Understand her husband better.The book was a key to a locked door, and she hugged it tight.“Thank you.You’ll have to return it.”
“Nico will do it for me.”
She was about to step on thin ice.But she could not stop herself.“Why is the king’s alchemist banned from the Guild Library?”
Temple relaxed into the squabs, but his voice sounded like cracking ice, breaking, cavernous, echoing across a cold gray sky.“Because he is a traitor.”
“No.No-no, that’s not right.”Too many reactions bubbled up inside her.Disbelief, anger, sorrow.
“Do you know that train engines explode from time to time?”he asked, as if inquiring about the weather.
“I have read reports of it.Always a tragedy.”
“My father and I were working on a project that would eliminate explosions entirely.We developed a new alloy that absorbs excess heat and energy and diffuses it slowly, safely.”
“I think I read something about that in the papers.”Not much.A small article only remarking on the increased safety of travel by train.
He nodded.“It’s remarkable you saw that.The papers preferred to slander my father instead, to call me a social climber.Rotting idiots.”He mumbled the insult then cleared his throat.“The prototype had been extensively studied in our forge, in others, but it had not been approved for dissemination by the Master Alchemist.All alchemist inventions must be approved for release by him.I discovered Mr.Stone—the current Master—had been purposefully refusing release of the heat diffusor.Apparently, the Earl of Shoffly was paying Stone a significant amount of money to kill it.He’d recently invested in a railway and did not want its opening delayed.”
“He was going to run it at the risk of an explosion?”
Temple nodded.“He did not believe my father’s claims that the old engines would explode, argued that my father and I were trying dupe him and all the other investors out of their money by inventing a problem so we could demand a hefty price for solving it.When not an alchemist or a transcendent investor would listen to us, I went to the king.It was the only way to get the others to listen to us.And it worked.But the Guild called us traitors for not following the rules, and the transcendents spun stories about my father being raving mad for yelling about explosions.”
“The king listened to you, though.”
“Yes.He forced the alchemists to approve our invention, and he forced the transcendent investors to use it.It cost everyone a great deal of money but for me.I earned a new title and a new position.Baron Knightly, Royal Alchemist.The King’s Lapdog.My family lost most, though.Barred from the Guild and all its benefits, including the library.My mother lost friends.My sisters lost suitors.My brother Hesperus is apprenticing in Germany because no British alchemist will have him.No apprentice will work for the Grants either.Tim is an orphan with no other options, and we are grateful to have him, to give him a home, but he’s not enough help for my father.My father is strong still, but… it’s not enough.We used to have five apprentices of various ages and abilities.Now we have a small boy, just learning.”
Temple spoke every word with the still calm of a lake on a windless summer day.She guessed the placid surface hid troubled waters deep below.All this, and he’d taken her on, a woman who could give him nothing but more trouble.
She leaned into his shoulder and hugged his arm.“We won’t give the book back.”
“Diana.”
“They don’t deserve it.”
“You wicked minx.”
She looked up at him.Could he see everything she felt for him in her eyes?It must all be laid bare there—the beating of her heart, the aching of her soul, the need of her body.All for him.
When he dipped to kiss her, she tried to tell him without words that she was grateful for all he had given her and sorry that she had nothing to give him in return.
