Chapter 26
Chapter Twenty-Six
Lucie woke slowly, and for several moments there was only the soft gray light and the weight of the blanket and the quiet of The Honeycomb around her.
She thought of the evening before, of Henry, and she registered fear at the edges of her mind, but distantly, the way one might notice weather happening a long way off.
A storm on some far hill that could not reach her here.
Because the larger thing, far more present, was relief.
He was gone.
He was finished with her, and she, far more importantly, was finished with him. Whatever small, dutiful part of her had once thought she would give him a proper chance after the launch had been slammed shut as firmly as the kitchen door, and she had no intention of opening it again.
She lay still for another moment, breathing in the quiet, and became aware of a weight on her feet. She lifted her head from the cushion and looked down.
Balthazar was curled there, settled atop the blanket in a neat, compact circle, his tail wrapped precisely around his body and one paw folded over his nose. He was asleep, or doing a very convincing impression of it.
Something in her chest went soft.
She let her head fall back against the cushion and stared at the ceiling. Her mind drifted to the morning before, to Kazrian beside her, and she thought, I could be happy with this. Just this. Kazrian beside me. Balthazar curled up nearby. The Honeycomb around us.
It was a dangerous thought, the kind that had no business existing in the mind of a practical woman with a launch to manage and a reputation to protect and a family who would be horrified if they knew.
She let herself have it anyway, just for a moment, lying on the cushions in the early light with nothing to interrupt her and no one to see the expression on her face.
“Lucie? Lucie, are you here?”
Lucie’s eyelids flew open, her heart giving a single hard knock against her ribs before her mind caught up and identified the voice.
Charlotte.
She sat up, letting the blanket fall. She wore nothing but her shift, but it was only Charlotte, so there was no need to reach for anything to cover herself.
“It is I!” came her sister’s voice. “Do not be alarmed! Where are you?”
“Up here,” Lucie called out. “In the study.”
Footsteps on the stairs. Then in the passageway. Then a knock on the study door, which was already ajar, followed immediately by Charlotte pushing it open without waiting for a response, because that was not something Charlotte generally did.
“There you are!” Her sister appeared in the doorway, a shawl wrapped around her shoulders. “Good stars, Lucie, are you sleeping on the floor?”
“How did you get inside?”
“You have a spare key at home. For the front. I took it from Mother last night.” Charlotte stepped into the room. “Where did all these cushions—”
“You did not touch the beehive structure, did you? We specifically left it in the front room because the shop is closed today, and—”
“Of course not. I did not so much as breathe on it.” She crossed the small space and stood at the foot of Lucie’s makeshift bed.
“You sent a messenger pixie to Mother to say you were staying the night again. Which was perfectly adequate as a message, except that no one has actually seen you in two days, and I thought I should come and assure myself that you had not been eaten by the building.”
Lucie smiled. “I am quite well. There has been a great deal to do before the launch, and it was simpler to stay.”
“Simpler,” Charlotte repeated, in a tone that suggested she did not find the explanation entirely satisfying. “Are you quite sure you are all right?”
“Yes. I promise.” And Lucie found that she meant it.
Charlotte studied her for a moment longer. Then she seemed to accept it—or at least to set it aside for the time being—and looked around the study with renewed interest. “Well, I must say, it is rather cozy up here, is it not?”
Then she gathered her skirts and lowered herself down onto the cushions, shuffled forward past Balthazar with a great deal of rustling, managed to turn herself over, and lay down beside Lucie. “Oh,” she said, settling back. “This is rather lovely, actually.”
Lucie, still sitting, looked down at her. “It is surprisingly comfortable.”
“I can see that. One might never leave.” Charlotte drew the edge of the blanket over her own lap and gave it an approving pat. “Very cozy. I shall have to inform Theo that I am moving in.”
Lucie laughed and lay back down, resting her head beside Charlotte’s. But as the laughter faded, something cold turned over in her stomach. The gossip bird. Henry’s voice through the door. Now all anyone will know you for is this.
She kept her voice steady as she stared at the ceiling. “Charlotte … you have not … heard anything, have you? About me, that is. Any talk, or …”
Charlotte frowned. “Talk? What sort of talk? Do you mean about The Honeycomb? I have heard only good things. There is much anticipation. I have a feeling it is going to be a great success.”
The tension in Lucie’s chest eased. If Charlotte had not heard anything, then perhaps the bird’s shrieking had come to nothing after all. Lost in the rain, or drowned out by some fresher scandal, or simply not believed. She breathed and let herself think it: Perhaps it will not happen.
“Why?” Charlotte asked. “Should someone have been talking?”
“No. Not at all. I was merely being—” Lucie waved a hand. “Foolish.”
Charlotte gave her a look that said she did not entirely believe this, but she let it go and launched into her next story, which concerned Robbie and Belle and the afternoon of ‘gardening’ they had undertaken in the back plot the previous day, unsupervised for what Charlotte swore had been no more than ten minutes, during which they had pulled up every last turnip and replanted them upside down with—
“Lucie.”
Charlotte had stopped mid-sentence. Her voice had changed to something careful and quiet.
Lucie looked at her.
Charlotte was not looking at her face. She was looking at Lucie’s arms. At the place where the short sleeves of her shift ended and her bare skin began, and Lucie followed her gaze downward and saw what Charlotte had seen.
Bruises. Dark against the soft brown of her skin, wrapping around both upper arms.
“Oh,” Lucie said softly, barely a sound at all.
Charlotte reached over. Slowly. Carefully.
She fitted her hand around Lucie’s upper arm, her fingers settling lightly against the marks the way a hand might fit into an outline drawn for it, and her expression went utterly still.
Her gaze shifted to Lucie’s other arm, and then back to the first, as she slowly withdrew her hand.
“Lucie.” Her voice was barely a murmur. “What happened?”
The silence that followed was heavy and close, and in it Lucie could hear the building settling around them, the faint creak of old wood, a bird somewhere beyond the window.
She did not deny that something had happened. There was little point when the evidence was plain to see. She only let out a slow breath through her nose and said, quietly, “It has been dealt with. It will not happen again.”
Charlotte’s eyes came up and met Lucie’s.
They were bright, and the stillness in her face was cracking at the edges.
“But who—” She stopped. Drew a breath. Started again.
“I hesitate to even suggest it, because I cannot think—it does not seem possible—but …” Another pause, longer this time, her brows drawing together.
“Kazrian has been here so often, and I know the two of you have been working—”
“No!” Lucie sat up at once. “Charlotte, absolutely not. He would never. Not ever.”
Charlotte pushed herself upright and exhaled a long, shaking breath. “I did not want to think it of him. Truly, I did not.” She squeezed Lucie’s hand. “But if it was not Kazrian, then …”
She trailed off. Her brows knitted again, and Lucie watched the calculation behind her sister’s eyes, the process of running through the possibilities. “Henry?” she whispered.
Lucie nodded.
Charlotte’s free hand flew to her mouth. She shook her head. “No. Oh, Lucie, no!” Her voice came through her fingers, thin and horrified. “And we were—Mother and I—we have been championing the man. Encouraging you toward him at every turn, and all this time—”
“You did not know.” Lucie gripped her sister’s hand more firmly.
“None of us knew. He is so charming on the surface, Charlotte. So perfectly, relentlessly charming. I even—” She broke off, the image of Georgiana surfacing suddenly and sharply in her mind.
A bruise on Georgiana’s arm, half hidden beneath a sleeve.
A quiet explanation, and Lucie had not thought twice.
Had not questioned it for a single moment.
“I saw a bruise on Georgiana’s arm,” she said quietly.
“Not too long ago. In a similar position. And I believed her when she said it was nothing. I would never have thought that her own brother—” She shook her head.
“But I think I see it now. What I thought was brotherly concern—Henry visiting her so often, always knowing where she was, always turning up—it was not affection. It was … perhaps something more like control.”
Charlotte was very quiet for a long moment, her fingers still pressed against her lips. When she finally lowered her hand, her face had settled into something harder than Lucie had ever seen on her. “We cannot simply allow this to stand.”
“No, Charlotte, please. He has been dealt with. Thoroughly.”
Charlotte looked at her. “How?”
“Balthazar left him with three rather deep scratches across his face.”
Charlotte’s gaze dropped to the cat, who was still curled in a circle at the end of the cushions, eyes closed, the picture of untroubled serenity.
“And then I slammed the door in his face,” Lucie added. “Which was, I confess, rather satisfying.”