Page 132 of The Discount Damsel

Millie cut him a look under lowered lashes. “You don’t have to do that.”

An involuntary groan escaped him as the taste of warm buttery, sugary goodness dissolved on his tongue. He took another crispy bite, then another. He practically shooed her out of the way to get another confection into each hand. Not even the College kitchens made such delights.

“What is that?” he asked past a mouthful of deliciousness. “Cinnamon?”

“Nutmeg, too. And cardamon, clove, and ginger.”

Millie gave him a suspicious look then took a bite of her own treat. She immediately snatched up the Lip Cutter full of smooth black tea and dunked it into the mug’s dark depths. She didn’t protest when Bradley crowded her to try a dunk of tea for himself.

“You need to think up a name that’s better than ‘failed scone,’” he told her.

“Teacakes, I think. My second etiquette tutor, Miss Lottie, had something like this amongst her personal effects. Hers were just plain vanilla, though. I tried to mimic Miss Dama’s favorite chai blend.”

He cocked an eyebrow. “Amongst your etiquette tutor’s personal effects?”

“How was I supposed to know she wasn’t an assassin unless I snooped?”

Bradley rolled his eyes and sucked the crumbs off his thumb. He caught the princess staring at his mouth, her bottom lip pinched between her teeth. Her brown eyes met his, and the two became very aware how close they huddled over her mug of tea.

“You, uh, have some on your chin. Just there.” She reached up and, with a feather-light sweep of her fingertips, brushed the crumbs from his jaw. “Wouldn’t want to get those on Master Excelsior’s books.”

Flushing, Millie turned back to the mess of a kitchen counter and started spooning out more dough. Her movements were sharp, chastising.

The apprentice confused her, and she didn’t like confusing things. He ran cold, aloof, until he tended her wounds or revealed a perfectly curated room for her particular use. Then he was warm, alluringly so, and Millie didn’t know what to do with that. Before being kidnapped, she couldn’t be bothered with men, and she’d met hundreds. Now that she finally had a chance to become a pirate, her thoughts were being muddled by a grumpy sorcerer apprentice? Whyever the hells for?

Was she lonely in the tower? Was the apprentice simply convenient? If that’s all it truly was, then why didn’t Sir Beauregard or Jax or even Duncan make every thought fly from her head like bats from a belfry at twilight?

Crone’s Crooked Tits, she’d almost kissed him in the closet. She’d thought he’d been reaching to cup her cheek, not extinguish the candle behind her. So she’d reached for his hand, rocking forward onto tiptoe to receive his kiss. Then he’d blown out the flame and left her in darkness with a heart crashing against her ribs like a bird against a window—confused, desperate, and hurting.

Of course he hadn’t wanted to kiss her. She was the Major Inconvenience. The tula. The Stealer of Friends and the Disturber of His Delicate Peace. And she’d done the nearly unforgivable unthinkable of calling him a coward. Yet, there had been a few times he’d been gentle with her, achingly so.

Millie thought she’d been successful at suppressing the maelstrom of emotions that had pestered her ever since that afternoon in the closet, but at the apprentice’s nearness, they came rushing back. Flustered, she practically threw the tray into the oven.

That seemed to scare the apprentice, who snatched the kettle off the stove and hustled to the faucet. Good. Get him away from her before she grabbed him by the front of his robe, thrust her hairpin up under his jaw, and demand he tell her what spell he cast on her to make her body yearn for his touch.

How dare he use a seduction spell on her! How dare he not tell her he could incant again after all the help she’d given him. How dare he make her want to unravel every stoic, grumpy, aloof inch of him!

Now that would be an adventure and no mistake. One she might even want to repeat again and again.

“Piss and plagues,” she hissed.

“I just ran out of tisane,” he said quickly. “I’ll be gone in a minute.”

She reached into the cupboard. “The tin’s right here⁠—”

“I got it⁠—”

His hand trapped hers against the glass canister. It would take only a thought for his fingers to intertwine with hers.

Millie shucked her hand, and Bradley caught the canister before it could fall from the shelf. She slapped the flour from her apron before the pain of her ruined hands reminded her she shouldn’t be doing that. “Crone’s Crooked Tits!”

“Let me see your hands, Tula.” The apprentice didn’t wait for permission, he just took hold of her hand in that mild way of his and peeled back the bandage. “Are you using the seaweed ointment?”

“Every night,” she grumbled. “Just a little,” she amended quickly, so he didn’t think she was wasteful. “But it doesn’t seem to have the same effect as when you do it.”

Millie wanted to die from how pathetic she sounded. Where was the fierce and independent lady pirate now? Turned to mush?

“Maybe I could come by . . .”