4
NICKLEBY HOUSE
Never,neveragain would Temple ignore a woman telling him to put down the whisky.Love potions apparently came with a horrible hangover.And the usual boisterousness of his childhood home was close to cracking open his tender skull.
His youngest brother screeched.His mother clucked.His eldest sister cackled, and beside him, their twelve-year old alchemical apprentice made little huffs of frustration that hit like hammers against Temple’s brain.Clinking silverware and china, sun bright through the open windows, birds chirping in the garden beyond.Idyllic and lovely and absolute torture at the moment.
He should have stayed at his terrace in Bloomsbury Square last night, but Nickleby House in Hampstead had been closer, and he’d been aching for a bed to climb into after losing sight of the mischievous mouse.He’d been aching to take his love-drugged cock in his eager hand.
“Sybil,” Temple’s mother screeched, “you’re going to squeeze Jax in two if you do not hold him correctly.”She snatched her youngest son from her eldest daughter’s precarious embrace.Sybil had him by the waist, upside down, and Jax had been chortling with glee, though a touch red in the face.He reached for his sister—who at four and twenty was often mistaken for his mother—as his actual mother settled him on her lap at the crowded, chaotic table where everyone broke their fast.
All three looked much alike, with yellow hair, blue eyes, and round, sunny cheeks.Only there were lines around their mother’s eyes and mouth, and deep strands of white in her hair.She was only two years shy of fifty, and she wore youth in her laughing eyes and strength in every movement.Ajax had been something of a surprise to the family two years ago.A welcome one.
Sybil grinned at her baby brother as she settled into an old, faded armchair in the corner of the room, pulled her legs up under her skirts, and returned her attention to her notebook.She was sketching something.Temple would want to see it later.After his head stopped pounding.Sybil’s sketches were always worth a look.Sometimes too fanciful to be carried out but other times the stuff of dreams for an alchemist.For now, he’d rest his head on the back of his chair and close his eyes.
A sharp elbow in his ribs made him yelp.Tim blinked up at him with wide eyes, clutching glowing copper wires the same color as his hair.The apprentice was bright and hardworking but not nearly enough help for Temple’s father in the forge.Twelve years old and an orphan, he was too long for his clothes.Just beginning his training, too.His father used to train a dozen alchemists of all levels and ages and abilities.Now he had one apprentice—a slip of a boy whose eyes were bigger than his muscles.
“Watch this, Temple,” Tim asked.The corner of the boy’s tongue poked out from between his lips, and his eyes almost crossed with the effort of his concentration.But as he opened his hand, the glowing wire twisted in his flat palm, the ends coiling together, fusing to make a slender copper rod.
“Well done.”Temple managed a weak smile and patted the boy’s shoulder.
Must have been convincing.The boy beamed.
Temple reached for his coffee.Cold now.Not a lick of steam wafting out of it.He groaned.
“Here.”His sister, Helen, swept by, refilled his cup with a steaming pot.“You need it.”She pushed a lock of dark hair behind her ear.Like Temple, she shared their father’s darker coloring, but her eyes were identical to their mothers, down to the laughter bubbling there.“You look like Ajax’s dolly after it’s been dragged through the mud and chewed up by the dog.”
He felt that way, too.Dragged and chewed.He scrubbed his hands down his face.
“Did you have any luck last night?”his mother asked, stuffing Jax’s mouth full to bursting with eggs.The boy could feed himself, but he simply wouldn’t unless forced, too busy bouncing off the walls.“Finding a bride?”
Temple laughed.Loudly.And for much too long.When he stopped, his sisters and mother shared worried glances that clearly said,He’s gone mad.
He had gone mad.He’d proposed to a woman without a name, dreamed of kissing her, and now… now his chest felt hollowed out.He rubbed it.Something worse than a hangover had taken root, something deeper once he dug past the humiliation.
He’dproposedto her.Good God, what a fool.Nothing could scrub away the embarrassment.
“It was a long evening,” he said simply, burning his mouth with a sip of coffee.
“I should like to attend balls.”Helen danced across the room in the arms of an invisible partner.“I will find a man to love me much more quickly than you, Temple.”Sixteen-year-olds thought everything easy.
“I bet you never find a husband.”Helen’s twin, Helios, leaned on the doorframe, ankles crossed, yawning and pushing a hand through his rumpled dark hair.“Not a man thickheaded enough to take you.And not a woman silly enough to consider Tempy.”
“Hell!”their mother bellowed.
The twins froze, shared a confused glance.
“Did she mean you?”Helen asked.
“Or you?”Helios said.
“Or the metaphysical plane?”they said together.
“The both of you!”Their mother wagged her finger in their direction.“Temple is taking time with this decision.It is an important one.And neither of you should make light of it.Or of each other.”
“He shouldn’t have to make it!”Temple’s father came into the room the same way he did everything else—loudly.The paintings shook on the walls with each footstep, and the china rattled in the cabinets.Their mother held the teapot lid to keep it from jumping ship.
Jax reached for their father.“Papa!”
