Lucie fell into step beside Rosavyn, and the two of them crossed the courtyard together.
“I am afraid to ask how long you have known,” Lucie muttered in a low tone before they were within earshot of any of the guests.
Rosavyn beamed at her. “Almost as long as I have knownyou, Lucie Fields.”
“Oh, good stars,” Lucie groaned, then arranged her features into the warmest, most composed smile she could manage and turned toward a fae lady who was beckoning her over, one gloved hand poised above a tray of elderflower champagne jellies with an expression of keen fascination.
It all continued, after that, in a happy blur.
Before long the pixies came fluttering out from the kitchen in a neat procession, bearing plates arranged with meticulous care. Pieces of golden honeycomb candy, the little chocolate bees settled among curls of spun sugar, and the marzipan flowers artfully placed, all of it still faintly aglow with honey light.
The guests were delighted. Lucie could see it on every face. They tasted, and their expressions changed—the honey light doing its quiet work, some private warmth surfacing behind their eyes—and they turned to one another to exclaim over it, and they rose from their seats to drift among the tiered stands, examining the confections on display, asking questions, pointing, marveling.
At one point, glancing across the garden, she caught sight of Lady Rivenna and the High Lady with their heads bent close together in conversation. And as she watched, both of them turned, in the same moment, to look at her. The High Lady’s gaze was appraising and unmistakably interested; Lady Rivenna’s was warm with something that looked very much like pride. The High Lady nodded at something Lady Rivenna said, and Lucie looked away at once, her face going hot, mortified to have been caught watching them watch her.
But her heart was singing. It was all going so perfectly. Every last piece of it. The demonstration, the guests, the honey light, Rosavyn, her family somewhere among the tables, the High Lady nodding as though … as though Lucie were someone worth nodding about. It was everything. It was more than everything. It was the whole of the life she had built stretching out golden before her, and?—
Her gaze, drifting across the assembled guests, snagged on something at the far edge of the gathering. Snagged, stopped, and would not move on.
A man stood at the boundary where the dappled light of the garden gave way to the shadow of the flowering trees. Dark coat. Easy posture. One hand resting loose at his side and the other lifted in the small, animated gesture of a person telling a story he was certain would be well received.
He was speaking with Lord Featherlock. Smiling, nodding, entirely at his ease, as though he had every right in the world to be exactly where he was standing.
Henry.
Chapter Thirty-One
For a moment Luciecould only stare, her mind refusing the plain evidence of her own eyes, turning it over and over and finding no place to set it down.What was he doing here?He had not been invited. Of course he had not. And after saying goodbye to Georgiana this morning, Lucie had believed she would never see Henry Stratton at The Honeycomb again.
But even as the shock of it was still reverberating through her, the cold understanding was already assembling itself behind it, because sheknewhim. She knew how this must have happened.
He would have arrived at the edge, slipping in during the bustle and movement of the guests walking around while they admired the various confections and sampled and asked questions. He would have drifted at the margins and when he brushed an elbow he would have begged pardon with that warm, unhurried charm of his—Forgive me, I did not see you there, but tell me, is that one of the dark chocolate and mint caramels? I confess I have heard the most extraordinary things. What did you make of the florentines?—and no one would have questioned it. Why would they? He was human, yes, but so was Lucie’s own family, somewhere among these very tables. And Henry had a particular gift for behaving as though he belonged somewhere, and so you believed that he did.
And so here he stood, and noone was any the wiser.
Lucie watched with mounting dread as Henry, scratches entirely absent from his face, leaned in. A small movement, just a shift of his weight, a dip of his head, the particular inclination of a man lowering his voice to say a thing not meant to be said too loudly. And Lord Featherlock, who had been smiling, was no longer smiling. A line had appeared between his brows. He drew back a fraction, the way one draws back from a bad smell, and said something, and Henry answered, close and unhurried, and though Lucie could not hear a single word, something cold began to uncurl in her chest.
And then both men turned their heads and looked directly at her.
The cold went through her all at once, sharp as a blade. Lord Featherlock’s gaze rested on her only a moment—assessing, faintly appalled, the look of a man reconsidering something he had just been told—and Lucie stood pinned beneath it, unable to move, unable to breathe, her heart slamming so hard it hurt.
What are you doing, Henry, what are you doing?
Then Lord Featherlock’s gaze moved past her. To someone else. To?—
Lucie followed his eyes.
To Kazrian.
No. No no no no?—
She knew with a certainty that flooded her body like freezing water exactly what Henry was whispering about.
Now all anyone will know you for is this.
She never would have guessed that he would come to her launch and spread the rumor himself. But she had underestimated him. She had underestimated what he would do when he could not have what he wanted.
“The Rowanwood son! The confectioner girl!”
