The king, risen to his full towering height, glowered at Jack from the opposite side of the cathedral. His hand curled around the back of the pew, digging in tight enough that Niamh feared the wood would splinter. His entire body quivered with the effort of holding in his rage.
“A brief recess, then,” the bishop said meekly, his prayer book clutched limply in front of him like a shield.
No one moved.
Jack stood and added, “Now.”
The guests scrambled to their feet and began shoving their way out of the cathedral with surprising swiftness. Niamh adjusted her tilted bonnet and wedged herself into the flow of the crowds, but a member of the Kings Guard seized her arm with bruising force. She gasped, and cold, sudden terror flooded in.
When the doors banged shut and the last of the guests cleared out, the cathedral looked like a carcass picked clean. The guardsman hoisted her up and all but dragged her to the apse. He deposited her at Jack’s feet with a rough shove. This time, Kit couldn’t catch her. She went down hard, her hands scraping the marble and her knees smarting from the impact. Her breathing echoed too loudly around her, but she kept her head bowed.
“What is the meaning of this?” the king thundered. “I do not know how things are run on this blasted island, but I did not consent to this farce.”
“Your Majesty,” Jack said placatingly, “this Machlishwoman is behind all this. I am certain now this is some sort of vengeance, and I will have her—”
“We do not want excuses from you.” Felipe cut his hand through the air emphatically, and Jack fell silent like a chided schoolboy. “Even if that is true, how can you be so incompetent? Look at her. How can you not manage even one sniveling girl?”
“Well,” Jack blustered, “I…”
“We have never seen such madness. Your subjects have gathered like an army to appeal to you. Your brother has clearly taken up with this common girl,” Felipe continued, with a disdainful look at the flowers that had sprung from Kit’s magic. “You assured us he did not inherit your father’s constitution. But now we see that madness is all relative. All of you must be as mad as loons if you believe we will accept such treatment!”
“My apologies, Your Majesty. I do not know what has come over everyone today, but I assure you it is most unusual.”
“Enough.” Felipe rested his hand on the hilt of his sword. “Whether or not you intended this, whether or not it is typical, you have insulted me today. Worse—and most unforgivably—you have insulted my daughter.”
At last, Rosa lifted her veil. Her dark eyes glinted with newfound purpose. “Father, please be reasonable. I am entirely unharmed.”
Felipe continued as if she had not spoken at all. “My Rosa is a good, obedient girl. She has never once spoken out of turn, and she is far too meek to say you’ve wounded her. But if she will not speak, I will. She is my only daughter, my crown jewel, and you do not deserve her.”
Rosa’s face twisted with anger and regret. It was the most emotion Niamh had ever seen from her, and yet, the fight drained out of her in an instant. How could she let her father go on believing she had no opinions or dreams of her own? How could she possibly let him speak for her, even now? The king loved her. If she found the courage to speak, surely he would listen.
“I understand you are unhappy,” said Jack, “but a bungled ceremony is no grounds to call off this engagement.”
“This is not a political matter. It is a personal one.” The king pulled off his glove. “And so, we will settle this like gentlemen.”
He threw it down between them. His eyes blazed golden, and the air within the cathedral surged. Static crackled through Niamh’s hair. The stained-glass windows trembled, and the petals whirled through the air as though lashed by a storm.
“Christopher Carmine, on my daughter’s honor, I challenge you to a duel.”
Kit paled. “What?”
Niamh clasped a hand to her mouth. What have I done?
She couldn’t kneel here and do nothing.
“Absolutely not.” Jack stepped forward, throwing out an arm in front of Kit. His eyes glittered with cold, determined fire. “If you must duel someone, you will duel me. I made this arrangement, and as you said, I failed to manage it properly. I will deal with the consequences.”
Felipe ignored Jack entirely. His focus was trained on Kit.
“I accept,” Kit replied flatly. “Your terms?”
Panic, at last, erupted through Jack’s facade. “Sabers, surely. To first blood.”
“Magic. To the death,” the king said. “You will meet me in one hour in the field to the north of the city. Bring your second. I will be waiting.”
With that, he swept out of the cathedral.
No. Niamh nearly collapsed against the stairs of the altar. After all of this, she couldn’t let him die for a debt of honor. If anyone was to blame, it was her. It had always been her. The petals scattered on the floor beneath her—and the joy they’d sparked within her—seemed a thousand miles away.
The bishop peered out from behind the altar. In a tremulous voice, he asked, “I take it there will be no wedding today, Your Highness?”
“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—”
“There is no 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, tangled affection 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 I want to 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 with those being 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 did Rosa not 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 know before the ceremony.”
“I’m sorry! I didn’t know how you would react.”
“I might have been furious, or perhaps I would have had some brilliant scheme. We shall never know. It’s too late now.” Rosa pinched the bridge of her nose. For the first time, a note of despair crept into her tone. “All this time, I endeavored to protect those I love. To secure Avaland as an ally and keep violence from our door, if only for a few years more. And this is where my choices have carried me: exactly to the fate I tried to avoid. My father will either die the proud fool he is, or he will kill Kit. The prince regent and my father may claim to be men of honor, but when it comes down to it, I cannot imagine either side will not retaliate. Conflict seems unavoidable now.”
“That’s all, then?” Niamh demanded. “Are you truly willing to give up so easily?”
“This does not involve you.” Rosa’s expression shuttered. “In fact, you have done quite enough. You should leave now while you still can. Return to Machland and abandon us to our fate.”
“I can’t do that.”
She laughed disbelievingly. “You’re still trying to protect them? Even though you know what they are capable of?”
“This scheme was entirely the prince regent’s, and now, it’s ruined. Besides, he has agreed to meet with the protesters. That is a small start.”
“That is not reassuring. You should know by now that I am not a sentimental person.” Rosa slouched further into her seat. “You truly care for Kit this much? I don’t mean to offend you, but surely you could have chosen more wisely. You have unfortunate taste in men.”
Her directness snatched every coherent reply from her mind.
“He is … pretty, in his way, I suppose. In theory,” Rosa conceded. “But I am shocked at his poor breeding. He is gentlemanly to no one but you. To the rest of the world, he is peevish and extraordinarily rude, and possesses no grace or decorum.”
A protective impulse seized hold of her. Niamh drew herself up taller. “I beg to differ, Your Highness. He is all those things, yes. But he is also kind, even when he is not always nice. He is forthright and loyal. And although he would never admit it, he worries about those he loves constantly. He’s rather like a mother hen at times. And … Well, he has such an intensity about him. When he looks at you, it feels like you are the only person in the world. Oh! And his voice—”
“Niamh.” Rosa looked jaundiced. “Saints, enough. I implore you. I will never scrub this conversation from my mind.”
“Sorry!”
“You are truly smitten with him, then.” With only a touch of puzzled wonderment, she said, “Good for him.”
“Yes. I love him.” It hit her all over again that he was currently marching to his death. “Rosa, you have to stop your father.”
“No, indeed,” Rosa said, looking quite alarmed. “He will not listen to me. He has never once listened to me.”
“Do not be a coward, now of all times.” Miriam snapped back into herself. She emerged from the shadows and into a wash of multicolored light. “How do you know unless you try? All these years, you have let him believe you are demure and in need of his protection.”
Rosa startled. “Miriam…”
“I have never known you to back down from a fight you know you can win.” Miriam glared at her with a ferocity Niamh had never seen on her. A curl escaped from its updo as she advanced on the princess. “Your father is doing this for you, misguided as he is. He believes you’ve been insulted. Naturally, he is furious on your behalf!”
“He cannot give me what I truly want. He would not accept it.” Niamh heard the unspoken fear in Rosa’s voice. He would not accept me. “It is far easier to be his weak-willed daughter.”
“He believes you want Kit to be punished for how today went,” Niamh pressed. “If nothing else, you can ask him to spare his life.”
“I can’t.” A pall came over Rosa, and melancholy oozed from her every word. “You are wrong about me, both of you. I am a coward and a masochist. I have never so sorely miscalculated in my entire life. I have failed everyone.”
Miriam stood in front of Rosa’s pew. “You haven’t failed me.”
“I have failed you most of all.”
“Rosa, I cannot pretend I am unaware of what you’re doing anymore.” Miriam planted her hands on her hips. “I am hardly qualified to be a chaperone! You had some scheme to have me married off this Season. I have told you a thousand times that I don’t want to marry. So why are you punishing yourself?”
“I don’t want you to marry, either. But bringing you here was the only plan I could come up with,” Rosa said desperately. “Perhaps that is why I do not like Kit Carmine. Because he and I are the same. We are utter fools for love. We are selfish and self-destructive to the highest degree.”
“I…” Miriam opened her mouth, then closed it. When she spoke again, her voice was very small. “What are you talking about?”
Rosa threw her head back and laughed breathlessly. “I have never once acted with my heart over my head. And doing so, just this once, has ruined me. I wanted to give you a chance to seek your own happiness, far away from a place that has hurt you so deeply. I thought this was the best way to protect you, but I see now it was only greed.”
“What,” Miriam repeated more vehemently, “are you talking about?”
“I love you!” Rosa seized hold of the pew between them. “Do you not see? How can you not? All this time, all these years … My sweet Miriam, it has always been you.”
Miriam gawped at her. “You love me?”
Rosa quailed. She gathered her veil around her arms, shrouding herself in shadow again. “I am sorry. I have forgotten myself entirely. If you cannot accept it—”
Miriam leaned over the barrier between them and took Rosa’s face in her hands. She kissed her, and Rosa’s eyes widened with shock. Miriam drew back, her chest heaving against her stays. “I love you, too, you stubborn wretch! Seeing you there on that altar, in that gown, was the cruelest torture I could have ever imagined.”
“Perhaps,” Niamh interjected, “I should give you two a moment?”
“Oh, Saints. I’m sorry.” Miriam hid her face in in Rosa’s shoulder. Rosa’s hand lingered at Miriam’s waist.
“We don’t have a moment to spare. The duel will begin in thirty minutes.” Rosa pursed her lips. “I’m afraid to confront him.”
“If you aren’t ready, you don’t have to tell him.” Niamh gave her an encouraging smile. “But if there is one thing I’ve learned, it’s that making yourself miserable to please others isn’t worth it. You deserve to live on your own terms.”
Without warning, Miriam pulled both Rosa and Niamh into a crushing hug. Niamh clung tight to her, a fizzy happiness filling her up from within. Rosa, however, endured it for all of two seconds before wriggling out of their hold. She took great pains to smooth out the front of her gown.
“All right, well, that is quite enough of that.” Rosa sniffed, once again the embodiment of dignity. “Shall we put an end to this?”