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retreating Laurie, “and can you even imagine him with magic?”
    “I think the point is rather that he already has a bit, yeah? Hence the whole presenting-him-for-magical-training thing?”
    Lucas paused with a dark scowl. “Do you ever want to have sex with me again?”
    “I really really do,” Alex answered without even missing a beat or losing his slight smile. “And so I therefore thoroughly support you in your endeavor to avoid Cráwa and requests on behalf of His Royal Twitness.”
    Lucas was somewhat mollified. Somewhat. “Cráwa hates me, anyway,” he grumbled. “He hates Laurie, and every time I step into his ‘study’, I wonder if I’m going to be hopping back out with tentacles and a sudden craving for flies.”
    “It’s settled, then,” Alex agreed. “You won’t be coaxed into it this year.” He pulled the ribbon from Lucas’s hair and wound his fingers through, then kneaded at Lucas’s nape. Any other time, the condescension and obvious attempt to divert him would have had Lucas growling; now, he only just stopped himself from slumping and purring. “Relax. Have yourself a wash, change into something fresh—you’ll feel worlds better. I’ll herd the delinquent prince into your mother’s tender care, and Miss Emma will have tea and a headache powder waiting for you when you’re ready to join us. All right?”
    Lucas did slump now, right into Alex’s chest. He avoided the muddy jacket and stuck his face into the silk of the waistcoat. “I love you so much,” he mumbled.
    He felt the chuckle rumble through Alex’s chest as much as heard it. “That,” Alex said with a rough kiss to the crown of Lucas’s head, “is what makes life perfect.”
     
     
    T HERE was a bit of a scuffle, with Bramble assuming he and his muddy paws would be welcome in the house and Lucas begging to differ. Lucas won. Just barely. And Cat seemed a little too pleased with it all, so much so that she deigned to greet Lucas with a stretch and a serpentine saunter over to her milk bowl—on the shelf over the stove to deter Bramble from slurping it—rather than her usual slow blink and yawn. Or, in Bramble’s case, her usual glare of death and warning extension of claws. Lucas obligingly fetched her the last of the milk and let the reverberating contented purr that rumbled through the quiet of the little house soothe him as he stripped and changed. His clothes smelled of pub. He hadn’t noticed it when he’d dragged them back on this morning, or when he and Alex had been walking home, but now… drat it all, had he spilled ale all over his shirt? Or maybe taken a swim in it?
    He tossed the shirt into the growing pile in the corner. There was a basket under there somewhere, he was sure of it, that he was going to have to gather up one of these days and present to Miss Emma. The anticipated oh-whatever-are-we-going-to-do-with-youlook that always came along with the occasion was what held him back. He should learn to wash his own clothes… someday. He should also learn to cook. Toast and cheese and the occasional egg did not a satisfying diet make. And if he learned to cook, he wouldn’t have to spend so much time up at the main house, suffering through yet another not-quite-lecture about Why Certain Young Men Should Have Already Given Their Mothers Grandchildren. As if there weren’t enough of the little creatures about the place for supper every Sun’s Day. Sometimes Lucas wondered if Pippa and Nan weren’t actually in some kind of competition for who could produce the most children in the shortest amount of time.
    Thank God they weren’t Lucas’s problem anymore.
    He was going to have to dump his wages from the Library into the estate’s coffers again, he could see it coming now. He’d been hoping to at least buy Clara’s handfasting dress for her, but he wasn’t as optimistic now as he’d been only a week or so ago. Slade had taken the news of his prospective wife’s poverty extraordinarily