“It is notfine. I should not have spoken to you like that.”
“Then I propose a bargain,” Kazrian said quietly. “I shall accept your apology for snapping at me, if you will accept mine for burning your hand.”
“You did not burn my hand. I burned my own hand because I was being stubborn and?—”
“Lucie.” He gave her a small smile. “Do you accept the bargain?”
He watched her shoulders relax. A reluctant smile tugged at the corner of her mouth, and she looked down at her hand, still resting in his. “All right.”
He looked down as well and realized he had been absently brushing his thumb gently up and down against the edge of her hand. He became suddenly aware of the nearness of her. The warmth of her hand in his. The faint scent of vanilla on her skin, and beneath it the familiar sweetness that was just Lucie.
His thumb traced along the base of her palm, then brushed lightly across the soft skin on the inside of her wrist. A small shiver passed through her. He felt it—a tremor that moved through her hand and up her arm, barely there, but undeniable.
The world narrowed.
And suddenly he was seeing Henry’s hand on her arm. He was seeing her step away, swift and rigid, putting distance between herself and a man whose touch she had not wanted. He was hearing again the words that had tormented him for three years:I do not care for you in that way.
Everything inside him froze. He was standing too close. He was holding her hand. He was touching her wrist in a way that had nothing to do with burn salve and everything to do with the fact that he simply … wanted her. But he was doing the very thing Henry had done, giving her attention she had not asked for, standing in her space, touching her in a way that was too familiar.
The horror of it went through him like ice water.
He stepped back. His hand released hers. “Forgive me.” His voice came out strange. Formal, stiff. “That was … I should not have. I apologize.”
Lucie blinked. The softness in her face shifted into confusion. “What? No—there is nothing to?—”
“No, I really should not have.” He took another step back. His handfound the edge of the worktable behind him and gripped it. “I … I should not—” He stopped himself. Drew a breath. “I need to work on something. Upstairs.”
He turned swiftly. Then stopped. Because it was here now, real and tangible, the thing he had needed to apologize for since his return, the thing that had felt like too much to unearth when he had first arrived in this kitchen. He could not step around it any longer.
He swung back around to face her before he could change his mind. “There is something I must say.”
Her lips were parted, her brows drawn lightly together. “All right.”
“About … us. When you were still working at The Charmed Leaf. Before I left.”
“Oh.” She drew back slightly. “No, you do not need?—”
“There is something I must apologize for.”
“No, you really do not—Kazrian, you have apologized a dozen times already?—”
“Not for this. And this is … this is important.”
He steadied himself with a long breath. His eyes had dropped to the floor between them, and he could not seem to lift them. He was not ready for whatever he would find in her expression when the words came out.
“After I arrived in the Shaded Lands, I spent a great deal of time going over everything in my mind. Everything that passed between us. And I realized what must have happened. I misread you. Entirely. I believed you felt something you did not. I was always the one who acted first, the one who was too familiar, too forward, and you—” He stopped. His jaw tightened. “You are human, and you were in my grandmother’s employ. You had every reason to believe that displeasing me might cost you everything. Of course you felt forced.”
She was shaking her head now, eyes growing wider. “Kazrian, that is?—”
“Perhapsforcedis not quite the right word, but I put you in a position where you felt you had no choice. You were reliant on my grandmother for your work, your livelihood, and you must have felt that your position depended on whether you responded favorably to my attentions, so?—”
“Kazrian—”
“—so you acted in a way that made it seem as though you might possibly return my affection. I could not see it at the time, and I am so sorry,Lucie—Miss Fields—so very sorry. The last thing I ever wanted to do was make you feel as though you had no choice?—”
“Kazrian, stop!” He finally looked up. Her expression had cracked open into something raw and stricken. “That is not what happened. Not at all! You did notmake medo anything. Ialwayshad a choice.” She pressed her uninjured hand flat against her midriff and took a breath. “What happened …” She shook her head, swallowed, shut her eyes a moment. “What I did or did not feel is not something that matters any longer. All that matters is that I will not have you carrying guilt over something that never even happened.”
A pause. Kazrian blinked. He turned the words over, tried to make them fit the shape of the story he had carried for three years, and found that they would not. Because if she had not felt pressured—if she had not been acting out of obligation—then why had she …
