Lucie set the bottle down and permitted herself a small, private smile into the batter. “That part, at least, is true,” she said. “You shall discover it in due course.”
“Lucie.”
“Now.” She measured out a spoonful of the ambervine nectar with great deliberation. “A far more pressing matter. For the wedding breakfast. I havebeen going back and forth, and I cannot for the life of me settle it, so you shall have to be the deciding vote. The honeyed rosewater comfits or the elderflower champagne jellies?”
Kazrian regarded her steadily. “I shall render my verdict the very moment you have told me your Stardust secret.”
“That is arrant blackmail.”
“It is negotiation. There is a difference, and it is an important one, and I shall be glad to explain it to you at length once you have?—”
“The jellies, then. I shall simply decide for both of us.”
“You cannot decide for both of us. It is a matter of grave and solemn importance and I insist upon my rightful say.”
“You forfeited your say,” said Lucie, “the moment you attempted extortion in my kitchen.” She glanced sideways at the hearth. “Balthazar, you heard him. You are my witness.”
Balthazar did not so much as crack an eye. But his tail, which had been lying still, gave one slow, deliberate curl.
“There,” said Kazrian at once, with enormous satisfaction. “You see? He curled his tail. That is agreement. He agrees with me entirely. He believes you should tell me.”
“He did no such thing. He is asleep.”
“He is plainly awake and plainly on my side. Balthazar and I have reached a complete understanding on the subject. We discussed it some time ago.” Kazrian turned to address the hearth directly. “Is that not so, sir?”
Balthazar, with the air of a creature who had heard quite enough foolishness for one morning, rose, turned around once with immense dignity, and settled again facing the wall, presenting the whole of his back to both of them.
“He has recused himself,” said Lucie.
“He is considering his verdict.”
“He has gone back to sleep.”
“That,” said Kazrian, “is precisely what considering a verdict looks like, in a cat of his gravity.”
She laughed, and turned back to her bowl, and thought the matter comfortably closed.
She ought to have known better.
Because the next thing she knew, two large warm hands had settled ather waist, and the floor was no longer beneath her, and the whole bright kitchen tilted and swung as Kazrian lifted her clean off her feet and set her down upon the edge of the worktable.
“There,” he said, with the deep satisfaction of a man who has solved a difficult problem. “Now we may have this conversation properly. Face to face.”
Lucie clutched the edge of the table and stared at him, scandalized to the very marrow. “You cannot—you cannot simplypick a person up!”
“I am reasonably confident I just did.”
“But I—you—on a kitchen worktable, of all things!”
“You are short,” he said, as though this explained and excused the whole of it. “We have long since established this. It is one of the few genuinely settled matters between us. And I have grown weary of conducting our disputes while addressing the top of your head. The problem now stands solved.”
“What we have established,” said Lucie with tremendous dignity, given the circumstances, “is that you are unreasonably tall, and that the correct remedy has always been for you to bend.”
“I do not need to bend.” He stepped in closer and set one hand on the wood to either side of her, so that she was framed neatly between his arms, and lowered his voice to something warm and unhurried. “Because now—you’ll observe—you are at exactly the perfect height.”
And he was close. He was very close. His face was right before hers, near enough that she could see the small line at the corner of his mouth that came when he was trying not to smile too broadly and failing, and they were near enough to be breathing the very same warm honeyed air.
It had taken work, this. She could remember, still, even after all those dances at the masquerade, even after that first kiss, how careful he had been for weeks. How he had held himself always a courteous half step too far away, forever waiting to be quite certain he had leave, as though her nearness were a thing he had no right to assume. She had had to tell him, more than once and in plain words, that she wanted him near. That she had always wanted him near. That he need not stand a polite mile off, hands clasped behind his back like a footman awaiting instruction.
