“Do not imagine,” she said, in a low, level voice, “for a single moment, that I missed what tonight was really about. And I cannot—I do not even?—”
She stopped, closed her eyes, and drew a long, deliberate breath through her nose before releasing it. Then she settled her gaze on Lucie, allowing it to soften a fraction. “I am aware that you have a very important day ahead of you tomorrow. You need to get to bed.”
Then she turned to Charlotte, and did not soften at all. “Andyouneed to gather your children and take them home to their beds.” A beat. “And after tomorrow is done, the three of us are going to have words.” Her eyes narrowed as they moved between her two daughters. “A great many words. A great many extremely stern words. About lines, and about where precisely we stand in this world, and about what a young woman of this family may and may not do. You have not thefaintestidea what?—”
She stopped herself, pressed her lips together, and simply shook her head. Then she swept from the room toward the kitchen.
Lucie let out a long breath.
And Charlotte, the moment their mother was through the doorway, spun to face her, seized both of Lucie’s hands in both of hers, and gripped them tight. Then she leaned in close, and with her whole face alight, she quietly squealed, “I think she likes him!”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Lucie stoodon the grass behind The Honeycomb with Iris on one side and Rosavyn on the other, and for several long, quiet moments, none of them spoke. The morning light came through the canopy of flowering trees in soft, shifting patterns, and the whole of the space before them glowed.
The round tables from The Charmed Leaf had been arranged beneath the branches, each one dressed in white linen. Elegant chairs with curved backs and pale cushions were placed around them. On every table, trailing garlands of honeysuckle wound between clusters of small golden faelights that would provide a subtle illumination later this afternoon, when the light through the canopy turned soft and honeyed. Tiny glass jars of wildflowers sat among the garlands, each one different, each one placed with careful asymmetry.
Above their heads, paper birds and butterflies—a product of Iris’s magic—flitted among the lower boughs. Strings of faelights wound through the branches, threading from tree to tree.
And along either side of the gathering, to the left and right, ran the long serving tables, tiered cake stands rising from them in glittering columns, waiting to be filled. Every confection that would ordinarily sit behind glass in the shop’s display cases would be arranged out here instead, so that once Lady Rivenna had welcomed the guests and Lucie had given her demonstration,everyone might wander among the tables to sample and admire and ask questions. Lucie and Georgiana would be there to answer them, to explain the honey light, the techniques, the ingredients, to draw them close in a way that made a person feel not like a customer but like a confidante—someone being offered a glimpse behind the curtain and finding the magic there even lovelier than what was on display.
“Because that is precisely what we are offering,” Lady Rivenna had said when they were planning this event. “There is no other place in Bloomhaven like The Honeycomb.”
But the morning was several hours from that still. The event was not until the afternoon. And everything—every garland, every paper bird, every precisely angled chair—was perfect.
And Lucie felt, for the first time in weeks, surprisingly … calm.
It was the strangest thing. She had expected to wake this morning in a state of advanced terror, her mind already racing through the dozens of things that might go wrong and the multiple contingency plans she had drawn up for each of them. She had expected the tight, too-high breathing that had become her constant companion these past weeks, the clenching in her chest that arrived before she had even opened her eyes.
Instead she had woken slowly, lain still for a moment, and thought:Today.
And the thought had not sent a spike of panic through her at all. Instead it had been … anticipation. Excitement.
She was ready. She knew she was ready. Every confection had been tested, tasted, refined, and tested again. The honey light was bottled and waiting. The chocolate bees slept peacefully in their tin. The marzipan flowers and leaves had been arranged upon the framework with a care that bordered on the obsessive. She had prepared everything there was to prepare, and what remained now was simply the doing of it.
“Iris,” Lucie said quietly, still looking out at the scene before her. “It is absolutely lovely.”
Iris smiled. “The honeysuckle was the right choice,” she said. “The scent carries perfectly out here, and it ties the whole thing back to the shop.” She tilted her head. “Though I may move that cluster by the third table a fraction to the left before this afternoon. It is bothering me.”
“It is not bothering anyone else,” Rosavyn observed.
Lucie’s gaze traveled past the tables to the far side of the gathering, where the showpiece structure stood just to one side, positioned so that every guest would have a clear view of it. Kazrian’s framework was fully assembled now. He had moved it out here earlier—after greeting her, after pointedlynotsaying anything about having been in her home the previous night, or about crouching on the floor of her father’s workshop, or about laughing with her family across a simple kitchen table.
The framework’s broad pedestal gleamed faintly in the dappled light, and above it, the curved pieces of silver wood rose and tapered inward, and each of them was covered in marzipan flowers. Dozens of them, with tiny marzipan leaves tucked between.
Lucie had to admit it looked rather impressive.
The honeycomb beehive was assembled within, concealed by the panels that would release outward at her signal. That was the part she was trying not to think about too carefully. The part that required her to stand before a gathering of Bloomhaven’s finest, channel magic from her ring, control the enchantments, guide the spun sugar, and coax the bees into their spiraling flight—all while looking as though it were the most natural thing in the world.
It will be fine. You have practiced this. You know every step.
She looked up at the sky. Blue, clear, not a cloud to speak of. “I do hope it does not rain,” she said.
Rosavyn leaned her head closer to Lucie’s as she gazed up. “Do not think like that. Of course it will not rain.”
“It has rained several times in recent weeks,” Lucie pointed out, trying not to think of the night on the storeroom floor, the cozy arrangement of cushions, Kazrian lying barely a breath away. “It is entirely possible.”
“It will not,” Rosavyn said firmly, as though the weather could be settled by the sheer force of a Rowanwood’s conviction. Given the family, Lucie was not entirely certain it could not.
