Lady Brightcrest arriving at half past two to collect her order.
Lucie’s heart gave a single hard thump. Lady Brightcrest’s order. The rose creams infused with Golden Hour honey light. But they were not … Whytoday? The shop was closed today. Georgiana was not here. There would be no one to greet Lady Brightcrest at the front or to?—
Lucie glanced toward the cooling rack, where the finished confectionsfrom yesterday’s batch sat on a tray, set but not yet boxed, not yet wrapped in the perfectly pleasing way Georgiana always presented them.
For a brief, breathless moment, Lucie’s thoughts scattered. Lady Brightcrest would take offense, Lady Rivenna would be so disappointed, and she would tell Lucie she was no longer the best choice for The Honeycomb, and then?—
Lucie gripped the rose-gold ring that hung around her neck and squeezed and?—
No. This was fine.
She breathed, and thought, and the scattered pieces came back together.
The rose creams were finished and flawless. She would box them herself over her lunch break. The gold-embossed boxes were in the front room, the tissue paper was in the cabinet by the display cases, and she knew exactly where Georgiana kept the ribbon. She could have the order packaged and ready well before half past two.
She would wash her hands and face, remove her work apron, and tidy her hair. She would greet Lady Brightcrest herself. She had done it before. She knew how to make a fae noblewoman feel attended to without overstepping, how to be warm but not presumptuous, how to present an order as though it were a gift rather than a transaction. Her mother had taught her that.
Her mother, in fact, had taught her nearly everything she knew about navigating a world that was not built for people like them.
Mrs Fields was a dressmaker, one of the most respected in Bloomhaven. She dressed fae ladies. She handled silks and enchanted fabrics and the kinds of embroidered underlayers that only the finest households could afford, and she did so with a warmth and professionalism that had earned her a reputation spanning decades. Fae families trusted her. They invited her into their homes for fittings, shared confidences in her presence. She had built something lasting and respected, all within the bounds of what a human woman was permitted to build. And Lucie had absorbed all of it, learning from her mother’s steady example.
Be gracious. Be excellent at your work. Read the room before you enter it. Know where the line is, and stay on the right side of it.
Aside from the scandal with her aunt and a fae lord—which had happenedlong before Lucie was born and before her mother’s business had taken off—the Fields family had never given anyone cause to speak ill of them. Lucie’s father, who was a fine woodworker and whose hands could turn a plank of oak into something beautiful enough to sit in a fae lord’s study, had the same quiet pride in his craft. They were good, hardworking people. They had built a good life.
Lucie would not allow herself to disappoint them—or Lady Rivenna, who had, for some unfathomable reason, placed so much trust in her.
Lucie crossed to the enchanted list, reached for the quill that hovered at its side, and made a quick amendment to Lady Rivenna’s note:Tie violets into the ribbon, because she had just remembered, from her time working at The Charmed Leaf, that Lady Brightcrest had a weakness for candied violets.
She stepped back. There. Handled. She would manage it perfectly, the way she always managed things.
Now, back to the caramels. It was too warm in the kitchen this morning and the cooling cabinets could not be trusted to maintain an ideal temperature until they were fixed. The front room of The Honeycomb, however, would likely be perfect. Its two large front windows did not catch the morning sun, and with the shop closed today, there would be no one to disturb the caramels. The display counter would provide a perfectly suitable surface for a baking tray to rest on for an hour.
“I am taking the caramels to the front,” she announced to Balthazar. “Do not follow me and breathe on them.”
One ear rotated in her direction. The rest of him did not move.
Lucie rounded the worktable to collect the tray from the far side. Gripping the sides, she lifted it carefully and turned toward the open doorway leading to the?—
She walked directly into a wall of someone, the tray’s edge jolting hard against her ribs and her heart almost lurching clear of her chest in fright.
“Oh, goodness!” the someone said. “Forgive me, I?—”
Lucie’s gaze flew upward. Gray eyes. Startled and so shockingly familiar that her mind simply refused, for one blank and airless moment, to accept what it was seeing.
The world stopped. Her entire body went instantly numb, and if his hands had not already risen automatically to grasp the edges of the tray, it would have crashed to the floor between them.
“Kazrian,” she breathed.
Chapter Three
“Lucie,”he said, barely above a whisper, and the sound of her name in his voice after three years gripped something inside her chest and squeezed.
She blinked. Blinked again. Her mind, which was generally quite dependable, had apparently decided that this was an excellent time to stop working entirely. Every coherent thought scattered like flour thrown into the wind.
He was here. Kazrian Rowanwood, whom she had convinced herself she would very likely never see again, was standing in her kitchen.In her kitchen.
She had imagined this. Not often—certainly not often—but on the rare occasion when her defenses were down and a stray thought slipped past her carefully maintained fortifications, she had wondered what it might be like to see him again. In those imaginings, she was always composed. Poised. She would smile and greet him and demonstrate, through the sheer force of her elegant calm, that she had moved on entirely and was doing very well indeed, thank you.
