“I’m—I’m all right.” Her voice came out thin. She looked down at her hands and watched them shake. “I am … I think I am more angry than anything else.”
She sat back on the floor. The trembling was getting worse, not better, spreading from her hands up through her arms to her shoulders. She curled her fingers into fists and pressed them against her knees. “Howdarehe. How dare he lay a hand on either of us.”
Balthazar’s tail gave a slow, furious lash of agreement.
And then her anger dissolved and all her fears came bearing down on her at once. Henry knew. Somehow he knew. Perhaps it was the gossip bird, or perhaps he had been watching. Ruined. The whole of society knowing about it, whispering about it, and the disgrace falling not only on her and her family, but on Kazrian and the Rowanwoods, who had never been anything but kind to her.
And whether it had come from the gossip bird, or from his own watching, or from some neighbor in the lane who had also remained late last night and seen something and carried it to him, it did not matter. The story was out there.
She felt her breathing climb high and shallow into her chest, that familiar terrible thinning, and she pressed Kazrian’s ring hard between her thumb and forefinger. Balthazar pushed himself firmly against her knee, and she spread her other hand through his fur. Warm metal, Balthazar’s soft fur, the occasional zing of magic sparking faintly against her skin, and a slow breath in … hold … and a slow breath out.
The panic did not take hold.
She breathed slowly and steadily until the tightness eased.
She gathered up every terrible possibility, folded them tight, and shut them away in some far corner of her mind, because there was no sense in tormenting herself over a thing that may not have even happened yet.
And then she looked toward the back door. No. She was not going outthere again tonight. Not while there remained the smallest chance that Henry lingered somewhere nearby.
It was fine. She would stay here. She knew, now, that a pile of cushions arranged on the floor made a perfectly comfortable bed. It was still Thursday. It was possible the storeroom door was still unlocked. She could carry the cushions into Lady Rivenna’s study and sleep there.
She ran her knuckles along the soft underside of Balthazar’s chin, then uncurled her fingers from around the ring, left it sitting as a heavy, comforting weight against her chest, and pushed herself to her feet.
She would be fine.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Lucie woke slowly,and for several moments there was only the soft gray light and the weight of the blanket and the quiet of The Honeycomb around her. She thought of the evening before, of Henry, and she registered fear at the edges of her mind, but distantly, the way one might notice weather happening a long way off. A storm on some far hill that could not reach her here. Because the larger thing, far more present, was relief.
He was gone.
He was finished with her, and she, far more importantly, was finished with him. Whatever small, dutiful part of her had once thought she would give him a proper chance after the launch had been slammed shut as firmly as the kitchen door, and she had no intention of opening it again.
She lay still for another moment, breathing in the quiet, and became aware of a weight on her feet. She lifted her head from the cushion and looked down.
Balthazar was curled there, settled atop the blanket in a neat, compact circle, his tail wrapped precisely around his body and one paw folded over his nose. He was asleep, or doing a very convincing impression of it.
Something in her chest went soft.
She let her head fall back against the cushion and stared at the ceiling. Her mind drifted to the morning before, to Kazrian beside her, and shethought,I could be happy with this. Just this. Kazrian beside me. Balthazar curled up nearby. The Honeycomb around us.
It was a dangerous thought, the kind that had no business existing in the mind of a practical woman with a launch to manage and a reputation to protect and a family who would be horrified if they knew. She let herself have it anyway, just for a moment, lying on the cushions in the early light with nothing to interrupt her and no one to see the expression on her face.
“Lucie? Lucie, are you here?”
Lucie’s eyelids flew open, her heart giving a single hard knock against her ribs before her mind caught up and identified the voice.
Charlotte.
She sat up, letting the blanket fall. She wore nothing but her shift, but it was only Charlotte, so there was no need to reach for anything to cover herself.
“It is I!” came her sister’s voice. “Do not be alarmed! Where are you?”
“Up here,” Lucie called out. “In the study.”
Footsteps on the stairs. Then in the passageway. Then a knock on the study door, which was already ajar, followed immediately by Charlotte pushing it open without waiting for a response, because that was not something Charlotte generally did.
“There you are!” Her sister appeared in the doorway, a shawl wrapped around her shoulders. “Good stars, Lucie, are you sleeping on the floor?”
