Page 105 of The Duchess Curse

“Finsbury Square.”

“The duke know you’re going?”

“No.”

They walked east, and the cold, bracing air coupled with moving limbs helped clear her head. At Finsbury, she used the key to open the door but paused before entering. “Please wait outside, Ned.”

“No one to watch both entrances. It’s better if I’m by you.”

“Please.”

He grumbled but he let her have her way, and she locked the door behind her once she was inside and sat in the very middle of the shop.

Alone.

As she had been since becoming Handsford’s child bride in his secluded castle, as she would be every day until she died, unless she could find a way to fix it. She’d fixed the danger before, distancing herself from a man she could love, opening her shop, finding a tolerable rhythm in a new life.

This was her shop. She belonged to it as much as it belonged to her. Yet…

She closed her eyes, tried to remember the gentle hum of customers, the lyrical jangle of the shopgirls’ chatelaines.

Instead, she heard it as music beyond her office door she could never dance to. She felt the hum of conversation as something she could never join. She’d been so alone. Even her shadow-shaped guard had kept his distance, giving her what she wanted.

What did she want?

To live without the fear of killing the man she loved.

To be free from the fear that had carved such emptiness into her.

When she closed her eyes and imagined her future, she saw the dowager stooped over a bowl of apple seeds, crushing them to a fine dust. She saw Lady Sophia’s little pink tongue poking out from the side of her mouth as she stirred the rose petals in rainwater. She saw Lady Anna with pink cheeks because her lover had just left her bed. She knew the sounds of them learning to save themselves, taking the power of potions into their minds and fingers so they could take power over their own bodies. She saw Mrs. Biira coming for tea and trading secrets.

She also saw Bran. Half gold, half green, smiling yet sharp, gentle and strong. The only man who could make her feel so strongly about him, she hated him.

And she didn’t hate him.

He wanted a life with her, was willing to kill half of himself to make it happen. He didn’t believe in the curse that would kill the rest of him eventually.

Unless she stopped it.

Fear was such a habit, it was hard to clutch at hope, hard to see the world in a new way and take that first step into it. She wanted to, oh she wanted to, but she was so damn scared.

What if there wasn’t time to stop whatever it was that forced her family to turn their hearts to stone? What if she worked day and night to produce a potion that cleared her blood of that long-corrupted glamour light, and Bran died before she succeeded?

She could survive nearly anything.

Except for his death.

She opened her eyes. And saw she was not alone.

Madame Poppy sat on top of the railing on the balcony above her, legs swinging beneath her skirts. “I see you plan to revive the old business.”

“How did you get in here?” Guin stood slowly, the better to show she was neither shocked nor worried by the woman’s presence.

Madame Poppy swung her legs to the other side and hopped off the railing. “Locks are such silly things, don’t you think? A little potion can melt them right away.”

“Melting other peoples’ locks… quite rude.” And also talented. Guin had developed a potion that stripped metals of their setting layer, allowing alchemists to reshape any metal they pleased. She’d only allowed its use once during an emergency. She’d never heard of anyone developing a similar concoction.

Madame Poppy shrugged as she descended the stairs into the main room of the shop. She whistled. “I only saw your shop once before. Before the fire. You’ve done a fine job getting it back together. But then, your husband is a duke. Lifts a finger, gets what he wants. It’s much harder for the rest of us.” Her eyes hardened, and she became a strange sight—a floating, dainty fairy queen with the cold eyes of a warrior.