Anger blazed fiercer now, because he was taking something tender and wholly innocent, something she had held close to her heart all day, and trying to twist it into something sordid. “Then you want a great deal of cleverness indeed,” she snapped, “because that is not at all what happened.”
He moved so quickly she had no time to brace for it. One hand came up against her collarbone and he shoved her backward, hard, into the wall beside the back door. Her shoulders struck stone. The breath jolted out of her. Beside her, the gnome’s neat rows of flower pots wobbled but held.
“Henry!” The word was a gasp torn out of her, more shock than fear, because this was—he had never?—
“I am not the fool, Lucie Fields.” His hand remained on her chest, pressing her against the wall, and his face was very close, the cold in his eyes terrifying. “Not in this.”
She could not think. Her mind had gone blank with the suddenness of it, every thought scattered, every word she might have said caught somewhere behind the hammering of her pulse.
His gaze dropped. She watched it travel to where his hand sat pressedagainst her chest. A humorless laugh, short and sharp, escaped him. “And there it is. The proof of the whole business.” Then he released her with a shove, pushing back from her as though she were something he wished to be rid of. “If you are stupid enough to wear his ring around your neck, then you truly are the fool. You have gone and ruined yourself, Lucie. There is not a decent man in Bloomhaven who will have you after this.”
“Nothing happened?—”
“Do you imagine anyone will believe you?” He shook his head slowly, almost pityingly. “You have been pining after that creature since the day he set foot in your kitchen.”
“That is not?—”
“The whole lane knows it.”
And there it was, the fear that had overtaken her the night before, that everyone would find out about this dreadful thing that had not even occurred, that her family would bear the stain of something she had not even done. But the anger helped to drown the fear out, and she held on tightly to the words Kazrian had spoken the night before.
If any rumor surfaces, their word will be more than sufficient to put an end to it before it takes root.
“The lane knows nothing, and neither do you.” Her voice was rising now, shaking. “And you have no right at all to?—”
“I have every right.” He seized her by the upper arms, both hands, his grip closing hard around them, and stepped in close. “I have made my intentions plain, Lucie, and I have been patient. Exceedingly patient. I have?—”
“You arehurtingme, Henry?—”
“I havewaitedwhile you told me you were busy, while you put me off again and again, and I waited because I understood that you knew precisely where this was leading, and you simply needed time. I offered you?—”
“Stop it, Henry, you are—” His fingers were digging in, so tight it sent a bright spike of pain down to her elbows, and she twisted against his hold and could not break it.“Stop?—”
A furious hiss split the air.
Balthazar launched himself from the open kitchen window in a blur of dark fur and bared fangs and raked his claws across Henry’s face in a single vicious swipe.
Henry cried out and let her go, one hand flying to his cheek as Balthazar dropped to the courtyard stones, magic sparking across his markings. Henry pulled his hand away, and Lucie saw three long scratches scored across the skin, already welling dark with blood. Balthazar gathered to spring again. He leapt onto the lowest of the gnome’s stacked flower pots, then the next, then the next, and from the top tier he swiped out again with one extended paw, catching Henry across the back of his hand.
“Cursed animal!” Henry snarled, and he lunged for the cat with his bloodied hand.
Andthatwas what truly snapped something loose in Lucie’s chest.
She grabbed Balthazar and gathered him hard against her as she stepped back fast into the open doorway. “Do notdaretouch him!”
Henry turned on her, his scratched face twisting, and he looked for one moment as though he might lunge again—at her this time—and Lucie did not wait to discover whether he would. She stumbled backward over the threshold and slammed the door with the whole of her weight behind it, then shoved the bolt across.
She should have done that at the very first. She understood that now, standing with her back pressed to the wood and her heart slamming against her ribs and Balthazar clutched to her chest. She should have followed the very first foolish instinct that had told her to shut the door between them.
His fist struck the door and her heart leaped into her throat, but he did not try the handle. When he spoke, his voice was right there, as though his mouth was pressed to the gap between the door and the frame. “I am finished with you, Lucie. Do you hear me? You could have had a very fine life. You were building yourself into something—truly something—and the two of us together would have been the talk of every good human family in Bloomhaven.” A pause, and then, quieter: “Now all anyone will know you for is this.”
She waited, breathing hard. Balthazar’s magic crackled faintly against her arms, small warm sparks that did not hurt. She heard, after a long moment, the sound of footsteps crossing the courtyard and departing down the lane.
Only then did she allow herself to exhale a long, shuddering breath.
She lowered Balthazar carefully to the kitchen floor and crouched downbefore him, running her hands over him, feeling for anything wrong. “Are you hurt? Did he—are you all right?”
Balthazar submitted to the examination with unusual patience, and then fixed her with a long, level, searching look, ears forward, and there was no mistaking that he was asking her the very same question.
