“Why not?” asked Rosavyn.
“Because one does not simply?—”
“It is a rite of sisterly fellowship,” Charlotte declared.
“It is not a rite of anything,” Lucie said with a laugh, “and you had not even heard of it until Mrs Penridge’s son told Theo about it a few days ago.”
“Ah, but Rosavyn is determined.” Charlotte spread her hands, the picture of regret at being forced to so unavoidable a conclusion. “And for reasons of safety and propriety, we cannot allow her to go alone. So at leastone of us must accompany her. Which means, really, we should both go. And since we will be there too, we shall simply have to have it done.”
Lucie opened her mouth to observe that this was not, by any measure she knew, how logic worked. And then closed it again. Because the trouble was that here, on this river made of chocolate, under this sky that had no business existing, the world had unhitched itself from its usual moorings, and somehow, in the process, had taken her usual careful, sensible objections with it.
“Oh, very well,” she heard herself say.
Charlotte clapped her hands.
Rosavyn made a sound of pure triumph and added, “Wonderful! It shall be your secret celebration, Lucie, after The Honeycomb launches. A little bee, perhaps. Or a small honeycomb pattern. Something only you and—” she caught herself, but the wickedness won, and she gave Lucie a look that was entirely too knowing “—whomeverwill ever know is there.”
Lucie’s face, which had only just begun to cool, betrayed her all over again.If only you knew, she thought, profoundly grateful that Rosavyn didnotknow.
In the boat beside them, a gentleman in a fine coat was leaning over the side of his vessel and dragging two fingers slowly through the surface of the river.
“Oh!” Rosavyn straightened. “I did not tell you—the chocolate in the river is real. Edible. You can taste it!”
Charlotte was already tugging her gloves off and reaching over the side.
“Is that entirely hygienic?” Lucie asked.
“It is dream chocolate,” Rosavyn said, as though this settled the matter entirely. “Dream chocolate has no hygiene concerns. It is magical. This is known.”
Charlotte had already brought one finger to her lips and made a sound of profound satisfaction that settled the debate. “Oh, Lucie, you simply must taste this. It is surely a professional matter for you.”
With a laugh, Lucie gave in and removed her gloves. She leaned over the edge of the little pearl boat and dipped her fingers into a river of chocolate beneath an impossible sky, and tasted it. And it was indeed extraordinary. Dark and silken and not too sweet, with something floral at the back of it that bloomed rather than faded. She tasted it again just to be certain.
“Well,” she said. “That is rather magnificent.”
The boat carried them on along the winding chocolate river, past dark gleaming banks and beneath low-hanging branches that trailed candy blossoms into the current. Above them, little umbrellas continued to float away, spinning and growing smaller until they were only points of light among the stars.
And then sweets began to rain down again, in every color and shape, and this time they did not turn to chocolate pebbles. Charlotte caught one in her cupped hands. Rosavyn caught three. Lucie caught one against her knee and another in her lap, and soon all three of them were comparing colors and trading shapes and arguing over who had found the finest one, and laughing so hard their stomachs ached and the little boat rocked beneath them.
And the weight of everything Lucie had been carrying for weeks—the launch, the showpiece, Henry, the question of Kazrian that she would not name—loosened its grip, just for a moment, and drifted up and away like one of those little umbrellas, disappearing into the sky.
Chapter Seventeen
“And then,”Lucie said, “there was a river. An entire river, Balthazar, made of chocolate. One could trail one’s fingers in it and taste it, and it was the finest chocolate I have ever had in my life. Well, perhaps not as fine as the chocolate we have sourced for the launch, and which I hope to continue using in our other confections, but close.”
Balthazar, seated on the floorboards in the passageway outside the open storeroom door, looked as though he had never been less interested in anything in his life.
“You would not have approved of any of it,” Lucie went on, easing the storeroom door experimentally back and forth on its hinges. “Far too whimsical. Too many strangers. And there was a great deal of standing about sayingohandlook at that, which you would have found exhausting.” The door swung freely, obligingly, with no inclination whatsoever to shut itself. She stepped out and stood alongside Balthazar, closed the door fully, and waited.
Nothing happened. No click of a lock. She opened the door once more.
“But it was the most magical night of my entire life, and I am telling you so, and you may make whatever face you like about it.”
Balthazar made a face about it. A slow, contemptuous yawn that exposed every one of his small sharp teeth.
“Yes. I thought you might.”
The storeroom door, at least, was behaving. After standing open for several days, it had locked itself again three mornings ago. Even with two crates wedged against it—heavy ones, stacked one atop the other—Lucie had arrived one morning to find the crates shoved neatly aside, the door swung shut, and the lock engaged. The following day, mercifully, had been a Thursday, and on Thursdays the building had always seen fit to open this room, and the door had unlocked and stayed open since.
