Page 100 of A Fragile Enchantment

“Do not go anywhere,” Jack snapped. He set to pacing down the length of the aisle. He wrenched his crown off his head and pulled his hands through his hair. “I can fix this. I will fix this. I do not yet know how, but we have an hour to—”

“Thereisno fixing this,” Kit said. “What he said is true.”

Rosa laughed bitterly. “Your magic is powerful, but it is nothing compared to ours. If you face him, he will strike you down in a second. What good is your honor to you? If you value your life at all, you will flee while you have the chance.”

Kit sat on the stairs of the altar and busied himself with lighting his pipe. He smoked for a few moments, and while he seemed to settle, the color didn’t return to his face. When he sighed out his third lungful, he sounded grimly resigned. “I don’t care about my honor, but I can’t very well deny him. Any alternative will involve other people.”

Jack placed his hands on Kit’s shoulders and shook him. “This is not your responsibility, Kit. It never has been. It’s mine.”

“For once,” Sinclair chimed in, “I agree with him. This is absolute madness, Kit.”

Kit shrugged Jack off and glared up at him with horrible, tangledaffection shimmering in his eyes. “I think it’s about time someone protected you instead. You can be my second if you insist on hovering.” He glanced at Sinclair. “Sorry.”

“As if Iwantto watch you die,” Sinclair snapped, his voice thick with emotion. “You noble idiot.”

“Enough.” Jack looked stricken. “We should not discuss this now. Come with me. Sinclair, you, too. Such business is not fit for young ladies to overhear.”

Jack strode purposefully toward the door, with Sinclair trailing reluctantly behind him. Kit hesitated for only a moment before approaching Niamh. He offered a hand to her. Even through his glove, his touch was electrifying. She didn’t know if she could bear to look at him.

When he steadied her on her feet, she said, “Kit, I am—”

“Stop overworking yourself,” he told her sternly. “I mean it.”

Before she could even think of how to reply, he followed after his brother. Her breath left her in a shaky rush. Of all the horrible, unromantic, ungallant things he could say in this moment… She bit down on the hopeless flare of affection. She would not succumb to despair. She refused to believe that this was the last time she would ever see him alive. She refused to let him get away withthosebeing the last words he ever said to her.

Niamh couldn’t read Rosa at all.

Since they’d retired to the chapel with Miriam, there had been no outburst, no tears, no anxious chatter. She sat in the front pew, her elbows planted on her knees and her fingers steepled at her lips. At first glance, with tiles of multicolored light playing across her face, she looked almost supplicant. But Niamh knew by now that she was only lost in thought.

When Rosa opened her eyes, no spark of an idea, no stroke of genius, animated them. Niamh saw only defeat. “You have quite a knack for causing trouble, Niamh. Do you know that?”

“Yes,” she said wearily. “Everyone has made that quite apparent to me by now.”

“Ten more minutes,” Rosa said with a rough edge of impatience, “and we all would have been free of this nightmare.”

“But I—”

“Do not insult my intelligence. I know very well that you planned this.” Rosa slumped further into her seat and scrubbed at her face. “I just did not expect Kit to be so… unknowingly complicit. Why have you done this? I thought we understood each other.”

“I could not bear to see either of you so miserable,” Niamh protested. “Both of you play at being so cool and unfeeling, but you are as obvious as he is.”

Rosa skewered her with a warning look, and a jolt shot through Niamh at the realization. Miriam didn’t know. Or didRosanot know?

Niamh chanced a look at Miriam, who had drifted to the back of the chapel. She sat at the base of a statue of some saint whose name Niamh did not know. It seemed impossible—absurd, even—that either of them should have an ounce of doubt about the other’s feelings. Perhaps this was how everyone else felt, watching her and Kit dance around each other for half the Season. The urge to shake them both nearly overpowered her.

“Once again,” Rosa said darkly, “I thought we understood each other.”

Niamh slowly crossed the room and sat beside Rosa in the pew. She unlaced her bonnet and set it aside. “I could not live with that arrangement. For many reasons, selfish and otherwise.”

Finally, she unburdened herself of the truth: Lovelace’s identity, the reality of Avaland’s financial situation, all the ways in which Jack had tried to salvage it.

“So they intended to use us as human mortar for all their problems,” Rosa said quietly. “Those snakes. I can almost admire that sort of cunning.”

“I had hoped to stop the wedding, but I didn’t foresee it going quite like this.”

“Thank you for telling me now,” Rosa said miserably, “although I could have stood to knowbeforethe ceremony.”

“I’m sorry! I didn’t know how you would react.”