Lysara was pleasantly light-headed by the time they left Sterling's estate.
The afternoon had disappeared beneath an endless succession of champagne toasts. Every introduction had somehow required another glass to be raised; every well-wisher had insisted upon drinking to House Vale, to their engagement, to their future, until somewhere during the afternoon she had surrendered entirely and accepted that refusing another flute would probably have caused more offence than accepting it.
She was content enough, therefore, when Daevyn steered the Aston Martin away from the estate and, rather than turning towards the Human Realm, drove instead into the forest.
The road narrowed steadily, the trees closing around them until the outside world seemed impossibly distant. Shafts of late afternoon sunlight filtered through the branches overhead, dappling the bonnet of the car before disappearing altogether as they reached the familiar clearing. Luxury motorcars sat scattered amongst the trees as though abandoned without a second thought; Bentleys beside Porsches, Aston Martins beside ageing Land Rovers, all waiting patiently for owners who had long since stepped through the veil into another world.
By the time the carriage deposited them at House Vale, dusk had settled softly over the Winter Court.
Rather than drawing up before the sweeping front entrance, the coach circled towards the rear of the manor.
Daevyn climbed down first before offering her his hand. She stumbled a little on the step.
He regarded her for a thoughtful moment before asking, with perfect seriousness, "Do I need to carry you into the house?"
She blinked. "What?"
"It seems appropriate."
Before she had the opportunity to discover precisely what he meant, he bent, slipped one arm behind her knees and the other about her back, and lifted her effortlessly from the ground.
She gave an undignified squeal that dissolved almost immediately into a fit of laughter. "Daevyn!"
"Tradition," he informed her solemnly as though that explained everything. "A gentleman ought to carry his bride across the threshold."
"I'm not your bride."
"Not technically."
Her arms had already found their way around his neck.
"Too much champagne," she murmured, resting her head comfortably against his shoulder.
"And almost no lunch." He adjusted her weight easily as he carried her around the side of the manor. "I intend to remedy one of those oversights immediately."
She smiled to herself.
There was something wonderfully reassuring about allowing someone else to decide such things.
As they rounded the corner of the house, movement caught her eye.
An woman stood quietly at one of the tall kitchen windows, her white-blonde hair arranged with impeccable care. She watched them with an expression that might almost have been approval before stepping back into the shadows of the room.
Lysara frowned. "Who was that?"
"Who?"
"The lady at the window."
Daevyn turned his head. "I didn't see anyone."
For another moment she continued looking towards the empty window before dismissing it with a small shrug. "I suppose it must have been one of your staff." Or someone from the family?
"Perhaps." He shifted her comfortably against him while opening the side door with his shoulder. "Though they all have the afternoon free. I thought we'd manage perfectly well looking after ourselves for one evening."
Warmth enveloped them as they stepped inside.
Only then did he lower her carefully onto her feet.
She looked around.
The kitchen possessed none of the grandeur of the formal rooms she had glimpsed the previous evening. Instead it felt lived in. Loved.
Generations had left themselves behind here in quiet, practical ways. Two enormous enamel refrigerators stood side by side beneath shelves darkened with age. The ancient Aga looked as though it had been warming the room for a century, while the long-scrubbed timber tables bore the softened edges that only thousands upon thousands of family meals could create. Nothing matched. Chairs from different eras gathered comfortably together beneath layers of paint that had worn away over decades to reveal colours chosen by forgotten hands.
It was, she thought with growing delight, exactly what a family kitchen ought to be.
Behind her, Daevyn had already opened one of the refrigerators. "I should warn you," he called over his shoulder. "House Vale has never mastered the elegant art of leftovers."
He began assembling plates from an assortment of covered dishes whose contents appeared to represent the remains of several entirely unrelated meals.
"It's something of a madman's supper," he admitted as he placed a mismatched plate before her. "But it ought to absorb some of the champagne."
He poured himself a glass of wine before replacing the bottle with a jug of water.
"I think you've probably had enough."
"I was arriving at the same conclusion."
He looked around the kitchen then, seeing it through her eyes perhaps for the first time in years. "Like the rest of the house," he said quietly, "it needs rather a lot."
Lysara rested her fingertips against the worn timber of the table. "No."
He looked at her in surprise.
"It needs care," she corrected gently. "Not replacing."
His brows lifted.
"Every generation has left something of themselves here." Her eyes wandered slowly around the room. "Different chairs. Different paint. Another cupboard. New refrigerators when the old ones finally gave up. It's like reading your family's history in layers."
She smiled. "It would be a tragedy to erase all of that."
He hadn't touched his meal.
Instead, he was watching her with an expression she couldn't quite decipher. "When Sterling suggested I seek an introduction to Theron Ashwyn's daughter," he said eventually, "I imagined someone very different."
She laughed. "I'm afraid reality has been rather disappointing."
"Quite the opposite." His smile was slow.
"I expected someone polished. Fashionable. Concerned with appearances." His gaze drifted around the kitchen before returning to her. "Instead, I found an artist who sees beauty in worn timber and chipped paint."
Lysara lowered her eyes, suddenly embarrassed by how much pleasure his words gave her. "I think," she admitted quietly, "I'm beginning to understand why this house matters so much to you."
For a long moment he simply looked at her.
Then he smiled. "I am glad you do."
After they had finished eating, Daevyn gathered their plates without ceremony, rinsing them beneath the old farmhouse tap before leaving them neatly beside the sink.
"The servants will be thoroughly offended that I've deprived them of washing up," he observed lightly.
Lysara smiled as she watched him.
"You sound terribly guilty."
"I'll recover."
He glanced around the kitchen once more, then back at her and offered her his hand. "The wedding will be here, of course.” He said as he led the way out of the kitchen. "We have hosted the weddings of my family here for centuries. I can't imagine beginning our marriage anywhere else."
The quiet certainty with which he said it stirred something unexpectedly tender inside her.
They reached the staircase.
Without thinking, she rested her forehead lightly against his shoulder as they climbed, breathing in the familiar scent of cedarwood and winter air that somehow always seemed to cling to him. His arm settled comfortably around her, drawing her a little closer as though neither of them had noticed the movement.
His phone began vibrating inside his jacket.
The sound seemed almost absurdly loud in the quiet house.
Daevyn sighed.
Without even looking at the screen he drew the phone from his pocket, silenced it, and slipped it into another pocket.
"Mobile phones," he said as he opened the bedroom door, "are simultaneously one of humanity's greatest inventions and one of its worst ideas. They're invaluable if you find yourself stranded in the middle of nowhere with a broken-down car." He held the door for her before following her inside. "Unfortunately, they've also convinced everyone that they deserve access to you every hour of every day."
"I can't say I've ever suffered from that particular problem."
"No?"
She wandered towards the dressing table, reaching automatically for the clasp of her pearl necklace. Daevyn stepped behind her without a word. His fingers brushed lightly against the nape of her neck as he released the clasp, lifting the strand of pearls away before laying it carefully in a small porcelain dish that had occupied the dressing table for longer than either of them had been alive.
She removed her earrings while he watched, placing them beside the necklace.
For a moment she hesitated.
The conversation with Étienne the previous evening drifted unexpectedly into her thoughts, bringing with it a small, uncomfortable pang of guilt. Daevyn had told her about Aurora. She owed him the same transparency.
"I had a phone call last night," she said, keeping her tone deliberately casual. "From my dance partner."
Behind her, the zip of her dress slid slowly down her back. The sensation sent a faint shiver across her skin.
Quite without invitation, another memory surfaced… Aurora's fingers smoothing the front of Daevyn's jacket beneath the marquee.
"Is that so?" he murmured distractedly, his attention seeming entirely occupied with easing the velvet from her shoulders.
Then, a heartbeat later, the words caught up with him. His hands stilled. "Dance partner?" he repeated. His voice remained perfectly calm, but there was something new in it now.
Curiosity. Or perhaps something just a little closer to jealousy.
"Where I was studying," Lysara replied, stooping to unfasten the straps of her shoes. "We attended the same classes. We danced together, painted together... we simply became friends."
"Mm." It was little more than a thoughtful sound.
Daevyn reached for the fastening at the back of her dress, his fingers brushing lightly against the bare skin at the nape of her neck before the zip whispered steadily down her spine.
"You'll need this again tomorrow," he observed as the velvet slipped from her shoulders. "Unless I decide to send you home wearing one of my shirts."
She laughed softly. "I suspect my mother would have questions."
"So would mine."
He caught the dress before it reached the floor, smoothing it almost absently between his hands before disappearing into the dressing room. She heard the muted scrape of a hanger, the soft closing of a wardrobe door.
"So," his voice drifted back to her, "what did your dance partner have to say?"
It was not the right time, she decided. Not when the tone between them had become so comfortably sensual. To say it would ruin the mood was so cliché—but also true. "Mostly he wanted to know when I'd be returning."
She slipped out of her shoes and wandered into the adjoining bathroom.
"Do you happen to have a spare toothbrush?"
"The top drawer."
She smiled as she found the little courtesy set, still wrapped neatly in paper exactly where he had said it would be.
The bathroom itself was immaculate.
Fresh towels stood rolled with almost military precision upon the shelves. The bottles of soap and shampoo were arranged in perfect lines beside the shower. Nothing had been left carelessly on the vanity. No half-used bottle of cologne. No discarded cufflinks. No forgotten glass.
It was beautiful.
And strangely impersonal.
She brushed her teeth slowly, opening one drawer after another out of idle curiosity more than anything else, only to find each one almost empty.
It didn't feel unloved.
Merely... unused.
As though this room existed because a bedroom ought to possess an ensuite, rather than because someone actually lived in it.
Puzzled, she wandered back into the bedroom.
It was empty.
For a heartbeat she thought Daevyn had gone downstairs again.
Then, she heard his voice. And a woman’s respond, the words distorted and muffled, coming from the other side of the bed. She tiptoed closer, puzzled. The voices came from the curtain draped wall.
She lifted the edge of one of the heavy curtains. A concealed door was almost invisibly within the panelling.
He was on the phone within.
The call ended, and she heard the floorboards creak as he crossed to the door.
She retreated, making it to the foot of the bed as he stepped back into the room, fastening the cuff of his shirt where he had evidently rolled the sleeves up. The shirt itself was unbuttoned at the collar, revealing the strong line of his throat, while his feet were bare against the polished timber floor.
His expression was heavily shadowed with weariness as looked up.
Their eyes met.
He pushed an absent hand back through his hair, leaving the pale strands pleasingly untidy.
The movement drew her artist's eye before anything else.
The loosened collar.
The rumpled hair.
The contrast between impeccable tailoring and effortless disarray, and the troubled man with a haunted gaze.
She could already imagine the charcoal sketch.
"I can't decide," she admitted, the champagne leaving her just honest enough to say the thought aloud, "whether I'd rather draw you..."
She let her gaze travel slowly over him before meeting his eyes again. "...or…”
The corner of his mouth curved, the shadows lifting.
"I find myself hoping you'll choose neither."
She raised an eyebrow.
"No?"
He crossed the room towards her with the unhurried confidence that always seemed to make her pulse quicken.
"I'd much rather you came here."
His smile was slow enough to leave very little doubt what he meant.