The way he asked it, soft and careful as if her answer mattered more than he wanted to admit, made her pulse quicken. “I thought I’d given up looking,” she said. “Until I came here.”
The air between them seemed to thicken, charged with possibilities neither of them was quite brave enough to name. Tristan’s gaze dropped to her lips, and she felt her breath catch as he leaned slightly closer, close enough that she could see the gold flecks in his blue eyes, could smell the scent of herbs and honest sweat that clung to his skin.
“Rachel,” he said, and her name sounded different in his voice—rougher, hungrier, like a prayer and a curse combined.
“Yes?”
But before he could finish whatever he’d been about to say, the moment was shattered by the sound of approaching hoofbeats and Hugo’s booming voice echoing across the courtyard.
“Tristan! Where are you, you brooding fool? We have visitors!”
They sprang apart like guilty children, and Rachel’s cheeks burned with embarrassment and frustrated desire. The spell was broken, whatever confession or declaration had been trembling on the edge of his lips dissolved like morning mist.
“Duty calls,” she said, trying to keep her voice light despite the disappointment crushing her chest.
“Aye,” he agreed, but his voice was hoarse, and she caught the way his hands clenched at his sides as if he were fighting the urge to reach for her. “We should... the sage needs proper drying.”
“Right. Sage. Very important.”
They walked back toward the castle in charged silence, the basket of herbs between them like a fragile peace offering.
By afternoon, the visitors—a merchant seeking shelter and news of the roads ahead—had departed, leaving Greystone to its usual quiet routine. She found herself once again in the kitchens, this time attempting to master the art of making pastry with ingredients that seemed determined to defeat her at every turn.
“This is impossible,” she muttered, staring at the lumpy mess that was supposed to be dough for meat pies.
“I can make pâte brisée blindfolded in my apartment kitchen, but here I’ve got warm hands, room-temp lard, a rolling pin with opinions, and an oven that’s really a moody wall of fire. How did people survive on this stuff?”
“Low expectations,” Tristan said from behind her, his voice warm with amusement that made her spin around, and several of the kitchen boys yelp. He arched a brow, and the boys scurried off to do whatever they did during the day.
“Try ‘no expectations.’” She flung flour off her hands. “If my blog readers could see me now, they’d unfollow in droves.”
He stood in the doorway, wearing a clean shirt, one that didn’t cling quite so distractingly to his torso. Though if she were being honest, Tristan de Valois in a potato sack would probably still make her heart beat faster.
“Very helpful,” she said sarcastically. “Any actual advice, or are you just here to mock my complete inability to work with medieval kitchen technology?”
“I am here,” he said, moving into the kitchen with that predatory grace that always made her breath catch, “to prevent you from poisoning half my household with whatever you’re attempting to create today.”
“It’s meat pies,” she protested, gesturing at her flour-covered workspace. “Basic meat pies. How hard can it be?”
He looked at the lumpy dough, the unevenly chopped vegetables, and the suspicious-looking meat mixture she’d assembled. His expression suggested he was reconsidering her culinary qualifications.
“Perhaps,” he said carefully, “you might benefit from some... guidance.”
“Are you offering to teach me?”
The question hung in the air between them, loaded with implications neither of them was quite ready to examine. Teaching meant working closely together. It meant his hands guiding hers, his body close enough that she’d catch his scent with every breath, his voice low in her ear as he explained medieval techniques she’d never master on her own.
It meant tempting fate and her increasingly unreliable self-control.
“If you’re willing to learn,” he said quietly.
“I’m willing.”
The words came out softer than she’d intended, heavy with meanings that had nothing to do with pastry and everything to do with the way he was looking at her—intense and careful and full of longing he was trying very hard to hide.
“Very well.” He moved to stand behind her, close enough that she could feel the heat radiating from his body. “The dough is the foundation of everything. Too much handling and it becomes tough. Too little, and it falls apart.”
His hands covered hers on the rolling pin, and she swore her brain temporarily forgot how to process any information beyond the sensation of his calloused palms warm against her fingers, his chest solid against her back, his breath stirring the hair at her temple.
