Feeling wary, he stepped in the front door only to be greeted by Blake. “Her Highness is upstairs in the study.”
“Are you cooking?”
Blake pressed his lips together, a worried expression on his face. “That’s Jeremy, the new cook.”
He gaped at Blake. “You hired a cook?”
The man’s eyes went toward the stairs and then up in the direction of the study. “It wasn’t my decision, sir.”
“Oh.” Will finally understood. This is how she wants to punish me. He had come in feeling regretful, but now he was already shifting to annoyance. Hiring a cook was a disproportionate reaction to his behavior that morning. “I guess I’ll go up and discuss matters with her then.”
“As you wish, sir,” said Blake neutrally, though his face conveyed a subtle warning.
Will didn’t care. He marched up the stairs and went to the study. The door was already open, and Selene was sitting at the desk penning a letter with her flawlessly elegant script. He felt a faint sense of envy every time he saw it. After two years of struggling at Wurthaven, his own handwriting was just barely legible.
Selene glanced up at him, then held up a finger. She reached for the sand and sprinkled a portion over the page, then lifted it and poured it back into the box. Eyeing the page, she decided it was acceptable and then set it aside in a tray to finish drying. With that done, she capped her ink bottle and put away her pen. Once things had been tidied up, she gave him her full attention. “Ready to talk?”
Will pulled up the other chair and sat down. “Already done with your correspondence?”
She pursed her lips, then replied, “No. I have quite a few more to pen, but you’re more important than that.”
That put him back on his heels. He hadn’t had many arguments with Selene, but soon after her return he had quickly figured out he was outmatched. She never fought while she was actually angry, as she had been that morning. Instead, she would set her feelings aside and return to the battle later, after she had consolidated her arguments. It probably had something to do with her strange upbringing, but Will never knew how to deal with it. At the moment she was cool and reasonable, leaving him at a loss for how to approach the subject. “About this morning, I had no idea you wanted to cook. If I had known—”
“You’d what? Pretend to like the food?” She lifted one brow. “I don’t want false praise.”
“Even so, what I said was too much.”
“You think my feelings were hurt because you insulted the food?”
He nodded.
Selene covered her face with both hands.
“Hiring a cook was a little over the top, though,” added Will.
Her fingers opened and she stared at him through them. “I’m not angry about what you said about the food. I was angry because of what you said to Blake.”
Will frowned. “Huh?”
“Would you like to know the easiest way to judge a nobleman? Watch how he treats his servants. What I saw this morning was ugly. It made me so sick I wanted to empty my stomach. How could you talk to him like that?”
He tilted his head to one side. “That’s just how we talk. Blake’s a friend.”
“I’ve never seen you talk to anyone else like that. Certainly not your other friends.”
His jaw dropped. Thinking back on it, he realized that if one were to actually look at the words he had used, they were pretty harsh. But his relationship with Blake was different somehow, though he couldn’t put his finger on it. His mouth went with the first thing that popped into his head. “He was in the army.”
“He isn’t in the army now. He’s your employee.”
Agitated, Will got out of the chair and began to pace. “I eat with Blake. While you were gone, we lived together like two bachelors. I don’t treat him like a servant. Even Tiny commented on it while he was here. You think I abuse him? Is that what you’re saying?”
“I’ve never felt that way before, but after what I saw this morning…”
It was Will’s turn to cover his face with both hands. He took a moment to carefully put his thoughts together. “I think I can explain,” he said at last. “Blake isn’t a cook. I never asked him to cook, but he took it on himself a few times, and even ignored my requests when I told him not to. As a result, it