Chapter 5 #2
Mrs Fields turned from the range and regarded her elder daughter with a sigh. “Must I truly still say this after more than twenty years?”
Charlotte looked down at the table beneath her. She looked up at her mother. “What?”
“Chair, Charlotte.”
Charlotte slid off the table with a sigh that suggested she was being asked to surrender a fundamental liberty and dropped into the chair instead.
She caught Lucie’s eye and pulled a face.
Lucie pressed her lips together and busied herself with carrying the bread to the table and placing it in the center.
“Should you not,” Mrs Fields added, turning back to the stew, “be preparing supper in your own home?”
“Already done!” Charlotte said with a self-satisfied smile. “Do not worry, Mother. I shall not bother you for long. I will deliver the message, steal some of your bread—”
“You will not.”
“—and be heading home shortly.”
Home, for Charlotte, was five houses down the lane, in the house where Theo had grown up.
The house his parents had left to him when they moved to the country.
Charlotte and Theo and their two children, Robbie and Belle, lived there now, close enough that Charlotte could walk to her parents’ house in under two minutes, and did so with a frequency that suggested she had never truly left.
“How fares The Honeycomb, Luce?” Charlotte asked. “Still throwing things at you?”
“Yes, actually. A pixie today. The one who keeps forgetting.”
“Oh, the poor little thing. Was anyone hurt?”
“Fortunately not.” Lucie turned to the shelf where the glasses were kept. “It is becoming a rather predictable routine.”
“Well, my day was quite busy, as it happens. I stopped by the tea house earlier to see Rosavyn. I am thrilled she is here early this year. Kazrian is here early too, which is the reason Rosavyn came, and do you know it has been three years since he was in Bloomhaven? I doubt I shall recognize the boy.”
Not a boy anymore, Lucie thought immediately, then pressed her lips together and kept her attention very carefully focused on the cutlery she was laying out.
“Lord Kazrian,” Mrs Fields said.
“Hmm?”
“Lord Kazrian, Charlotte. He holds a title.”
“I know he holds a title, Mother, but I have known him since he was a boy tripping over things in the tea house kitchen—”
“And he is no longer a boy tripping over things. He is a titled fae lord from one of the most prominent families in the Isles, and you will address him accordingly.”
Charlotte let out a breath. “Fine. Lord Kazrian.” She turned to Lucie. “Lord Kazrian is back in Bloomhaven because Lady Rivenna summoned him to fix all that magical nonsense you keep complaining about at The Honeycomb.”
Lucie frowned. “I do not complain. I merely … relate unfortunate events.”
“Well, in any case, did you see him at The Honeycomb? Rosavyn said he was headed there this morning. I know the two of you always got along well.”
Lucie’s hands were steady. Her face was carefully neutral. “He was there, yes.”
“And? How did he look?”
Lucie paused. The question was simple enough. The answers that presented themselves, however, were numerous and almost uniformly unsuitable for a family kitchen. She opened her mouth, hesitated, then settled on: “Tall.”
Charlotte laughed. “Well, that is nothing new. He has always been tall.”
Lucie decided this was a perfectly adequate place to leave the subject. She glanced about for anything else that might need carrying to the table.
Charlotte shifted in her chair, crossing one ankle over the other. “Speaking of tall men—I encountered another one this afternoon.”
Here it comes, Lucie thought.
“One Henry Stratton. He was coming from the direction of Highgrove Street. Looking very well.” Charlotte’s eyebrows rose meaningfully. “Very well, Lucie.”
Lucie laughed, because there was nothing else to be done with it. Henry’s interest in her was hardly a secret in the Fields household. Charlotte had taken it on as a personal project, and subtlety had never been among her sister’s gifts. “I am glad to hear Henry is in good health.”
“He asked after you.”
“How kind of him.”
Charlotte leaned forward. “Did he call on you again today?”
Lucie’s laugh this time was somewhat less composed. She had a brief, vivid image of Henry appearing at the kitchen door while she and Kazrian stood far too close with a tray of caramels between them, and the sound that came out of her was closer to a cough.
“He does not call on me,” she corrected. “He visits the shop to see Georgiana, and Georgiana was not there today as the shop was not open, so no, I did not see Henry today.”
“He is so handsome, is he not?” Charlotte batted her eyelashes meaningfully at Lucie.
Something flickered at the edge of Lucie’s mind—gray eyes, a jaw that had lost its boyish softness—and she pushed it firmly aside. “Does Theo know you hold such opinions about a man who is not your husband?"
“For you, silly girl,” Charlotte said with a laugh. “You are well aware of that. Why not permit his interest? It is not a crime to let a man court you properly.”
“I am not opposed to courtship in principle,” Lucie said pleasantly. “I am simply occupied at present. The launch is in a matter of weeks.”
“She has been occupied,” Charlotte informed their mother, “since she was fourteen. Do we imagine she will stop being occupied at some point? Is there a date?”
“I think your sister knows her own mind,” their mother said diplomatically. Then added, “Though a young man of good character who has built his own prospects and asks nothing of anyone—well. One could do a great deal worse than that, Lucie. He may very well be everything we ever hoped for you.”
Lucie nodded. She murmured something agreeable—yes, he was a good man, yes, she was aware of that—and felt the warmth climb her cheeks, which was maddening, because it had nothing whatsoever to do with Henry Stratton.
It had to do with a pair of careful hands that had always moved as though they knew exactly what they were doing, even when the rest of him did not, and shoulders that had decidedly filled out in the time he’d been gone, and a jaw that Lucie wanted to trace her fingers along—
The sound of heavy footsteps in the back passage interrupted her traitorous thoughts, and Lucie inhaled deeply as she turned to see her father appearing in the kitchen doorway, rubbing his hands together to brush the last of the sawdust from his fingers.
“Charlotte,” he said, unsurprised.
“Father. I have a message from Theo.” She slid the folded note across the table. “Something about the dimensions of the display case.”
Their father nodded, then crossed to the basin and washed his hands. He dried them, kissed his wife on the temple as he passed her, and settled into his chair at the head of the table. After looking at the note, he folded it again and set it down. He rubbed the back of his neck.
“Is everything all right?” Charlotte asked as Lucie peered over their mother’s shoulder at the stew.
“Yes, yes. It is only … the lathe has been playing up again.”
Lucie looked back at him over her shoulder. “Again?”
“Yes, the enchantment on the drive belt. Speeds up without warning and then drops off again. Nearly took the end off a spindle this afternoon.” He shook his head. “I’ll look at it again tomorrow.”
The thought arrived before Lucie could stop it: Kazrian could fix it.