From the far side of the kitchen, Kazrian spoke. “Have you any ideas yet? For the showpiece?”
“Oh, ah …” Lucie quickly scratched out the wordforearms. “A few. Nothing fully formed. I have been considering your grandmother’s suggestions—the spun sugar, the chocolate, the light. Whether something delicate and intricate would serve better, or something grander, moretheatrical. Different flavor pairings, different structures …” She traced shapes on the page as she spoke. “I am still turning it all over.”
“I am certain you will come up with something magnificent.”
Their eyes met, and for one unguarded moment she was not in this kitchen at all. She was in the tea house pantry, years ago, the walls pressing close and the air thinning to nothing, a pair of hands finding hers in the dark and holding on?—
She looked down at the page and drew another few lines through the now entirely hiddenforearms. Kazrian said nothing more, and she was grateful to him for letting the moment pass. She kept her eyes on her page but she was aware of him moving along the wall, his hand following some invisible line that traveled above the hearth and toward the other side of the kitchen where?—
Balthazar hissed, rising into a sharp arch, magic crackling in brief, bright sparks along his fur.
Kazrian halted, though he appeared less startled this time than the first. He regarded Balthazar with a respectful wariness. “He still does not seem happy with my presence.”
“He will come around,” Lucie said, with more confidence than she felt. “He simply needs time.”
“You said his name is Balthazar?”
“Yes. Sir Balthazar Grimwhiskers.”
Kazrian smiled. “I know little of him, yet that seems fitting.”
Balthazar looked affronted at the sheer presumption of a stranger having an opinion about his name. He dropped from the chair in one fluid, disdainful movement and stalked out of the kitchen toward the front room.
“How did he come to be here?” Kazrian asked, his attention still on the doorway through which Balthazar had vanished.
“I found him.” Lucie uncorked the rosewater and held it beneath her nose, breathing in the scent. “Around the time Lady Rivenna and I were first settling in here. He was in a back alley off the main lane. Pressed against a wall, thin as anything—you could see his ribs.”
She set the rosewater down, made a note—rose and saffron? or rose and pistachio?—and continued. “I crouched down and spoke to him. Just … normally. Told him where I worked, that there was food, and a hearth, and no one would bother him. Then I left.”
“And he followed you?”
“From a distance.” She smiled at the memory. “I pretended not to notice.”
Kazrian’s hand was still pressed to the wall, but his attention was no longer on the lattice. He was watching her with that quiet, focused look of his, the one that made her feel as though nothing else in the room existed but whatever she was saying.
“I left food on the back step for over a week,” Lucie continued, reaching for the crushed pistachios and letting a few fall into her palm, examining the color. “Every morning the dish was empty. I never saw him. Then I moved the dish inside—near the hearth, with that cushion beside it.” She brushed the pistachios back into the jar. “Another week, and still I did not see him. And then one morning I came through the door and there he was. On the cushion. Not asleep, just … waiting. Watching me. Deciding.”
“What did you do?”
Lucie shrugged. “I said good morning. As though it were perfectly normal. And then I started working.”
“And he decided to stay.”
“Yes.”
She opened a tin of dried lavender and held it to her nose, breathing in its scent. Perhaps this was not so terrible after all. They could do this—hold a conversation that did not trip over itself with courtesies and averted gazes. Perhaps the trick was simply to have something else to talk about.
“And the name?” Kazrian asked. “Sir Balthazar Grimwhiskers?”
Lucie smiled to herself. “I tried several names that seemed fitting for a cat. Buttercream. Nutmeg. Whiskers. He appeared to be profoundly offended by them all.”
“I can imagine.”
“Then Georgiana left a novel on the counter one afternoon—she reads during her lunch—and he climbed on top of it and refused to move. Georgiana had mentioned a character named Sir Balthazar Grimley, so I tried Sir Balthazar Grimwhiskers, on the theory that a cat who found Whiskers beneath him might tolerate it in a more distinguished form.” Lucie shrugged and lowered the lavender tin to the table. “He seems to have accepted this.”
After a pause, Kazrian said, “You speak to him as if he understands you.”
Lucie glanced up. “Because he does.”
