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“I feared you meant to challenge me, Your Grace.” She would invoke Hestia herself if need be. Luckily, however: “I have just the thing.”
***
Alwyn flexed his fingers over the handle of the mug. It was sturdier than a teacup—imagine trying to take tea with the Lowell Hall crowd, him with his big, ungainly paws. He’d crush the duchess’s delicate porcelain into dust. A veritable bull in a china shop.
Miss Barrington rummaged around her stores with a vengeance, as though preparing to storm the Belgian front. He’d laid it on a bit thick about the hair but reaped the desired result. The lady’s jaw had set, determined neither to deepen his shame nor take the situation lightly.
He had not stopped thinking about her slim body lying next to his on her coat. Of her face tucked into his shoulder. Of her scent, of how close he had come to kissing her. Would she welcome his kisses? He was not afraid to ask.
But first, a scene must be set. He balked at the thought of hands in his hair, but up to now, her touch had been soothing. He would allow her to provide a solution to his dilemma and thus encourage her talents and begin his courtship in earnest.
Her healing shed was as good a place as any for such an endeavor. The sound of the water slowly bubbling in the pot over the fire, of the click of a glass jar on a wooden work top, the clean scent of tea leaves: it was a balm to the soul. The flames of the beeswax candles (had her eager apian suitor supplied her with those as well?) flickered gently as she moved about the place, and he relaxed his vigilance, going so far as to rise and shut the door.
As ever, the lady apothecary did not press, and as ever, silence descended—no, this was not silence, this was quiet. This was peace. A peace strong enough to contain his sorry tale, to allow him the relief of having told someone the truth, of not facing judgment for the mistake that had cost him his freedom.
He did not feel shame for what he had done. He would do it again, did he see a Shifter or human in danger or distress. Who would he be if he let fear rule him? Who indeed…
Alwyn joined Miss Barrington at her table, where she mixed Palu only knew what in a large bowl. “From which exotic stop on your travels does this originate?”
“You will be amazed to hear this is a good old-fashioned English concoction that relies heavily on native marshmallow root.” She set out a tea towel, a comb, a smaller bowl. “I have, however, tempered its scent with a pinch of foreign lavender from the south of France. When we were there, I—well. Do sit here, Your Grace.” She indicated a high stool.
He sat upon it. “Do you seek to tantalize your listeners by never finishing an anecdote?”
“No one is interested. Not truly.” She mixed cream into oil and swirled it about with her fingers. “When we were abroad, no one wished to speak of home. Now back at home, no one wishes to hear of abroad.”
“I find myself tantalized.” She dropped the comb to the floor and fussed over washing it off. “When you were in the south of France…”
“When we were in the south of France,” she repeated, “we stayed for some time in Valensole. Timothy had students clamoring for his language skills—he could teach a stone to speak English—and while there, I was able to tend and harvest my very own lavender field.”
“Was that your most memorable experience?”
“One of many.”
“What is your first memory? Of your time abroad.”
She smiled into the bowl and scooped some of the substance into a smaller one. “Dawn in Calais. I am an early riser by nature, but waking there was like taking my first breath of life.” She stood behind him, and he marveled at his acceptance of having someone at his back. “We were safe and free.”
“Were you in danger?”
“My brother had a lover, of like gender, and it became prudent that we embark on our version of a Grand Tour.” Her light tone did nothing to disguise the import of her confidence.
He was about to respond when she slicked some of the lotion onto the ends of his hair. It smelled like fresh grass in the height of August; it called to mind hazy days of idleness and adventure combined. She gently combed it through, holding a good portion of the length so it didn’t pull on his scalp. Alwyn said, “This smells like summer.”
“There is a dash of meadowsweet oil in it as well. I am sure that is common in Wales at that time of year.”
“The two or three days we enjoyed of that precious season. Oh, the rain, the rain…though we did have meadowsweet to show for the damp, if not beautiful fields of lavender. Not much else to show for it at all.” She drew the tonic through another lock of hair he’d thought was hopelessly tangled; her gentle touch convinced every strand to yield to her will. “Nor much to show for being a duke in Wales. Nor a lion.”
“I had thought it an unlikely pairing, lions and Wales,” she said. “Timothy told me the lion is the symbol on the arms of your namesake, Llewellyn the Great. He said no one knew how it came about.”
“The dukedom was conferred upon us by an ancestor of George’s to make up for our kind forever being poached.” He would not dwell on that, he could not. It was all he could do to surrender to the work of her hands. He breathed, and she breathed, and the scent of the summer and her essence, faint as it still was, soothed him. “Despite our superior strength, if we are set upon, alone byhomo plenumin numbers, there is naught we can do but Change, and that is not permitted.”
“Even to save yourself? Or a helpless child?”
“A hunter who has discovered a man may turn into a lion will not leave off the hunt for more.”
Another application of the stuff, but with a caress to his skull. His courtship was making headway.
Oh, how his lion loved a pun. Alwyn was certain the whole world would be shocked to discover his dignified and lethal essential self adored a low play on words. He sighed and received another stroke to his scalp and imagined a purr deep within.
