Page 35 of The Duchess Curse

“Yes, well, Mother believes it best to keep conversation as vacant as possible. And very, very loud.” She raised her voice with each word, and her mother startled and snapped up a book to bury her face in.

Bran laughed. His future wife laughed. And he thought, maybe, there was one good thing about being a duke after all.

Three months later, after the bans were read and two formal calls were made each week, with her mother eavesdropping from the same chair and from behind the same book, they were married. A handful of hours after that, they’d consummated the marriage. After that, everything had fallen apart. She’d grown cold and distant and avoided him as often as she could. She refused to go into public with him, and the ton had begun to whisper that he’d married a ghost. He’d begun to feel like a ghost and had been almost relieved when she’d come to him demanding to be freed. He couldn’t divorce her, so he’d let her go in the only way he could.

New name.

New lodgings.

New purpose.

From duchess to potions mistress for her.

From duke to guardian for him.

It hadn’t felt like a disguise, though, for either one of them. It had felt like shedding unnecessary and ill-fitting layers.

A knock on the door.

“Who is it?”

“Bentley, Your Grace. You have visitors.”

Bran opened the curtains then checked his reflection. He was more Bran now, but the glamour swept back up his body as the light from the window reflected off the looking glass. The glamour was fully in place when he unlocked and opened the door.

Behind a dour-looking Bentley, Apollo grinned, and the Royal Alchemist, Temple Grant, Marquess of Fordham, scowled.

“What are you doing here?” Bran’s question more for the marquess than the one who’d killed him yesterday.

“That’s not a very warm welcome for your savior,” Apollo said. “Or for my cousin.” He swung an arm around the other man’s shoulder, earning a scowl. “What? Do you prefer brother?”

“I will tear your arm right out of its socket,” Grant warned.

Apollo did not seem to care. He kept his arm firmly in place around the other man’s shoulder.

“They refused to wait outside,” Bentley said.

“That’s fine. You may leave us.”

The butler strode off and Bran invited the other men into the room, shut the door again, locked it.

“What’s the marquess doing here?” Bran asked.

“I know he’s a bore, but he could be a help, too,” Apollo said. “He can see through glamours.”

“Fuck.” Bran looked to the Royal Alchemist, found his steely gaze riveted on Bran’s face.

Grant strode a slow circle around Bran. “What in the hell? You look like… But you can’t be…” He stopped right in front of Bran. “Take off the glamour.”

“I cannot.”

“He’s not lying,” Apollo said, flopping into the chair behind Bran’s desk.

“The resemblance is uncanny.” Grant leaned closer, almost nose to nose with Bran.

“No resemblance.” Apollo opened the top center drawer of the desk, poked around inside it. “That is Bran.”

“He’s dead.”