Dreams Made Flesh

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…
    "What do you mean I can't put it on the account?" Roxie's voice rose toward a screech. "He told me I could buy anything I wanted and put it on his account."
    "Unfortunately," the proprietor replied, his voice condemning in its politeness, "Prince Yaslana has not informed me of that fact."
    Marian winced. She'd bought a few things at the shops she usually patronized, but