Page 77 of The Duchess Curse

“Check the mirror?”

“I’ll give you one guess.”

“Your glamour is currently unpredictable, but you could appear as yourself. Now, at the ball, in parliament. There’s no law saying you must wear the hereditary glamour in public.”

“It’s what everyone expects a duke to look like.” He pulled her away from the mirror and toward the drawing room.

“Wait.” She stopped him outside the door, inhaling deeply. “I’m nervous.” She pressed a hand to her forehead. She shouldn’t have admitted any weakness in front of this man, but she couldn’t quite control her mouth. It leapt before her brain could catch up, foggy as it was inside her brain box. At least she wasn’t asleep on her feet anymore. Anxiety rippled her into twitchy wakefulness.

“Why?” Bran asked.

“I haven’t seen my parents since our wedding. And I assume they’re here because they’ve discovered the infamous Lady Guinevere is their daughter, Gabriella Guinevere Pottinger. They will not be best pleased.”

“Did you care what they would think when you set out on your own? Would you have let them stop you?”

“No.” She dropped her hand and rested her shoulder against the doorframe. Her entire body felt heavy.

“You’re still her. The woman with fire in her soul and wit in her eyes, the woman whose beauty is rivaled only by her daring and intelligence. That girl didn’t care for parents. Neither do you.”

She laughed. She’d cared too much. It didn’t matter. She’d faced worse, like the man behind her resting a large and gentle hand on her shoulder. Her heart tripped over itself to get to him. Words like beauty and wit in the deep Scottish brogue were deadlier than sword or potion.

She shrugged away from his touch as she pushed herself upright, opened the door, and stepped inside. “Mother, Father, what a surprise!”

Bran took up his usual place right behind her, close enough to feel his heat, and she allowed herself to lean into his strength. Here was a man who’d lied. For years. But he’d never leave her helpless. That a certainty, but certainly not trust, which was a deeper thing that held the soul as well as the body. Bran might be able to keep her heart thumping, but he could not, would never, keep her heart.

Guin’s mother rushed toward her, and Guin braced herself for a hug. She received a piece of newspaper instead, held out at the end of her mother’s arm, folded and folded and folded so that only a single article was visible on the upward side.

Guin read. “Duchess of Braxton an East End Brewer.” She pushed the article away. “Rather unimaginative headline.”

Her father remained at the window, not even looking at the daughter he’d not seen in six years.

“What is this about?” Her mother shook the paper.

“Have a seat, Mother. You do not wish to become overset. It will hurt less if you faint while sitting.”

“Oh, I’ve fainted!” But her mother sat anyway, prim and proper and huffing in one of two matching armchairs. “When Lady Gibbons handed me this article, sneering. ‘You’ve always lorded your duchess daughter over us,’ she said. Did you know that’s what she said?”

“I had no idea.” Guin sat across from her mother on a low, elegant sofa—striped white and cream with wooden trim painted gold.

“It is! Then she said, ‘You won’t be able to lord it over us now, we all know she’s nothing but an elixir mixer.’”

“Elixir mixer. I’ve not heard that phrase. I rather like it.”

Bran sat beside Guin, stretching one long arm out across the back of the sofa, his hand resting right at her back, one extended thumb seeking out that strip of skin above her gown and between her shoulder blades. An uninvited invasion of her space she shouldn’t have taken comfort from but did. “It’s catchy.”

“You approve of this, Braxton?” Guin’s father stepped away from the window. “No sensible man would let his wife, a duchess, dabble in witchery.”

Bran shrugged. “She’s happy doing it. And safe. And as her husband, those are my priorities.”

“As a duke, your priorities are to the title!” Her father’s jaw ticked. His hair was fine and red still in large streaks. But around his face, it was snowy white. “The reputation of your family! Of my family! It’s clear the line had to reach so far down the family tree for an heir you have no idea what any of it means.”

Guin’s mother shifted one way then the other with little bounces, her hair entirely covered by a large purple bonnet. Her eyes were blue and watery, and her hands clutched tightly in her lap. “His lack of refinement is why we chose him, Gabriella. He has everything a Pottinger looks for in a mate—title, wealth, unlovable qualities.”

Guin almost choked.

Bran tensed.

Guin laid a hand on his thigh. To comfort him? He didn’t deserve comfort. It didn’t work, no matter the why. He was still a barely-tamed beast when her father stalked their way; a sound like a low growl—territorial, animalistic—rumbled from Bran’s throat.