hermalecousin.Few women had held the crown in England, and it had been almost three hundred years since a queen had possessed transcendent talent, too.Queen Elizabeth.Talent had died out entirely in women soon after her reign.
Diana studied the sketch of Princess Victoria in the paper.Her profile facing the profile of her male cousin beneath the very handsome sketch of King William.
How did the princess feel about her uncle’s indecision?Was she irate or secretly relieved?
In the princess’s position, Diana would feel… ha, as she did now.Like running away.
At least the potion worked.
“Is something amiss, Diana?”Lady Tascott asked, much too sweetly.
“No, aunt.”
“Then do not groan.”
Had she groaned?Marvelous.“Apologies.”
“Though I do not blame you.What with the state of the world these days.Magic dropping out of the bloodlines of the best houses, titles stripped, upstarts profiting off potions in broad daylight!Intolerable.”She sniffed.“Why, they’ve even let a”—she lowered her voice—“commonalchemistinto the ballrooms.The king gave him atitle.Can you believe it?Having a Royal Alchemist is one thing, but giving him a title?Hmph.And after his father went entirelymad.”She shook her head, sighed.“It is a true shame.Perhaps King William feels some kinship with the alchemist.Mad fathers and all.”
“I met him last night.”Not meant to sound so dreamy.She cleared her throat.“The new Baron Knightly, the alchemist.Not his father.”
“No!”Another point of toast fell to the tablecloth.“Was he crude?Was he an absolute bore?”
“He was quite civilized.”If stubborn.“He deserves the title, you know.The summoning stone he invented is revolutionary.”
“Hardly, I’m sure.Did he threaten you?Oh!”Her hand fluttered at her breast.“Thank God Apollo was with you to keep you safe.My son is nothing if not a true chivalric hero.”She sighed then chomped into her toast.
Diana had seen Apollo only once last night.From behind a curtain with a certain alchemist so very, very close.He’d been so hot, and so hard.The lightest brush of his fingers against her skin had seemed more a sin than Apollo thrusting into his mistress in a mostly public room at a ball.She’d felt the alchemist’s muscle, been singed by his heat.He’d left her weak-kneed and breathless.Places in her body she never thought much about had been… glowing.She’d barely kept her control.
Miss Maple should have told her the potion would affect her, too.She must have gotten some on her skin, ingested some, when he’d spilt it.Well,she’dspilt it, technically, knocking him over.Falling on him had been like falling onto marble.He was that hard, that big.She’d heard all alchemists were.That they honed their own bodies as they honed their metals.That their natural temperatures were hotter.She’d never believed it.
Until last night.She’d almost been tempted to accept his proposal.He’d offered a way out of her marriage to Apollo.Yet… to marry a man who’d only asked because of a potion?She could not take advantage of anyone like that.He would have regretted it come morning.
