Chapter 26 #2
A sound came out of Charlotte—half laugh, half something fiercer. “Good.” She looked back at Lucie, her eyes still bright but a grim satisfaction settling into her expression. “Good for you, Lucie. And good for Balthazar.”
Lucie drew a steadying breath. “So please, Charlotte, do not speak of this to anyone. The matter is finished.”
“But he should not simply walk away,” Charlotte said hotly. “I cannot stand by while he puts a mark like that on my sister and then—”
“You can.” Lucie’s voice was gentle but firm.
“Because I am asking you to. I appreciate your concern for me, but the matter is behind us now, and Henry Stratton is a small, petty man, and I am perfectly fine, and we have more important things to focus on. So that is that, and no one else need be involved. Especially not Kazrian.” She paused, eyebrows rising. “Do you hear me?”
Charlotte blinked. “Why especially—”
“Because he is good. And honorable. And if he knew what Henry had done, he would feel compelled to confront him, and that would only lead to scandal. People would want to know why, what prompted it, and the whole business would unravel publicly. It would damage our family’s name.”
Charlotte was quiet, turning it over. “Yes,” she conceded at last, slowly.
“Yes, I see that.” Then, in a tone Lucie did not entirely trust: “There are other ways, though. To ensure a man does not simply escape the consequences of his own conduct. A word placed here. A doubt planted there. Society is a great deal cleverer at ruining a man quietly than it is given credit for, and Henry Stratton has a reputation he cares for far more than he cares for anything else—”
“Charlotte.”
“I am only saying—”
“You are not to do anything. Do you understand me? Nothing. You are not to breathe a word, or plant a doubt, or place anything anywhere. It is not worth putting yourself anywhere near Henry’s anger, and it is not worth the risk of it coming back on our family. Leave it.”
“Yes, yes,” Charlotte said, holding up both hands, the very picture of surrender. “Of course. Leave it. I understand completely.” Then she opened her mouth to say something else—and then she stopped.
Lucie watched a new thought arrive in her sister’s face, watched it land and take hold, watched the whole shape of Charlotte’s attention swing round and fix on her with sudden, terrible focus.
“Wait,” Charlotte said slowly. “Wait one moment.”
“What?”
“Why.”
“Why what?”
“Why,” Charlotte said, sitting up straighter among the cushions, “would Kazrian Rowanwood feel that he simply must defend your honor?”
The heat came up Lucie’s throat before she could do a single thing to stop it. “Because—because he is a good man,” she said, far too quickly. “He is honorable. He would do the same for anyone. For—for Georgiana, or Rosavyn, or—it is simply his nature, Charlotte, he cannot abide anyone being—”
“Mm.” Charlotte’s eyes had narrowed to bright, delighted slits. “For anyone. Naturally. Any woman at all whose arms happened to be bruised. He would fly into a rage over Mrs Moorfield’s arm, would he?”
“That is not—I did not say a rage—”
“You did rather imply a confrontation in the street.”
“I only meant that he is protective by—”
“Lucie Fields.” Charlotte reached over and gripped her knee. “Look at me. Look at me.” She pressed both palms to Lucie’s cheeks and held her there. “Stars above, you are practically aflame.”
“I am warm,” Lucie protested with a laugh, batting her sister’s hands away. “It is stuffy in here.”
“Nonsense.”
“Charlotte—”
“Lucie.”
Lucie heaved a sigh and met her sister’s gaze. Charlotte was staring at her with an expression of such barely contained delight that Lucie wanted to pull the blanket over her own head and never emerge.
“How long?” Charlotte asked.
“How long what?”
“How long have you been in love with him?”
The silence that followed was enormous. It filled the study. It pressed against the walls and the window and the writing desk and the armchair with Lucie’s dress hanging over the back of it.
“I …” Lucie began, and then could not think of where the sentence was supposed to go.
Charlotte waited. Patiently.
“He is … I have … there are feelings,” Lucie managed, which was perhaps the most inadequate sentence she had ever produced.
“Feelings,” Charlotte repeated.
“Yes.”
“For Kazrian Rowanwood.”
“… yes.”
“And he?”
Lucie looked down at her hands, clasped tightly in her lap, and let out a long breath. “He has made his feelings rather … clear.”
Charlotte’s hands flew to her cheeks. “Lucie! He—does he love you?”
The word landed in the quiet room like a bell struck in a closed space, and Lucie felt the sound of it move through her long after it should have faded.
There was never anyone else.
She nodded, a small, tight movement. “I believe so. Yes.”
“He loves you,” Charlotte said faintly.
“Yes.”
“And you love him.”
A pause, but there really was no denying the truth. “Yes.”
“Kazrian Rowanwood.”
“Charlotte, if you say his name in that tone one more—”
“HE LOVES YOU.” Charlotte seized both of Lucie’s hands and very nearly shook them off.
“Oh—oh, I had no idea. I had not the faintest idea, Lucie, how did I not—” She stopped, and her whole face crumpled into something soft and thrilled.
“Oh, but of course he does. Of course. He is completely wonderful, he always has been, and he has been here, at The Honeycomb, every single day, helping you with all of it, all these weeks—”
“It was not—”
“All that time in the kitchen together.” Charlotte pressed on, ruthless, her eyes shining.
“The two of you, side by side, hour after hour. The long looks across the worktable. His hand brushing yours over the—over the truffles, or whatever it is, and neither of you saying a word, and the tension simply—oh, Lucie, of course you fell in love with him, how could you not, it is exactly like a—”
“It was not like that!” Lucie was laughing now, helplessly, and swatting at her sister’s arm. “Stop it. It was not all long looks and brushing hands. Most of it was flour and burnt sugar and me being cross about falling ovens. Stop.”
“Long. Lingering. Looks,” Charlotte said with relish, and Lucie lifted the blanket and pressed her burning face into it and laughed until it hurt.
It was some while before the laughter wound itself down. When it finally did, Lucie wiped at her eyes and found her sister watching her with a quieter expression, thoughtful now, the delight banked down into something more considering.
“You are not,” Lucie said slowly, “as disapproving as I expected you to be.”
Charlotte lifted one shoulder. “Well. It is Kazrian.”
As if that settled it. As if who he was, specifically—not his title, not his family, not his place in society—was the only thing that mattered.
“But he is still a fae lord,” Lucie said quietly. “And Mother and Father … after everything with Aunt …”
Charlotte’s expression shifted. The brightness dimmed, though it did not go out entirely. “I know,” she said. “I know that.”
“Then you understand why I refused him.”
Charlotte went very still. “You refused him?”
“Yes.”
“He made an offer of—he asked you to—”
“In a manner of speaking, yes. But I knew it could not possibly work, so I told him I did not love him. And then he left for three years.”
Charlotte stared at her. The silence stretched. “This happened three years ago?” Charlotte’s voice climbed. “You have loved him since—for three entire …”
“Yes?” The word came out small and uncertain, almost a question, as if she were bracing for a verdict.