Reluctant to do anything that would please him after he’d insulted Lucivar but not having enough nerve to defy him, she lifted the mug and sniffed. It smelled good. She took a sip. It tasted even better.

“You’re making stew?” he asked.

“Yes.”

He washed his hands and began moving around her kitchen with a confidence that looked like he was used to being in kitchens. Which wasn’t likely.

“His social skills are rough, to put it kindly,” Saetan said. “He just smashes through an obstacle instead of considering if there’s a quieter way around it.”

Maybe Lucivar’s social skills were rough compared to a slick Hayllian, but that wasn’t saying much. She’d rather have rough and honest than slick any day.

“Here, darling.” Saetan returned to the table and placed a cutting board, the carrots, and a knife in front of her. “Do you feel well enough to cut up the carrots?”

“I feel fine.” As he turned away from the table, she drank the rest of the brew and put the mug aside. She picked up the knife, then looked at the carrots. They were cleaned and the ends were neatly cut off. She didn’t remember doing that, but she must have.

chop

He moved around her kitchen, but she didn’t dare look up to see what he was doing since he kept grumbling about Lucivar and she was afraid of what she might say if she actually looked at him right now.

chop chop chop

Who did he think he was, anyway? He had no right to come into Lucivar’s home and criticize. She didn’t care if he was Lucivar’s father and the Steward of the Dark Court and the High Lord of Hell. He had no business criticizing Lucivar in public. Well, maybe not in public, since they were in the kitchen, but he shouldn’t be saying these things to Prince Yaslana’s housekeeper. It wasn’t right.

chop chop

And it wasn’t his business, was it? If she and Lucivar had clashed this morning, it had nothing to do with him. He didn’t live here.

She heard a quiet sizzle, but it was gone so fast she wasn’t sure she’d really heard anything, so she kept her eyes focused on the cutting board.

chop chop chop

So Lucivar was a little rough around the edges. So what? There wasn’t an Eyrien male who wasn’t. But he was kind, and if he got testy when he thought she was working too hard, wasn’t that better than someone who expected her to work until she was exhausted and still didn’t think she’d done enough? If she hadn’t snapped at him this morning, if she’d kept a tighter hold on her own emotions and told him she was planning to rest today, they wouldn’t have argued, and he wouldn’t have left because she’d made him unhappy.

chop chop

That wasn’t the point. The point was his father had no right to be grumbling about his son, and if she were Lucivar’s lover instead of his housekeeper, she’d tell his father a thing or two. Oh, yes, she would.

Slick Hayllian. Bah!

“Finished?”

The amusement in his voice confused her enough that he slipped the knife out of her hand before she realized he’d reached for it. He set another mug down in front of her and took the cutting board away.

She sniffed. There was a lingering scent of cooked meat in the air. She looked at the counter—and frowned at the bowl of cut vegetables. She looked at the stove and saw the big kettle she used for soups and stews, the witchfire beneath it spread in a circle that was perfect for simmering whatever was in the kettle.

“Now,” Saetan said as he settled his cape around his shoulders. “Lucivar is what he is. No social skills, or lack of them, can change a Warlord Prince’s nature. If you want to punish him for snapping at you this morning, you go do the kind of heavy work that will most certainly cause you pain today. But if he matters enough to show him kindness, you’ll let him make the biscuits to go with the stew and you’ll tuck yourself in this afternoon and do something that won’t make demands on your body. You’ll let him fuss over you a little. If he doesn’t have to fight you to protect you, it will make things easier for both of you.”

She studied him. “What you said about Lucivar. You didn’t mean any of it, did you?”

He smiled. “He’s physical, demanding, and rough around the edges. In other words, he’s Eyrien. I wouldn’t want him to be any other way. But it was an effective way of keeping you distracted.”

He brushed a hand over her hair, leaned over, and kissed her forehead. There was something so . . . fatherly . . . in the gesture, she felt tears sting her eyes.

After he left the eyrie, she sat at the table, sipping the brew he’d made for her and thinking about what he’d said.

Lucivar quietly closed the eyrie’s front door, then stood still a moment, listening. No sounds. No indication of any kind of what he was walking into.

He couldn’t stay away. The worry that she’d do something foolish because he’d jumped on her that morning had gnawed at him. He knew witches tended to snap and snarl when they felt the most vulnerable. Hell’s fire, he’d slammed his will against Jaenelle’s enough times over the past three years to figure out aggression pitted against vulnerability only caused hurt feelings on both sides. Asking for a favor always got better results than making demands. But when he saw Marian sweeping the floor that morning, his temper had snapped the leash. Now all he could do was hope he could repair whatever damage he’d done.

He found her in the kitchen, her hands wrapped around a mug. She glanced up when she saw him, then looked down at the mug.

Feeling miserable and awkward, he leaned against the counter. “I . . . ah . . . picked up some bread at the baker’s.” When she just nodded, he winced. Still pissed off at him. “I also picked up this.” He called in a box, set it on the table near her, then stepped back. When she opened it, her lower lip trembled.

Hell’s fire. Being whipped didn’t hurt this much. Chocolate fudge was the bribe when it came to being forgiven for doing something stupid and male. At least, it usually worked with Jaenelle and the coven. He knew Marian liked fudge because she’d bought some from that same sweetshop in Riada, but she wasn’t giving in enough to even taste it.

Looking around the kitchen, he spotted the kettle. “You made stew.”

“Actually, your father made the stew,” Marian said. “He showed up a little while after you left.”

Lucivar clenched his teeth. Well, wasn’t that just fine and wonderful? If he’d offered to help make the stew, she would have snapped at him. But his father could walk in here and make the damn thing without so much as a yip out of her. And, damn it, he was not going to be jealous of his own father.

Of course he was.

“You let him make the stew.”

“I didn’t let him do anything,” Marian said, sounding testy. “One minute he was criticizing you for getting me upset and the next he was making the stew. I think.”

“You think?”

“I don’t care if he’s your father, he had no right to criticize you about what you do in your own home. And when he gave me the carrots to cut up—”

“Wait.” Lucivar raised a hand. “He gave you the carrots?”

Marian bristled. “What’s wrong with that? I’m perfectly capable of cutting up a few carrots.”

He held up both hands in a placating gesture. She did get feisty when she was riled. “I didn’t say there was anything wrong with it. It’s just not the vegetable I would have given a woman who was holding a sharp knife and was pissed off at men.”

When she gave him a blank look, he decided to move the conversation along before she figured out what he meant. “So you cut up the carrots and . . . ?”

“And I was so annoyed with him, I didn’t pay attention to what he was doing, and the next thing I knew the meat was cooking and the rest of the vegetables were ready to go in when it was time.” She frowned at the mug. “And he made this brew for me.”

Lucivar waited. “So what did he say about me?”

She shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. He didn’t mean any of it. He told me so after he made the stew.”

He didn’t appreciate being criticized, but wasn’t it interesting that it had annoyed her enough that she hadn’t paid attention to what was going on in her own kitchen?

“But then he said . . .”

Lucivar studied her. She looked so baffled. “What?”

“He said if I wanted to be kind, I would let you make the biscuits . . . and let you fuss over me a little.”

“I can make biscuits.”

She shook her head. “You bought some bread.”

Not sure how she’d respond to him, he moved closer to her and ran a hand over her hair.

She looked up at him. “Why did he do that?”

“Make the stew?” He leaned over and kissed her forehead, hoping she’d take it as a friendly gesture—and wanting to kiss her in ways that had nothing to do with being friends. “He’s a Warlord Prince. I guess he couldn’t stand seeing you work when you were hurting.” He eased back a little to look at her. Her eyes held a female awareness of a male that eased one kind of tension in him and created another. “So. Are you going to let me fuss a little?”

“I’ve never been fussed over before.”

He smiled. “Think of it as an adventure. It will be easier that way.” And until someone, like Jaenelle, told Marian the rules about fussing, he was going to make the most of his hearth witch’s ignorance.

FIFTEEN

Marian crouched behind the shelves of dishes and glassware. How soon before the shop’s proprietor remembered he had another customer and started wondering what she’d been doing all this time?

She wasn’t hiding, exactly. She just didn’t want to deal with that Roxie woman. Thank the Darkness she’d been examining some plates on the lower shelves when Roxie walked into the shop. There’d been no mistaking that voice, and one quick look had convinced her she didn’t want to meet Roxie when she couldn’t slam a door in the woman’s face. But having spent the past hour carefully making her selections, she was not leaving without her cookware, which was stacked on one end of the large wooden counter that ran across the back of the store.

She peeked over the top shelf, then ducked back down out of sight. Poor man. Roxie had been sneering at his merchandise since she walked in the door, proclaiming loudly that the aristo shops in Doun had much better fare. But that hadn’t stopped her from plunking several items on the counter. And now . . .