Lucien coughed a laugh in surprise, and she grinned peevishly at him, wrinkling her nose.
But when the freckled maid looked at her blankly, she amended with, “Just the tea tray will be fine, Becca.”
“Are you going to pour the pot over my head?” he asked when they were left alone.
Standing beside a bank of shelves near the corner of the room, she shook her head. “Tempting. But I wouldn’t want to risk my father’s collection, which is here.” She gestured to the rows of books bound in leather and buckram. “You’ll find the older books on the top shelves. Their bindings are fragile so—”
“I’ll be careful,” he promised.
The books were well cared for, though some showed their years in the fraying edges and tea-colored pages. A few of the tomes were even dated before the fifteenth century, their flat spines worn thin to show wood slats and the ligaments that bound the parchment and vellum beneath.
He was honored to be permitted to handle them at all. Were these in his collection, he would likely keep them in the vault. Though little good that might have done him with Lady Avalon on the loose.
They studied the volumes in companionable silence, occasionally sharing a glimpse of an exceptionally artistic illumination, the vibrant reds and blues, gold and silver shimmering on the page as if they’d been inked that very day.
Her father had an extensive variety of old manuscripts. Lucien had seen many of these same titles during his years of study. Some were in his own collection. Then there were others that he was exploring for the first time, and he lost himself in the joy of discovery, forgetting his purpose far too often.
Whenever that happened, he would carefully replace the book and then look over to Meg. It felt as though she’d become his mooring line, always drawing him back to a fixed anchor before he set off again.
They paused briefly for tea—sans cherry tarts. He watched her with some curiosity when she moved the tray from the low table between the settee and the hearth and laid it on the writing desk instead.
Noticing his scrutiny, she issued a nonchalant shrug. “This seems a more efficient location for our current task. This way, you can continue your search without interruption.”
That much was true. However, he surmised that she likely didn’t want either of them relaxing in each other’s company, even if only long enough for tea.
He’d been thinking the same thing. Being too at ease with her never ended well for him.
But it didn’t seem to matter where they were in the room, because they always ended up beside each other, riffling through the pages.
She slid a book onto one of the shelves and cast an appraising glance in his direction. “You mentioned last night that you need the book because you have experiments to prove. What kind of experiments?”
“On the recipes, testing their validity.” He absently turned the pages of a more recent printing of Le Morte d’Arthur by Thomas Malory, finding pressed flowers and fern fronds, and with an inscription in the front that read:
For my daughter, Margaret the Fair,
keeper of stories and of her father’s heart
Lucien closed the book with care and placed it back on the shelf as an image of little Meg, with her dark ringlets bouncing as she skipped through a meadow picking flowers, drifted across his mind.
“So you cook, then?”
“I experiment,” he clarified.
“Where? In the dungeons of Caliburn Keep?”
His mouth twitched at the teasing edge in her tone. “In the old buttery. And the former great hall beside it has an inglenook hearth that most closely resembles the kitchen depicted in one of the book’s illuminations.”
“Ah. So you are trying to preserve the integrity and authenticity of the recipes.”
“Always.”
“And, as I recall, you wear an apron, too.”
He straightened. “A blacksmith’s apron.”
“In other words, a man’s apron,” she said, her tone mockingly severe. “And you likely use a large hammer to roll out pastry dough for the pies.”
When she pantomimed swinging her fist in a downward arc onto an imaginary table, he crossed his arms. “Are you enjoying yourself?”
“Immensely.” She flashed her teeth in a smile. “So tell me, was that the reason you were covered in soot that day? Because you were baking, and everything went up in smoke?”
He took a step toward her. “One more word out of you and I’m going to toss you over my shoulder and—”
“And?” she challenged saucily with her hands already on her hips.
“Put you on the roasting spit as my next experiment.”
She laughed gaily. “Try it and you’ll find yourself knocked over the head with a fire poker.”
“It might be worth it,” he said with a grin of his own before he turned and resumed his search.
Beside him, she leaned her back against the shelves. “Have you had any success with your attempts?”
“Do you mean, have they proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that they can imbue a man with the strength of a great beast? Make his enemy’s heart falter? Compel him to reveal his deepest, darkest secrets?”
When she nodded, he considered just shaking his head and leaving it at that. But for some reason, he decided to tell her the truth.
“I’d thought so,” he said. “It was actually on the day we met. I had just eaten a sample of the latest experiment, and then I saw you in the corridor. I felt a surge, something predatory, rise inside me.”
“I remember when I was putting on your glasses that your breath tasted like spices—cinnamon and clove.” She inhaled deeply as if she were there in the corridor, with him, once more.
He nodded, transfixed by her rapt attention, her pupils expanding, her face tilted up to his. “Aware of these changes in my physiology, I left you so that I could describe the sensations in detail in my ledger.”
“So you did believe in the legend.”
“For a few days,” he admitted. “Until I met you in Calais.”
She frowned. “Are you now accusing me of ruining your experiment and your faith in your family legend, in addition to stealing your book?”
“Nothing like that,” he said with a playful tug on her fingertips. “I knew it wasn’t the recipe because, the instant you launched yourself at me and broke my spectacles, my physiological reaction was the same. Which led me to the conclusion that it was you all along. Just you.”
A breath slowly slipped from her parted lips, and she searched his gaze for a long moment. “That might be the most romantic thing that any man has ever said to the woman he hates.”
“I have my moments.” He shrugged. Realizing that he was still holding her fingers in the clasp of his palm, he released her and cleared his throat. He needed to remember that it was far too easy to become distracted by her. Turning back toward the shelves, he said, “Now, where is my book hiding?”
She grumbled under her breath. “Fleeting moments, apparently.”
After that, they resumed their search in tense silence. Nothing could be heard between them but the whisper of her skirts shifting as she moved, and the crisp rasp of the pages sliding against each other.
Then, after a while, he simply broke.