Chapter 4
Chapter Four
Kazrian stepped into his grandmother’s study, shut the door behind him, leaned back against it, and groaned.
Lucie worked here.
She worked here. Not in some other kitchen, in some other town, with some other man’s name.
(Of course he’d look at her left hand the moment he’d recovered enough to tear his gaze from her warm hazel eyes; no wedding ring.) And now Kazrian was going to have to inhabit the same space as the one person in all the United Fae Isles he had crossed into another realm specifically to avoid.
He pushed off the door and began pacing, seeing nothing of the small space around him. The room could have been on fire and he would likely have walked a circuit through the flames without noticing, because his mind was entirely occupied with the image of her.
Good stars, was it possible she had grown even more beautiful in the time that had passed? She was—
No. Not helpful.
He would not think about the exact shade of warmth the morning sunlight had cast across her brown skin, or the endearing way her hair had been half escaping whatever she had done to pin it back, or the fact that he knew how soft the curve of her cheek felt beneath his thumb—
Not! Helpful!
He stopped in the center of the room, pressed both hands over his face, and groaned again. This was absurd. He was behaving as though the sky had cracked open and the stars had rearranged themselves, when in fact nothing whatsoever had changed.
He lowered his hands, and his fingers found his father’s pocket watch without thought—drew it from his waistcoat pocket, clicked it open, clicked it shut, clicked it open again.
The steady motion helped. It always did.
It kept his hands occupied while his mind ran through a problem, turning it over the way he turned the watch, searching for the place where it would yield.
The facts, then. He would deal in facts, because facts were reliable and feelings were not.
Fact: Lucie worked here, and she had built something here, and whatever she had created in this kitchen was important to her and to his grandmother.
Fact: Kazrian had been engaged to repair the building’s magical infrastructure, and he could not do that while hiding in this upstairs study.
Fact: They were going to see each other. Most days, if not every day. In close quarters. There was no configuration of hours or schedules that would allow them to avoid each other entirely, and attempting it would be not only impractical but glaringly, conspicuously strange.
Which led him, reluctantly but inevitably, to the only sensible conclusion.
They would simply have to make this work.
There. He turned the thought over and found it sound.
He had a task to complete and she had a craft to practice and there was no earthly reason the two of them could not occupy the same kitchen for the duration without the entire enterprise collapsing into stammering and apologizing and not-quite-meeting each other’s eyes.
Which meant the awkwardness had to be addressed.
Not the past itself—stars, no, not the past—but the awkwardness.
The surface of it. They could acknowledge that this was strange, agree that it need not be, and then proceed as two reasonable adults who had once known each other and now found themselves working in proximity.
A clean reset. A wiped slate. Start afresh, as though the slate had never had anything written on it at all.
Yes. That was the fix.
He took a breath, clicked the watch shut and slid it back into his waistcoat pocket, straightened his coat, and crossed to the door.
Then he turned around, walked back to the window, and stood there for a moment with his arms folded tightly over his chest, staring out at the lane below without seeing it.
He could do this.
He turned again, walked back to the door, set his hand on the handle, and opened it. He started down the stairs before he could change his mind—and the stairs, helpfully, made sure he followed through.
The heel of his boot caught the edge of a step that had not, he was certain, existed a moment ago, his ankle turned, and the world tilted. He caught the railing with one hand and the wall with the other and arrived at the bottom several seconds sooner and considerably louder than he had intended.
He stood at the foot of the stairs, gripping the rail, and let out a breath.
Yes, here I am, the same clumsy boy of three years ago, and absolutely not the suave, refined, self-possessed gentleman I’d always hoped you might see if we ever ran into each other.
Well. At the very least, no one in this kitchen would be startled by his arrival. He had announced it the way a dropped anvil announces itself. There would be no walking into her this time. She had had ample warning. The whole lane had had ample warning.
A small mercy, that. He would take his mercies where the architecture saw fit to provide them.
Lucie was at the worktable when he came round into the kitchen proper, very carefully not looking at him and very thoroughly wiping a section of the worktable that did not, from where Kazrian stood, appear to require it.
She wore a clean apron and had tucked away most of the loose strands of her hair.
The ruined caramels, he noted, were nowhere to be seen.
Another stab of guilt pierced his chest.
“The stairs,” she said.
“The stairs,” he agreed. “Perhaps I shall attempt to fix that particular quirk first.” He moved a few steps closer and stopped at what he judged to be a sensible distance—near enough to converse, far enough to be unmistakably professional.
“Lu—Miss Fields,” he began. “I owe you an apology.”
She stopped wiping the table and met his gaze. “You have already apologized. Multiple times, in fact.”
“Not for the caramels. Well—yes, also for the caramels—but more broadly, for …” He searched for the right words.
Every option seemed either insufficient or dangerously close to territory he had resolved not to enter.
“For the surprise of it. I truly did not know you would be here. My grandmother did not mention—she said nothing about—” He stopped himself. Took a breath.
“I know this is … awkward,” he continued.
“But I see no reason it has to remain awkward. The past is … well, in the past. We are both grown. We both have work we care about. I should like, if it is agreeable to you, to simply … begin again. Civil acquaintances who happen to share a kitchen. I can repair your lattice and your contrary cooling cabinets and your Thursday door and all the other quirks without the two of us tiptoeing about one another.”
For several moments, Lucie said nothing. Then she smiled, small and a little careful, and the relief of it loosened something in his shoulders. She set down the cloth and took a deep breath.
“You are right. This need not be awkward. There is more than enough to keep us both occupied. The Season begins in a few weeks, and The Honeycomb’s official launch is approaching.
There are dozens of recipes to finalize, commissions from noble houses, Georgiana and I have the front displays to redesign, and there is Henry—”
“Who?”
Her eyes widened. “What?”
“Who is Henry?”
“Who?”
“You said ‘there is Henry.’”
Lucie blinked several times before stuttering, “I said … many. There is … are … many … things to be getting on with.” She gestured to the room at large. “A great many. That is what I said.”
It was not at all what she had said. Kazrian had heard her perfectly well, and she had now clearly said the name Henry twice.
But he watched her and understood several things at once: that the name belonged to someone she did not wish to discuss, that whoever Henry was occupied a place in her days substantial enough to surface twice without invitation, and that pushing on it would be precisely the sort of thing a civil acquaintance who had only just met her would never dream of doing.
He had told her he wanted to begin again. A man beginning again did not interrogate a woman about the men in her present life.
“Many things,” he said. “Of course. I shall endeavor to add as little as possible to the total.”
“You are not adding,” she said, too quickly. “You’re subtracting. From the list of things that are broken. Which is—helpful. Genuinely.”
“Well. That is … good.”
“In any case,” she said, to the worktable. “I should—”
“Yes,” he said. “You’ve a great deal—many things—”
“Many things.”
“—to be getting on with. And I ought to begin looking at the—” He turned toward the nearest stretch of wall where the lattice ran close to the surface, grateful beyond measure for the existence of infrastructure, for problems with diagnosable solutions.
“The branching, here. Where it meets the older enchantments. I expect that’s where most of your trouble—”
The back door of The Honeycomb opened and his grandmother stepped into the kitchen.
Kazrian and Lucie moved at the same instant.
It was not a coordinated effort. It was not discussed or signaled or agreed upon in any way.
It was simply that some deep, shared instinct—honed by years of proximity to this particular woman and both her terrifyingly perceptive gaze and her magical ability to see the patterns connecting people—propelled them both into immediate action.
Lucie turned to the worktable, seized the cloth, and began wiping again, her posture radiating industrious calm. Kazrian leaned closer to the wall and adopted an expression of mild professional interest.
Nothing to observe here. No patterns. No connections.
No threads of any kind worth following. Which was, unfortunately, the truth.
Because apparently there was a Henry, and from the particular way Lucie had not wished to elaborate on the subject, there very likely existed between Henry and Lucie precisely the sort of connections that had never had the chance to form between Lucie and himself.
“Ah, good,” Lady Rivenna said, setting her gloves upon the counter. “You found your way here, Kazrian. Have you had a look around?”
“I have, yes, and I’m formulating a plan for where to begin with the repairs.”
“Excellent,” Lady Rivenna said. Her gaze swept the kitchen and landed on the far counter. Her eyes narrowed. “Cat.”
Balthazar narrowed his eyes in return. His tail gave a single, deliberate flick.
“May I help you with your cloak, Grandmother?” Kazrian offered, crossing the space toward her.
“Yes, thank you.” She turned her back to him and Kazrian drew the cloak from her shoulders.
“Ah. You received my reminder about Lady Brightcrest,” his grandmother added, presumably addressing Lucie now, since Kazrian had not the faintest notion of any reminder.
“I did,” Lucie said. “I shall have the order boxed and ready to present well before the afternoon.”
“Wonderful. Ah, just there, thank you,” she added to Kazrian, pointing to the row of coat pegs mounted on the wall beside the back door.
“Now, come with me to the study, Kazrian. Tell me what you have taken note of thus far, and we shall lay out a proper plan for the repairs.” She was already moving as she said it, heading for the staircase.
Do not look, Kazrian told himself.
He made it to the bottom of the staircase before he failed. He glanced back, found Lucie’s eyes already on him, and his heart gave a single painful thump.
They both looked away at the same time.
Kazrian cleared his throat and ascended the stairs.
And tripped for the third time.