Her parents. Charlotte. Lady Rivenna. The whole of the Rowanwood family. The High Lady herself.
Everyone knew.
The high breathing was there, climbing, but some deep self-preservation instinct had hold of her now and would not let go. It told her, cold and certain: you cannot come apart here. Not in front of them. Do not let them see you break.
So she did not.
She gathered herself. She kept her gaze down and stepped out of the circle of Kazrian’s arm. His hand at her waist resisted for the space of a single heartbeat before he released her. She stepped around him. And she began to walk back toward The Honeycomb’s back kitchen door.
Do not run, she told herself.Do not look at anyone. Just walk. One foot, and then the other. Hold yourself together until you are inside.
And as she went, slow and straight-backed across the grass with all those eyes upon her, she heard Lady Rivenna behind her, not missing a beat.
“I did warn you, Nirella, about that storeroom door. Stubbornly locked the whole Season through. I confess I should dearly love to see one of us get shut inside—it would at least imply the wretched thing had consented to open in the first place.”
A hesitant laugh from somewhere. Then another, less hesitant.
“My grandson has worked tirelessly for weeks to set right all the little magical quarrels this old building keeps.”
“Yes, you did speak of it.” Lady Nirella Brightcrest’s voice, taking up her part with the ease of long friendship. “Before the Season had even begun.”
“I did. And meanwhile our Miss Fields has been at her confections from morning until night, week upon week, without a word of complaint. Andsome dratted, pea-brained gossip bird snatches up a fragment here and a fragment there and stitches the scraps into a tale of utter nonsense.” A delicate sigh. “One does wonder that anyone lends the creatures a moment’s credit.”
“One can expect nothing less of a gossip bird,” said Lady Nirella. “They are notorious for muddling the half of what they hear.”
“Just so.”
A pause.
Lucie was almost at the kitchen door.
“I must say, I am rather relieved to have seen the last of Mr Stratton. His sister departed Bloomhaven this morning, did you know? A rather swift engagement, from what I gather. How fortunate for the girl. One does hope she will be very happy indeed.”
Lucie reached the door.
She stepped through it, out of the golden light and the murmuring garden and into the cool dim of the kitchen, and the moment she was across the threshold something in her legs began to tremble.
Balthazar was there. He pressed himself hard against her leg, a warm insistent weight, but she could not stop, could not bend to him, could not do anything but keep moving. She ran for the stairs.
The tears had already begun, spilling hot down her face before she had reached the bottom step, her chest heaving now that no one was left to see it, the high breathing broken at last into ragged, gasping sobs.
Up she went, one hand dragging along the wall, past the storeroom door—the wretched, ruinous storeroom that was the cause of every last piece of this—and on to the other one, the bedroom beyond, and she pushed inside and shoved the door shut behind her and pressed her back against it and slid down until she was sitting on the floor.
And there, alone, with the whole of the life she had built lying in ruins around her, Lucie let herself fall apart.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Lucie was quitesure she would be dismissed that very day.
She was not.
After the tears had run their course and left her hollowed out, and the light coming through the small window had softened from bright afternoon gold to the deeper amber of early evening, she heard footsteps on the stairs. Measured. Unhurried.
Lucie’s body went rigid.
The footsteps reached the landing. Paused. And then Lady Rivenna’s voice called from the other end of the passage, composed and conversational, as though she were merely passing by and had happened to think of something.
“The event has concluded. You were marvelous. I do not say so lightly, and I shall thank you to believe me.”
