He uncorked the bottle and poured it into a waiting crystal cup, sniffed it.Whisky.Good stuff, too.Wasn’t his.Didn’t care.He grinned as he lifted it to his lips.
“Stop!”A woman appeared from the shadows, the curtains behind her rustling, swinging away from center then back toward it as she hurtled toward him, arms outstretched.“Do not drink it!”
He lowered the glass enough to say, “Why in hell not?”
“It does not belong to you.”Fisted hands, tiny, at the end of gloved arms, bent.She rested those fists on slightly rounded hips.Her fashionable clothes, her refined voice—she was one of the transcendent ton.No wonder she was so uppity.She wore a glamour, a hazy, weak concoction that produced the image of a pale and forgettable young girl with thin, pinched lips and bony shoulders.He could not see clearly what kind of woman lay beneath the illusion.He viewed the real her through the glamour as he might view a fish beneath the water—the image cloudy and rippling.
“Put it down,” she said, that voice much stronger than the faux visage someone—a father or brother, uncle or grandfather—was trying to project with a glamour.“It’s not for you!”
“But it’s here,” Temple said, “and I’m here, and whoever it belongs to is not here.”He lifted the cup, the glass cool and barely touching his bottom lip.
“Please put it down.”She was wringing her hands now, the ends of her gloves sagging below her elbows with the force of her worry.
He raised the glass, then he lifted it to his lips, opened his mouth.
A damn cannonball crashed into him, screaming, “No!”so loudly the entire ballroom likely heard.
Not a wailing cannonball.Too many arms and legs and yards of skirt for that.
Aher.
His whisky flew up and out of the glass as he teetered backward and slammed into the ground.She fell with him and the whisky, every bit of her tangling up in every bit of him.
“Fuck.”He wiped the liquid out of his eyes, licked his fingers, licked his lips where he’d been splashed.He’d been right.It was the good stuff.“What a waste.”
She mumbled something into his neck, her arms and legs thrashing against him and, her breast pressing against his chest.Well, hello.What he felt was therealwoman.Glamours could not change how things felt, only how they looked.And the woman on top of him didn’t feel bony at all.None of her bony.Those breasts… small but nice.It had been a while, hadn’t it, since he’d held a woman this close.He’d forgotten how soft and lovely women were.
When they weren’t too damn close to kneeing him in the balls.
He rolled her off him and helped her up.
When she had her footing, she gaped at him, then her hands raced up to cover her open mouth.She dropped them only enough for him to see the outline of her lips behind her fingertips.
The real woman stood before him, glamour gone entirely.Brown hair, big luminous eyes, skin pale and smooth with cherries high in her cheeks.She was as tall as his chin and—he allowed himself the swiftest glance downward—yes, with a lovely bosom.There was also, if one squinted, the fullness of her lips to catch a man’s attention.Nothing to write sonnets about.Not that he was the rhyming type.
But a definite improvement over the glamour.Almost a beauty in comparison.Odd, though.Transcendents always glamoured themselves and their families to appear blindingly beautiful.
Someone had hidden her away.
“Your glamour’s gone,” he said.
Her eyes widened, her mouth parted.The little mouse was startled.“I-it is?”Was she trembling?She looked at her hands as if they did not belong to her.“My grandfather recently died.You know how it is… a man’s glamours can continue on for some months after his death.His have… they’ve only just started flickering in and out.”She studied her feet as she spoke, the walls, the windows, the ceiling, looking every which way but at him.
Because he was an alchemist and not worth looking at?“You look better without it.”
Oh, now she looked at him, pleading, begging.No.She did not beg.The expression in her eyes could not be bent so easily.He worked with iron, knew strength when he saw it.She was not begging him.She was demanding.Frantic and desperate, yes, but a demand nonetheless.
“Did you ingest any?”A drop of something dripped down her temple.“Did you?”
“Not enough to matter.It’s all on the rug.And in my hair, and?—”
“I wonder if it can soak in through skin?”She was pacing now.
“It’s likely on you, too.”Yes, there—a dark stain dripping down the low neckline of her white gown.Apparently, her shoulders were noteworthy, too, pale and straight.Likely having her body imprinted up on his during the fall had made him more aware of her.
“How much is not enough?”she demanded.
“A few miniscule drops.Shouldn’t you be apologizing for knocking me over and spilling good whisky all over me?”
