“It’s not a love match,” Diana said, stepping into the foggy day, Madeline at her back.
“That’s why it’s a messenger.But mind it can only do the telling.Someonehas to listen.”Lady Guinevere chuckled as she locked the door with a golden key then stepped back to survey her shop.She scowled.“Tell your groom to stop ruining my sign.Never mind, I’ll tell him.”
“You won’t have to worry about him after this.”
“True.”Diana took off down the street, but Lady Guinevere stopped her, grabbing her wrist.“You do not have to worry about him, either,” she said, her voice as thick as the fog around them.“You can hide in other ways.”
Diana’s heart stopped.Hide in other ways.She couldn’t know.How would she?Diana had been careful, so very careful.But before she’d learned to control the magic, she could have… without knowing… How many times had she glamoured herself or the world around her and not even known it?
It was possible it had happened.Probable even.
“I-I…” Diana licked her lips, swallowed to wet her throat.“I do not wish to hide any longer.”The words slipped into the fog and into Diana’s skin.God, they were so very true.Her world had always been so narrow.Her grandfather’s house, his sickbed.Then her cousin’s arm and future had become hers, too.Then, even when she’d escaped that gilded prison, her freedom could be contained within the confines of Finsbury Square, within the walls of the potions shop.All of it bars to break her fluttering, frantic wings.
She wanted out.
She wanted soaring open skies and crisp green fields below and?—
Impossible.She’d have to spend the rest of her life hiding.Her new cage the guise of an innocent alchemist’s wife.Lady Knightly’s secrets were only those her husband allowed her to have.
“If you ever need us, we’re exactly where you left us,” Lady Guinevere said, folding Diana’s hands in her own.“Isn’t that right, Miss Maple?”
Madeline nodded her head, grinning.
Two smiling, open-hearted women could lift a broken bird’s wings.
“Thank you,” Diana said, rubbing her knuckles into her eye.“Thank you.”
“Don’t cry, Di.”Madeline stepped down the street with her chin high.“You don’t want to look a fright on your wedding day.
Especially if she could not glamour away the evidence of her distress.Temple took his vows seriously.He meant every word of it.Protect.
And Diana… well, she’d done the best she could.He deserved better.
The walk to the church proved too short, and each step sent another butterfly tumbling into Diana’s stomach.The old chapel was gray and squat between larger buildings, and it appeared out of the fog as if hidden by a glamour.Mrs.Grant, Sybil, and Helen appeared next wearing large grins and pretty gowns and soothing, a bit, Diana’s roiling nerves.
“There you are, there you are.”Mrs.Grant hugged her tightly.“Temple has been pacing for hours.”
“It’s not yet nine,” Diana said.“I’m early.”
“Not as early as your groom.”Mrs.Grant laughed then held out her hand.“Let me see the ring, then.”
“How… how do you know?”But Diana slipped off her glove, held her hand out.
“Saw Temple’s this morning.He keeps twisting it about his finger.”Mrs.Grant took Diana’s hand, pulled it close as her daughters peered over her shoulders.“What is that?Opal?He did a good job.But of course he did, being Temple.”
Sybil wrinkled her nose.“It’s too him, blunt and to the point.”
“No, no.”Mrs.Grant pointed.“See the shimmer?He put thought into it.I think it’s lovely.”She sighed.
“I don’t get it,” Madeline whispered to Lady Guinevere.“It’s a ring.He made it, though?”
Mrs.Grant released Diana’s hand, her gaze narrowing on the two other woman.“Mm.Merely a ring.”There was the alchemist secrecy.
There might be no sin in keeping a secret from a groom like Temple.If anyone would understand, it would be him.
Diana held her hand out for her friends to see, though it felt a little like showing a forbidden bit of her, something no one should see but her husband, hidden behind skirts and petticoats.
Madeline reached out to touch it.
