And then Charlotte swept into the living area, beaming as though she were presenting the family with a grand gift, and behind her, ducking his head slightly beneath the low beam of the doorway because he was too tall for it, stepping into the small, warm, cluttered heart of the Fields house, came Kazrian Rowanwood.
Lucie forgot how to breathe.
He washere. He was in herhouse. He was standing on the worn rug in the parlor she had known her entire life, beside the collapsed cushion-block castle, in his fine boots that probably cost more than the whole room’s contents together, and the only thing he was looking at was her.
And whatever he had been about to say seemed to leave him entirely, because for a moment he simply stood there holding her gaze. Then a smile broke across his face, slow, warm, and more than a little apologetic.
“Luce—Miss Fields.” A small, polite bow. “Good evening. I—your sister?—”
And Belle and Robbie chose that precise moment to launch themselves at Lucie’s legs with the combined force of their small bodies—which was, it turned out, rather considerable when one was not braced for it. Lucie pitched backward onto the sofa with a gasp and a graceless thud, the children tumbling after her in a heap of shrieking delight.
And from somewhere to the side she heard Theo saying, “Belle—Robbie—no, we do nottacklepeople—” and she could see Kazrian take a step forward, one hand reaching out automatically, and she scrambled upright before he could offer assistance, brushing her skirts down and tucking her hair behind her ear and saying, “I am perfectly fine, thank you, quite all right, absolutely—” while her face burned so thoroughly she was surprised the whole room did not catch light.
Stars above, she was going to kill Charlotte for this.
“Everyone,” Charlotte announced over the sounds of Theo quietly muttering stern instructions to his children about behaving, “you remember Lord Kazrian, of course. I ran into him earlier today, quite by chance, outside the tea house, and I happened to mention Father’s lathe. The belt enchantment, or the—whatever it is that keeps … not working. It has lumyrite at its heart, does it not, Father? And I said to myself, why, Lord Kazrian could put that right in amoment, could he not, being so very clever with all of that. And he was ever so gracious about it, so here he is!”
Silence. Well, it was not quite silence, Lucie reflected, because Belle was rebuilding the castle, so there was the quiet sound of the larger wooden blocks being stacked, and Robbie had begun hiccuping. But that was somehow worse. Lucie was quite certain that in no other home, in the entirety of his life, had Lord Kazrian Rowanwood—son of one of the most distinguished fae families in the Isles, brother-in-law to the prince himself—ever been greeted in this way.
Lucie’s father recovered first, because he was a fundamentally kind man who could not leave a guest standing in awkwardness even when the guest was a fae lord who had materialized in his home on the strength of his daughter’s meddling. “Lord Rowanwood,” he said, and inclined his head. “This is—that is, you are most welcome. Though I would not have dreamed of troubling you with something so trifling as a drive belt.”
“It is no trouble at all, truly,” Kazrian said. “Though I confess I feel I have rather ambushed your evening.” He glanced around—at the collapsed castle, at the children, at the general state of the room—and there was something apologetic in it. “Perhaps this is a poor moment. I would be glad to return another?—”
“Oh, not at all!” Charlotte cut in before anyone else could speak. “No, no, you are quite welcome now, we are only just—we are ages from dinner yet, aren’t we, and Father does so hate to be without his, ah … belt. Lathe belt. Do stay.”
And that was when Lucie’s mother came through from the kitchen.
She came through wiping her hands on her apron, her mouth already forming some likely ordinary question—and then she saw who was standing on her rug. Lucie watched the question die on her lips, watched the single moment of absolute horror take over her mother’s face. And then her body went through a rapid and silent transformation, her spine straightening, her chin lifting, the apron coming off in one smooth motion and vanishing behind the doorframe as though it had never existed.
“Lord Rowanwood,” she said as she stepped into the room. A curtsy, precise and correct. “What an unexpected honor. You must forgive the state of us. We were not expecting company, and the little ones have rather laid siege to the parlor.”
“Mrs Fields, good evening.” Kazrian inclined his head. “And please do not apologize,” he added. “My brother has two of his own—Coralie is three and Emeric is not quite two—and I assure you, this scene is entirely familiar to me. Children do have a way of taking a room apart to its very foundations, do they not?” He looked down at Belle, who had finished rebuilding the castle and had edged forward to inspect the newcomer. “That is a formidable fortification. Is it defended?”
“By a pegasus,” Belle informed him gravely.
“Ah. Might I suggest a dragon? Of the larger variety.”
Belle considered this for a moment. “Will you be the dragon?”
“Oh, ah?—”
“Not right now, dearest,” Lucie’s mother hurried to say, her smile slipping an inch.
Lucie was dying. Quietly, internally, and with enormous composure on the outside. Because he was beingperfect, and her mother’s smile had that fixed quality that meant she was performing gracious welcome over a foundation of pure structural outrage, and Charlotte was still glowing, and her father was already saying, “Well—if you are truly certain—the workshop is just through here—” and gesturing toward the back passage, and Kazrian was saying it would be his pleasure, and the two of them weremoving, they were crossing the room, her father and Kazrian Rowanwood, heading together toward the little workshop at the back of the house as though this were a thing that happened, as though this werenormal?—
And then they were gone, the pair of them, and the parlor was left ringing with their absence.
Lucie moved. She crossed the room, caught Charlotte by the wrist, and towed her bodily into the kitchen, past their mother, who followed at once with the grim inevitability of a storm front.
“What,” Lucie hissed in a furious whisper the moment they were through the doorway, “are youdoing?”
“Fixing Father’s machinery,” said Charlotte serenely, reaching for a cleaning cloth. “You are welcome.”
“Charlotte!” Mrs Fields snatched the cloth from her daughter’s hand. “Do you have the faintestnotion—thefaintest—of how this appears? A fae lord. ARowanwood. In this house. Inthis part of Bloomhaven. With an employee of his own family?—”
“Father’s back has been dreadful,” Charlotte said, locating another cloth and moving to the kitchen table. “You know it has.” She began wiping the surface clean. “He has been hunching over it trying to coax it right, and the thing will not stay fixed no matter what he does. And Kazrian can put it right in moments?—”
“LordKazrian?—”
