Becoming Lailah: Married to my Twin Sister's Billionaire Husband

Chapter 315: The Cottage 2

THE SCORCH MARK on the splashboard was approximately the size of a hand.

Mailah looked at it while she ate. Then at the cracked window. Then at the small, telling absence of one egg from the carton that sat on the counter, which had not made it onto either plate and had not, based on available evidence, survived the attempt.

"The first egg," she said.

"Is not a subject we’re revisiting," he said.

"Did you — incinerate it?"

"I applied too much heat," he said. "It was a calibration issue."

"You incinerated an egg."

"The situation was resolved."

She looked at the scorch mark. "The splashboard would disagree."

He picked up his tea with the composure of a man who had decided this conversation had run its course and was declining to extend it further.

She looked at his profile — the absolute serenity of it, the complete absence of embarrassment — and felt the laugh move through her chest before she could contain it.

It escaped. Properly this time, not the small involuntary exhale of the kitchen corridor but a full, genuine laugh, the kind that required a moment to recover from, and she pressed the back of her hand to her mouth and looked at the ceiling and tried to manage it with limited success.

He watched her laugh with the expression of a man observing a weather phenomenon — not displeased, not amused, simply present for it in the attentive way he was present for everything she did that he had not predicted.

"It’s not funny," he said.

"It’s extremely funny," she said.

"An incubus who cannot calibrate heat on a standard hob is not—"

"That’s what makes it funny," she said. "You pinned an archdemon to a concrete floor with a sigil spike and the egg beat you."

A long pause.

"The egg did not beat me," he said. "The egg was a preliminary casualty of an unfamiliar hob. There’s a distinction."

She looked at him. He looked back at her with perfect equanimity.

She pressed her lips together very hard and returned to her breakfast.

After, he washed the plates.

She stood in the kitchen doorway and watched him do this — standing at the small sink, methodical, the sleeves of his shirt still rolled up, washing two plates and two cups with the focused efficiency of someone applying professional standards to a domestic task.

He found the dish rack without looking. He dried with the same geometric thoroughness he had brought to the plating.

"You don’t have to do that," she said.

"They need to be clean."

"There’s a dishwasher."

He looked at it. It was a small, slightly elderly appliance tucked under the counter, the kind that came with a cottage and had been there long enough.

"I’ll wash them," he said, and continued washing them.

She decided not to point out that he had been doing it wrong — too much soap, which she was fairly certain was a consequence of Mrs. Baker’s kitchen having a dispenser and this one having a bottle that required a different approach — because the mountain of bubbles currently occupying half the sink had an energy she was not willing to interrupt.

He finished, set the plates on the rack with mathematical precision, and turned to find her still in the doorway.

"What," he said.

"Nothing," she said.

He looked at the bubbles. Then at her. "The soap dispenser is different here."

"It is," she agreed.

"That’s a design flaw."

"Definitely," she said, and moved before the smile became visible.

The morning had lightened by the time they went outside.

The cloud cover was still total but had shifted from grey to a pale, diffused white that made the sea luminous — silver and moving, the waves coming in at the base of the promontory with a steady, unhurried force.

The lighthouse stood dark and practical in the daylight, a different thing altogether without its beam. The path along the cliff edge was narrow and slightly overgrown, the kind of path maintained by occasional use rather than intention.

Grayson stood at the edge of the promontory looking at the water with his hands behind his back. He had found a coat — his own, inexplicably, hanging behind the cottage door as though the previous version of him had left it deliberately — and he wore it with the same composed authority he wore everything, which looked faintly absurd on a Welsh cliffside and somehow suited him entirely.

Mailah stood beside him.

"Have you ever just — walked somewhere?" she said. "Not to get to a location. Just walked."

He looked at the path. "Define just walked."

"No destination. No purpose. You move your feet and you look at things."

A pause. "That sounds inefficient."

"That’s the point."

He looked at her. She looked at the path. He looked at the path.

She could feel him processing the concept of purposeless movement with the focused attention he gave to problems requiring solutions.

"You go first," he said finally.

She went first.

The path ran along the cliff edge with the casual confidence of something that had been there long enough to stop worrying about it.

The sea was immediately present — not visible from every point but audible always, the sound filling the spaces between gusts of wind. Mailah walked with her hands in the pockets of his jumper, which she was still wearing over her own clothes, and said nothing.

He walked beside her.

He lasted approximately four minutes before he identified a structural issue with the path’s erosion pattern and mentioned it.

"I see it," she said.

"The edge is unstable for—"

"Grayson."

"I’m observing."

"Observe without reporting."

A pause. "That’s a difficult instruction."

"Try."

He tried. She could feel the effort of it beside her — the particular quality of a man suppressing approximately six tactical observations per minute — and she found it more endearing than she was prepared to admit.

They reached a point where the path widened onto a flat shelf of rock above the water. The sea was directly below, not violent but present, the waves coming in with a steady patience.

Mailah sat on the rock without checking it first, which produced an immediate response from him — not spoken, just the slight adjustment of his position, placing himself between her and the edge.

She looked at the water.

"Your turn," she said.

"For what."

"Tell me something. Something you noticed today that you didn’t expect."

He stood looking at the sea with his hands behind his back. The wind moved through his hair, which had lost its usual composure somewhere on the path, and he looked — she searched for the word and found it — younger. Not literally. Just less armored.

"The hob," he said.

She waited.

"It’s gas," he said. "The one at the estate is induction. The calibration is different." A pause. "I didn’t expect to find that interesting."

She looked at him. "You found a gas hob interesting."

"I found the difference interesting. The adjustment required." He was quiet for a moment. "I’ve been running on the same instincts for four centuries. The estate runs because it runs itself — systems, staff, protocols. Everything is controlled." He looked at the water. "A different hob requires actual attention. I found that—" He stopped.

"Refreshing?" she offered.

He looked as though he were weighing the word for accuracy. "Adequate," he said, which from Grayson was approximately equivalent to profound.

She stood up.

He tracked the movement immediately, but she wasn’t heading for the edge — she was heading for him, crossing the two feet between them and standing in front of him on the rock shelf with the wind coming off the water and his coat open at the front and his hair doing something it would never be allowed to do back home.

She reached up and fixed his collar.

He looked down at her hands. She wasn’t fixing it because it needed fixing. They both knew that. He let her anyway, standing still while she straightened something that didn’t need straightening, because this was their language.

Her hands stilled at his collar.

He put his hands over hers — both of them, covering her fingers, warm even through the wind.

"James was right," she said quietly.

He looked at her.

"You needed this," she said. She looked at the sea behind him. "Just — this."

He was quiet for a moment.

"James," he said, "says a great many things."

"He’s right about most of them, isn’t he."

A pause that lasted exactly long enough to be a yes. "Don’t tell him that," he said. "He’s already insufferable."

She laughed and he stood in it the way he had that morning, present and attentive, watching it happen with focused interest.

His hands tightened on hers.

He drew her closer. His arms came around her, her face against his chest, the coat closing around them both.

The sea moved below.

The lighthouse stood patient and dark.

Somewhere inland, the cottage sat.

"Tomorrow," Mailah said, against his chest.

"What about it."

"I’m teaching you how to do laundry."

A long pause.

"Absolutely not," he said.

"There’s a machine in the kitchen."

"I’m aware of the machine."

"You need to know how to use it."

"I will never need to know how to use it."

"Grayson—"

"I will buy new clothes before I operate a residential washing machine."

She tilted her head up and looked at him. He looked back down at her.

"You once said," she told him, "that a man who cannot adapt to his environment is a liability."

He looked at her for a long moment. "I said that about combat."

"The principle applies."

His jaw shifted. The expression of a man who had walked directly into his own argument and was deciding whether to acknowledge it.

"Tomorrow," he said finally, with the tone of a condemned man accepting a sentence.

"Tomorrow," she agreed.