Lucie blinked several times before stuttering, “I said … many. There is …are… many … things to be getting on with.” She gestured to the room at large. “A great many. That is what I said.”
It was not at all what she had said. Kazrian had heard her perfectly well, and she had now clearly said the nameHenrytwice. But he watched her andunderstood several things at once: that the name belonged to someone she did not wish to discuss, that whoever Henry was occupied a place in her days substantial enough to surface twice without invitation, and that pushing on it would be precisely the sort of thing a civil acquaintance who had only just met her would never dream of doing.
He had told her he wanted to begin again. A man beginning again did not interrogate a woman about the men in her present life.
“Many things,” he said. “Of course. I shall endeavor to add as little as possible to the total.”
“You are not adding,” she said, too quickly. “You’re subtracting. From the list of things that are broken. Which is—helpful. Genuinely.”
“Well. That is … good.”
“In any case,” she said, to the worktable. “I should?—”
“Yes,” he said. “You’ve a great deal—many things?—”
“Many things.”
“—to be getting on with. And I ought to begin looking at the—” He turned toward the nearest stretch of wall where the lattice ran close to the surface, grateful beyond measure for the existence of infrastructure, for problems with diagnosable solutions. “The branching, here. Where it meets the older enchantments. I expect that’s where most of your trouble?—”
The back door of The Honeycomb opened and his grandmother stepped into the kitchen.
Kazrian and Lucie moved at the same instant.
It was not a coordinated effort. It was not discussed or signaled or agreed upon in any way. It was simply that some deep, shared instinct—honed by years of proximity to this particular woman and both her terrifyingly perceptive gaze and her magical ability to see the patterns connecting people—propelled them both into immediate action.
Lucie turned to the worktable, seized the cloth, and began wiping again, her posture radiating industrious calm. Kazrian leaned closer to the wall and adopted an expression of mild professional interest.
Nothing to observe here. No patterns. No connections. No threads of any kind worth following.Which was, unfortunately, the truth. Because apparently there was aHenry, and from the particular way Lucie had not wished to elaborate on the subject, there very likely existed between Henry and Lucieprecisely the sort of connections that had never had the chance to form between Lucie and himself.
“Ah, good,” Lady Rivenna said, setting her gloves upon the counter. “You found your way here, Kazrian. Have you had a look around?”
“I have, yes, and I’m formulating a plan for where to begin with the repairs.”
“Excellent,” Lady Rivenna said. Her gaze swept the kitchen and landed on the far counter. Her eyes narrowed. “Cat.”
Balthazar narrowed his eyes in return. His tail gave a single, deliberate flick.
“May I help you with your cloak, Grandmother?” Kazrian offered, crossing the space toward her.
“Yes, thank you.” She turned her back to him and Kazrian drew the cloak from her shoulders.
“Ah. You received my reminder about Lady Brightcrest,” his grandmother added, presumably addressing Lucie now, since Kazrian had not the faintest notion of any reminder.
“I did,” Lucie said. “I shall have the order boxed and ready to present well before the afternoon.”
“Wonderful. Ah, just there, thank you,” she added to Kazrian, pointing to the row of coat pegs mounted on the wall beside the back door. “Now, come with me to the study, Kazrian. Tell me what you have taken note of thus far, and we shall lay out a proper plan for the repairs.” She was already moving as she said it, heading for the staircase.
Do not look, Kazrian told himself.
He made it to the bottom of the staircase before he failed. He glanced back, found Lucie’s eyes already on him, and his heart gave a single painful thump.
They both looked away at the same time.
Kazrian cleared his throat and ascended the stairs.
And tripped for the third time.
Chapter Five
