Page 67 of The Duchess Curse

“And you have not single-handedly killed a room full of peers. I think it was a useful diversion.” He dipped in for another kiss, and she ducked out from under him.

“I’m choosing not to be angry with you.” She was tired of being angry. And tired of being as frustratingly aroused as he was every damn day. She opened the door and stepped into the hall and right into a gentleman hurrying down it.

“Apologies,” he said, righting her, grinning. When he saw her face, the grin died swiftly. “You’re her.” As affable as he’d seemed a few seconds earlier, he was all malice now, his lips a sneering slash across his face before he shot his hand out and wrapped it around her throat.

Shocked momentarily, he managed to slam her against the wall. The fairy orbs bobbling there shook.

Holding onto her breath and her consciousness, though black dots swam before her eyes, Guin grasped his forearms and brought her knee up into his groin.

He released her immediately and hit the ground in a wailing puddle.

Bran stepped out of the shadows and put his boot over the man’s neck. “You enjoy hurting women?”

The man clutched at Bran’s foot, clawed up his ankle, his face mottled, gasping red.

Another man came out of the room where they’d congregated and spotted them immediately. “Release Lord Maryville now!”

“This is tiring,” Bran said.

“They’re not even a challenge.” Guin stepped over the man on the floor—Maryville presumably—and started toward the other.

But Bran beat her. He seemed to move down the hallway with the flicker of the fairy orbs, a faint blur before he stood in front of the second man, a knife at his neck. “You will go to the ballroom, and you will stay there until after Lord Morington’s announcement. Then you will consider very carefully any violence you intend to commit against this woman.”

The man’s eyes shot to Guin, and she gave him a little curtsy.

When the other man grasped her ankle, she shook him off with one swift jerk and stood beside Bran. “This truly does grow tiresome. I’d like to go home.”

Bran pointed his knife toward the ballroom before returning it to its holster. “Go.”

The man helped his friend to his feet then scrambled in the appointed direction.

“Ready?” Bran asked her, straightening his cuffs.

“Your glamour’s half on.”

“Fucking Jupiter.” He sounded adorably irritated.

She couldn’t help a smile, a little laugh, as she put him right beneath a fairy light. Braxton’s golden mien washed over Bran’s face, across his body, and the shift didn’t hurt quite as much as it usually did. “All better.”

He took her arm, and they approached the ballroom together. On the other side of the door, the violins roared.

Morington waited with impatience in the toe-tap of his shoe. “There you are. It’s time.”

And five minutes after that, beneath a shower of falling stars (but no giant potion bottles, thank Gaia), the ton—with half astonished, half outraged faces—knew Lady Guinevere was the Duchess of Braxton. And as the glamoured falling stars surrounded Guin, the streaks of their tails felt like the bars of a golden cage.

15

MADAME POPPY’S POTION EMPORIUM

When Guin didn’t wake up with a polite nudge, Bran whipped the blankets off the bed.

Guin’s still-sleeping (or trying to sleep) brows scrunched together, and she curled her legs up to her chest, whining a little. Snowy chemise, lovely skin, a little constellation of freckles on her left thigh…

Under different circumstances, he could climb in there with her, wrap himself around her, and sleep the day away. Fuck his current circumstances. Not that he could ignore them.

“Rise and shine,” he commanded.

“Noooo.” She was not too dignified, apparently, to thrash about. Just a little bit.