Page 45 of The Duchess Curse

She knew what she’d seen last night with a certainty that made her heart brittle. But she didn’t want certainty. She wanted to be wrong, wanted her eyes to have been fooled by a trick of the light, her nerves to have finally been overcome by an attack.

Rolling onto her back, she knew she could not lie to herself.

Not when Braxton had been lying to her so thoroughly.

Bran.

A sound jolted her heart into a frantic rhythm, and she jerked away from it, pulling the blankets against her chest and finding a body half in a chair and half sprawled across the very edge of her mattress, his arm outstretched toward her, large blunt fingers loosely curled toward his palm.

The oddest body she’d ever seen.

The man was split in two, vertically down the center so that he appeared to be two half men invading her privacy. The bottom one, whose ear was pressed against an outstretched arm, had a scar carved up the side of his face, silvery and sinewy. His long dark lashes fanned against pale skin, and his messy tangle of unkempt hair was a dark ink spill across his plain lawn shirt. He was wrinkled and rumpled and the sight of him was too much.

She focused on the other man instead of crying. He was a head shorter than the first, and even in sleep, his golden hair was perfectly placed, and his formal suit was perfectly pressed.

Not two men.

A man and a glamour, muscle and bone, shadow and light. A reality and an illusion.

Looking at them this way, she found commonalities she might not have found otherwise. But for the bump where Bran had broken his, the glamour’s nose shared the same shape and slope. The eyelashes were similarly thick and long, the brows both heavy slashes, the lips firm and well shaped.

Family resemblances. She should have seen it. What a fool she was.

She rolled out of bed and dressed quietly, braiding her hair and pinning it in a simple coil near her neck. She slipped out of her bedchamber as Susan came whistling down the hallway.

“Oh, Your Grace, you should return to bed! Last night was horrid, and⁠—”

“I have too much to do to return to bed.”

“His grace⁠—”

“Is sleeping. I do not think you should wake him.” Guin strode down the hall without waiting for a reply. She found Ned guarding the front door and gladly let him take up place behind her as she stepped into the cool morning. Fog curled around her boots and made the street a miasmic soup. The sun was only just rising, and it charged the fog with a broken pink and purple light.

“Where’s the duke?” Ned asked.

“Sleeping.”

“Does he know yer out and about?”

“It does not matter.”

“The queen might disagree. The duke certainly will.”

“Funny you should mention her, Ned. Set your steps toward Buckingham. Keep your guard high today. We met with trouble last night.” She told him about the attack, the red eyes, the mad behavior.

“The duke met trouble with trouble, no doubt.” Ned chuckled. “He’s a curious good bruiser. Never would have guessed it. And you likely won’t believe it, Lady G, but he reminds me—just his fightin’ style, mind you, and p’raps also how short he is with words—of Bran.”

“I would believe it, Ned. I would.”

They reached Buckingham as the fog began to dissipate and the sun began to heat the day. She did not intend to be put off, even by the queen. But thankfully, she was led with little fuss to the conservatory behind the palace.

She wasted no time, saying as soon as she rose from a curtsy, “Braxton cannot act as my guard any longer.”

The queen studied her over the top of a letter she held lightly in her hand. She folded it meticulously and set it aside. “Is he indisposed?”

“He is perfectly well. But we do not suit. It is why we have lived apart all these years.” Ha! They’d lived side by side, day in and day out. Only she’d not known. “I do not wish to harm your majesty’s soldier, but I fear I may harm this one.”

“Is he… a danger to you?”