Page 36 of The Duchess Curse

Laughing, Apollo said, “He was yesterday, but not before then.” He opened another drawer.

“Get away from there.” Bran hefted him from the seat and tossed him toward a small sofa across the room.

Apollo stretched out across it and folded his hands behind his head, kicked his feet up on the opposite arm. “I received your letter. It’s working. The glamour is fading?”

“Yes, but I can’t control it.”

“That’s no good. Before you couldn’t control it, or rather, it controlled you, but you could keep your secret and now⁠—”

“I’m fucked.”

“You said it, not me.”

“What is going on here?” Grant demanded.

“I wouldn’t have brought him,” Apollo said, “but he was at the shop when your note arrived, and he’s terribly nosy. Do you want me to kill you again?”

“Kill?” Grant barked.

“No.” Bran definitely did not want to die again. Then, turning to the marquess, he said, “How can you see through glamours?”

Grant shrugged. “I was born this way. How is Bran a duke?”

“I wasn’t damn well born this way.” But then, he had been born into a line of succession, no matter how far down it.

“That does not answer my question,” Grant said.

“It’s a long story, and I do not feel like telling it.”

“Does Lady Guinevere know?”

“She will soon,” Apollo said. “Oh! Look! There it goes. No doubt she’ll know soon enough.”

Bran turned to the mirror. Half his face glamoured, the other half him. Damn.

“You know,” Apollo drawled, “perhaps this is a sign. You should just tell her.”

“That I’ve been lying to her for four years?”

“Four years!” Grant groped for a chair. “I need to sit down.”

“Yes, tell her about that,” Apollo said.

“No.” Bran leaned against his desk. “You’re going to get rid of it fully. Why else come all the way to Mayfair? And why bring him?” He nodded toward Grant.

“You know,” Grant mused, “if I’d ever seen you in the glamour as the duke, I would have known immediately you were also Bran. I would have seen right through you.”

“I didn’t know that, did I?” Bran snapped. “Either add something constructive or leave.”

Grant stroked his jaw. “Diana has been reading about comets and meteoric stones of late. They glow when they rain down but are dull rocks once they hit Earth. Scientists posit, and she agrees⁠—”

Apollo groaned. “Posit. Prepared to be bored, Bran.”

“—that these stones possess or used to possess the properties of light and fire.” Grant continued as if his brother-in-law had not said a word. “We were able to obtain a specimen.”

Apollo groaned again. “Specimen.”

“And,” Grant said, “we were fascinated to discover large traces of iron in the rock.” He shrugged.