Page 76 of The Duchess Curse

“How did you learn?” he asked.

“Handsford’s cook, his housekeeper. They were mother, grandmother, mentor, friend—everyone I didn’t have. When I cried, they gave me recipes to distract me. Potions to keep surfaces from getting dusty, elixirs to cure a runny nose or make a sparse meal feel more filling.”

“How often did you cry?” His voice was as tight as it was low, a shadow itself on the verge of losing its shape to total darkness.

She waved a hand, dismissing his question. “Quite often in the beginning. What child wouldn’t?”

“Because of the curse?”

“Because I was alone. The curse was like… the color of my hair or the slope of my nose—hereditary and uncontrollable. It wasn’t until I was older, falling in love with Tommy, that I thought I could break it.” She’d broken him instead.

A shadow of a hand brushed against her neck, rested heavy on her shoulder, and she thought, perhaps, she’d felt lips—made only of the intersection between light and dark—flirt with her temple. A diaphanous kiss that existed only because it almost didn’t.

The dowager reappeared first, a variety of leaves clutched in her hands. She shook them above her head, grinning wildly. “These them?”

“Come along,” Guin said, fighting another yawn, “and let’s see.”

The shadow at Guin’s side disappeared, and the dowager settled into the space, joined soon after by the other two women.

Guin was in the middle of showing Lady Folley how to peel a lemon when the butler called her from the hallway beyond the plants.

“Your Grace.”

Guin collected the seeds from a halved lemon—a cut on her finger hissing, and called out, “What is it, Bentley?”

“You have more visitors.”

“Send them this way. They may join us.”

“I do not think they will wish to do so. It is the Earl and Countess of Cairnsbury.”

There was a flicker of light in a nearby corner as the shadows there coalesced into a big body. Bran crept around the walls toward the hallway unnoticed.

And Guin tried to spin sense of confusion. Her parents were… here? But they were supposed to be in Bath. They were always in Bath. “Pardon me, ladies, but I must end our lesson for the day.”

“Can we return tomorrow?” the baroness asked.

“To finish what we started,” Miss Prince added.

“Yes.” Guin didn’t wait to make sure they’d left. She joined Bentley in the hallway where Bran was waiting for her, studying her intently. “Do you know why they’re here?”

Bentley sniffed. “They did not say, and I thought it impolite to ask.”

“You didn’t write to them?” Bran asked her.

“A letter a few times a year, but nothing since I returned to Mayfair.”

“Word must have made it to Bath. After the ball.”

“So quickly?”

“I’m surprised it took so long.”

They headed toward the drawing room, strides eating up the distance at a familiar, shared pace they’d learned together long ago. In the entry hall, Bran paused before the mirror, checked his glamour, which had begun to return once he’d left the shadows.

“Why do you always do that?” Easier to ask such questions than to consider what sort of conversation awaited her in the drawing room.

“Do what?”