“No.” He shook his head, a small, quick movement, and the smile that accompanied it was entirely unguarded. “Do not apologize. I asked because I wanted to know. And I find it interesting.”
“Well. That is—thank you. For listening to me prattle.” She could feel the heat still sitting stubbornly in her cheeks and willed it to leave. It did not.
They returned, after a moment, to the sketch. And it was only some time later, when they’d refined the spindle and argued amiably about how many curved panels the framework should have—Kazrian favoring fewer for structural integrity, Lucie wanting more so the opening would look like a flower unfurling rather than a box lid opening—that Lucie became aware ofhow close her arm was to his. They were both leaning over the book, elbows on the table, her forearm alongside his with scarcely a hand’s breadth between. When had that happened? Had she drifted toward him, or he toward her?
She could not move away now. That would only draw attention to how close they were, and it seemed Kazrian had not noticed. And besides, his nearness really did not affect her that much. She was perfectly capable of working alongside a person without being undone by the proximity of a forearm. Especially since the person in question was the man she very definitely, under no circumstances, harbored any lingering feelings for whatsoever.
“—though I still maintain,” Kazrian was saying, “that if you insist on chocolate bees, I feel compelled to point out that the likelihood of it being a warm afternoon is high, and that chocolate has a well-documented tendency to melt.”
“They will not melt. I shall temper them within an inch of their lives.”
“I’m not certain whether a chocolate bee can be tempered against direct sunlight, Lucie, it is simply?—”
“Says the man who has never tempered a chocolateanythingin his life.”
“That is true,” he conceded. “I have not. I am, in fact, spectacularly useless in all matters of baking, as you are already well aware.”
“Perhaps notallmatters of baking,” Lucie said. “If I recall correctly, you are exceptionally talented at drawing lopsided pictures in flour.”
Kazrian shut his eyes and groaned. “No.”
“That portrait you drew of your brooding brother in Orrit’s flour?—”
“Oh good stars?—”
“—ought to have been framed. Hung in a gallery. Given its own wall in the exhibition of Truly Terrible Artworks.”
Kazrian shook his head, but he was fighting laughter now. “The term ‘artwork’ does not belong anywhere near that questionable portrait I drew.”
“And yet Orrit recognized who it wasimmediately,” Lucie pressed, delighted. “Even your grandmother smothered a laugh before she could stop herself. And then she wiped it clean before Jas—Lord—” Lucie caught herself. “Before your brother could see it.”
Lucie was laughing now, really laughing, the sort that rose up from somewhere deep and took over before she could stop it, and Kazrian waslaughing too, the two of them bent over the sketch and helpless with it. And for a moment, the three years apart and the Rowanwood name and the carefully measured distances ceased to exist. There was only this.
And then Balthazar hissed loudly, and Lucie’s gaze shot up, and there was Henry standing in the back doorway.
Her laughter caught in her throat, and she straightened so fast she sent the pencil spinning across the worktable. “Henry! Good morning.”
How long had he been there? His arms were crossed loosely over his chest, and he was smiling, but the smile did not sit quite right. Lucie stepped back, putting a clean, visible foot of space between herself and Kazrian.
“I did not hear you come in,” she added.
“The back door was open. I did not want to interrupt. You seemed to be enjoying yourselves.”
“We were just working on the showpiece. The structure for it.”
“So I see.” Henry walked forward, and by the time he reached the other end of the worktable, the smile had warmed back into the old, easy Henry-smile.
“Mr Stratton,” Kazrian said, inclining his head.
“Lord Rowanwood. Good to see you again. And how are the repairs? Nearly finished, I hope?”
“Finished entirely,” Kazrian said. “As of last evening. Oh.” He turned to Lucie. “I meant to ask you if Evryn has been by. I asked him to?—”
And in that moment, something round and yellow shot off the high shelf above the cooling racks, bounced off the opposite wall, and landed on the floor.
There was a silence.
All three of them looked at the small yellow object—a lemon, Lucie saw, realizing now that that was where she must have left it the previous afternoon when she’d been interrupted by a delivery. It was now lying on the floor across the room from the shelf, exactly as though it had been thrown.
