And eventually she had to go home.
As much as some small, desperate part of her wished to take up permanent residence in The Honeycomb’s bedroom and never face her family again, the world did not permit such conveniences, and so at the end of the day she gathered herself and walked home.
In Elmrow Lane she passed Mrs Dunbar and her daughter, and they gave her startled, overly bright smiles before lowering their heads toward one another, whispering something. And when she was nearly home, Mr Moorfield across the way stood hastily and took himself and his chair inside before Lucie could so much as lift her hand in greeting.
Tears burned hot behind her eyes, because here it was, already happening. The story spreading outward, people who had known her all her life turning away. But the high, thin breathing did not return. Or rather, it flickered at the edges and she breathed through it, and it passed. It seemed, somehow, that the worst of the dread had lived in the anticipation. Now that the thing she had feared most had already happened, there were no longer a dozen fragile plates to keep spinning, no performance of perfection left to maintain. The possibility of perfection was long gone, and there was a strange, bleak liberty in that.
She arrived home and discovered that the confrontation she had been dreading did not materialize, because it turned out that the Fields householdhad, for the first time in its collective memory, developed a talent for avoidance.
Charlotte, mercifully—astonishingly—seemed to have resolved to give Lucie space, for perhaps the first time in their entire lives. And over the next several days, Lucie came to understand that it was guilt. Charlotte had stood up in that garden and accused Henry of lying and hurting her sister, thereby lighting the match that set the rest of it ablaze. She had done it out of love, to defend Lucie, and Lucie wanted to tell her it was not her fault. But the moment did not seem to present itself.
Her father, meanwhile, had retreated into the workshop with a thoroughness that suggested he intended to build his way through the crisis. His daughter might possibly be entangled with a fae lord? This was, without question, a matter best discussed with one’s mother, and Mr Fields appeared to have made this determination with admirable speed. He was kind to Lucie when he saw her—the same steady, quiet kindness he had always offered—but he did not raise the subject, and neither did she, and between the two of them a rather impressive wall of mutual silence was constructed and maintained.
And her mother.
Her mother, who would have the most to say about all of this—whose entire career had been built upon the delicate art of existing beside fae families without ever presuming to be among them, who had watched her own sister-in-law’s heart broken by a fae lord and the scandal that followed—her mother was working.
Late. Every night at her dress shop.
The Rowanwood Masquerade was very nearly upon them, and she had gowns to finish. Commissioned gowns, last stitches, last fittings. Fae ladies for whom it was too late to make alternate arrangements and find another dressmaker, despite the scandal that now surrounded the Fields name. Lucie understood—without either of her parents having to explicitly state it aloud—that her mother needed to finish everything so perfectly, so flawlessly, that these fine fae ladies would think twice about taking their custom elsewhere after the masquerade.
It had always been her mother’s strategy. To be too skilled, too excellent, to discard. But it had never before been quite so pointed, quite so much amatter of survival, and Lucie felt the weight of it settle heavily across her shoulders.
And Kazrian?
Kazrian, she did not see at all.
Lady Rivenna, Lucie understood via Rosavyn, had instructed him to keep his distance from The Honeycomb. For Kazrian to be seen loitering about the kitchen anywhere near Lucie would add precisely the wrong sort of fuel to a fire that wanted nothing more than to be allowed to burn out.
And with all the building’s most pressing problems resolved and only one or two stubborn quirks remaining—which did not affect the running of the shop—Kazrian had no reason to be there any longer.
Lucie told herself she was glad of it. It was sensible. It was safe. It was exactly what the situation required. It was, in fact, what she had expected would happen even before the gossip birds had shrieked her name and Kazrian’s across a garden full of fae nobility.
She could not help noticing, however, that the kitchen felt larger and emptier than it had any business feeling.
A week of it, then.
A week of arriving at The Honeycomb each morning, tying on her apron, and beginning the day’s work beneath the low, persistent hum of scandal that had settled over the shop like weather. It was a steady presence, a consciousness shared by all who walked through the door, that something had happened here, that the confectioner girl and the Rowanwood son had been the talk of every drawing room and every afternoon call for days, and that purchasing a box of honeycomb brittle also afforded one the opportunity to glance toward the kitchen and see her with one’s own eyes.
Lady Rivenna continued as though all were precisely as it should be. She arrived, reviewed the ledgers, drank her tea, and made her observations about the window display.
Rosavyn was a particular grace. She manned the front counter with a brightness that was almost aggressive in its good cheer, as though she were daring anyone to bring up the scandal in her presence. She praised the confections to every customer with an enthusiasm that left no room forgossip, complimented their gowns, inquired after their families, and generally made herself so relentlessly charming that by the time a patron left The Honeycomb, they likely could not quite remember what they had come to gawk at in the first place.
And at home, the careful avoidance held. Lucie was not in a room with her mother long enough to receive more than a glance—tight, weary, unreadable—and exchange more than a few words.Good morning. There is bread on the table. I shall be late again this evening.
More patrons came to The Honeycomb than ever before. They came for the gossip and stayed for the confections, and Lucie supposed there was a bleak sort of triumph in that, if one were inclined to look for triumphs in the wreckage.
No, I did not see the girl, but the honeycomb brittle?—
The honeycomb brittle! Indeed!
Is it not the most marvelous you have ever tasted?
Without a doubt. I find I cannot get enough of it.
It is the honey light, of course. You will not find it elsewhere.
Of course, it is quite unique. I am finding myself partial to Golden Hour.
