Chapter 3 #2
I could stand it no longer. I tiptoed down the hall and then stomped back along my path. The maid’s grating carriage laugh came to a halt.
I plastered a fake smile on my face and rounded the doorway. “Ah, Sable, there you are. Please help the men downstairs. They are looking for my parasol. It seems to be missing.”
My parasol was in the accessory chest in my room.
Sable opened her mouth with disdain, but Noble beat her to it. “A proper mage can’t be without her parasol.” His tone was offhand, but his eyes didn’t move from mine—watching me for something.
Sable threw me a look drenched in venom, then turned back to Noble, all sweetness and light. “I will fetch it and return.”
I curled my own fingers into my palms with enough force to break the skin.
Sable strode from the room without another glance at me. Her footsteps pounded down the stairs.
“You.” I pointed my finger at him, too angry to care that it was shaking.
“Me,” he said mockingly, then threw Kennen’s journal at my feet.
I knelt and placed my hand on the leather cover—anger and anxiety replaced with confusion and uncertainty. “What?”
“Are you going to convince me that you weren’t listening outside the door?”
I stared at him, uncomprehending. No one ever knew I was there. It was the only thing I could rely on.
I was so tired all of a sudden—the last hundred hours collapsing in on me. Exhausted. This man completely unnerved me as he carelessly flicked at my foundational supports, occasionally taking a swipe at the bottom of the stack, destroying the base for everything else.
“Pick it up.” Something dark laced his tone. “Or shall we leave it here for your loving maid to sell to the highest bidder?”
Angry at me? What gave him the right when he was the one using his dark wiles? “I wouldn’t want your efforts to go to waste. Perhaps I should leave you here to sex all the information right out of her.”
“Selling me for physical services, I’m aghast.” His voice was mocking, but there was a dangerous undercurrent. An eddy that threatened to drag me under.
“You seemed to be enjoying it.”
“And how would you know that, Lady Winters?”
“No one acts that well,” I said, my lips nearly cracking from the force required to utter the words.
“Isn’t that what you are paying for, Lady Winters—my full services, in acting and all else?”
My fingernails dug into my left palm. I picked up the journal in my right. “Were you going to give this to me if I hadn’t walked in on the two of you?”
“Don’t you trust me?” His voice was nonchalant.
“To sin would be less dangerous.”
He was suddenly squatting in front of me, having moved too quickly for me to react. He ran one finger over the leather cover, the tip brushing mine.
“That’s a shame, Marietta.” His voice held the low hum of an ocean wave at night. “If you don’t trust me, your brother is going to hang. And you will still serve me. Three times. Three tasks. Three vows to sin?”
His fingertip moved down the side of my hand and then lifted. The most dangerous man I’d ever met crouched in front of me. Terrifying in the responses he caused—created.
“I want to know if you were going to give me the journal,” I whispered, unable to do anything else.
He leaned toward me, his lips mere inches from mine. “And what makes you think I will answer?”
Footsteps sounded on the stairs. Frozen, I waited for him to move. And waited. The footsteps grew closer.
His mouth curved, so close I could see the fine lines on his lips. Footsteps outside the door. I shoved away from him, standing and clutching the journal to my chest.
“We couldn’t locate your parasol.”
I processed Sable’s words without turning. “Bring Master—bring this gentleman something to drink, Sable. I’m sure he will appreciate the gesture.”
A strangled growl emerged, then her footsteps retreated once more.
“Poor Sable. Do you always abuse your staff so?”
I gripped the journal more tightly at his smooth, mocking voice, the arrogant tilt to his head—the way he continued to squat on his heels and stare up at me through the fringe of his hair, green eyes jaded and promising all sorts of things.
“And if I do? I’m sure you can coax her back to a satisfied state. That is what you do, is it not?”
“I perform all my jobs well.” He leaned back on his hands, long legs spread before him. “What other services interest you?”
Sex and mystery coiled, curled, oozed from every pore.
Sex magic was a gray area. Most gilded wore gloves covered in anti-enchantments and charm protections.
But it was part of the game they played too.
Ballrooms reeked with social enchantments of all kinds.
It was part of how they decided who was deserving—who had access to the best charms, who could sway others without being swayed themselves.
Gabriel Noble’s pull was a whole different kind—primal, as if he wasn’t using magic at all.
“I don’t want your other services.”
“Pity.” He cocked his head to the side in a derisive tilt.
“I thought the underfed weren’t your style?”
“They aren’t. But adders are something I pride myself on handling.”
I stiffened. “You get away with this type of behavior?”
He grinned wolfishly. “Always.”
“Pity.” I turned and walked through the doorway, not trusting myself to stay in a room with him any longer. I’d likely pull out my pistol. Or do something worse, like fall prey to his eyes and gestures.
Back in my room, Penny had placed a number of things out for inspection. She looked up at me, then past me, her eyes glazing over.
“Are you finished packing, then?” that damned voice said from behind, explaining the maid’s slack jaw.
I shoved a jewelry pouch into the corner of my case. “Why don’t you bother Sable? She is begging for the attention.”
“I’m hurt, Marietta. Truly.”
“I’m sure.” As if I had the ability to hurt anyone these days. Someone would have to care first.
I shut my eyes. Idiot. I was going to have a breakdown if I kept up such pitiful thoughts.
“Is this all you have?”
“If you are going to be obnoxious, I’d prefer for you to wait elsewhere.”
He picked up the edge of a black gown. I slapped his hand away.
He whistled and touched the edge again. “And here I thought little could outdo your current dress.”
“I’m in mourning.”
“Your parents have been dead for two years.”
I glanced up sharply at his quick display of knowledge once more. “How do you know that?”
“I know many things. Such as when you lie.”
That I’d stretched my mourning period into a second year was pushing things, but I couldn’t afford new dresses, and altering my older, out of fashion garments would only get me so far.
Besides, the dark gowns protected me in other ways.
Silly, insidious ways where my femininity wasn’t threatened.
I couldn’t be held responsible for my lack of feminine wiles in dresses like these.
And here I thought Ferris the prideful one.
“You know no such thing.” I pushed his hand aside and folded the dress.
“Don’t spend too much time worrying about which beautiful gown you can’t live without.”
Mocking words, words that made me want to lash back, but contradicted by the seriousness and truth in his eyes. I turned to my personal effects. No one would want my dresses, which could be replaced. Personal possessions could not.
The servants were untrustworthy, and Ferris soon wouldn’t be able to keep away the mobs.
The streets were calling for vengeance. Noble’s house, though it chafed me to admit, was a safer place to store my mementos and more precious items. I might not trust him, but deep inside, underneath my tired and irrational anger, I perceived he had a code he would not cross.
We wouldn’t be standing in my bedroom otherwise.
The irritating man poked around my room, flashing smiles at a giggling Penny and sending Sable on repeated errands downstairs while I finished packing.
Penny disappeared to gather a last box. Noble reclined against a pillow, as if he owned the world. “Did you know they were selling your brother’s things?”
My lips tightened. “No.”
I needed to let Ferris know. I picked up a pen and jotted a note.
I used the scant magic I could grip in my exhaustion to silently enter his room and tuck it into his hand, where the servants would have less of a chance of finding it.
For the first time in two years I was glad my older brother was passed out.
I didn’t know if I could deal with him now.
And he and Noble would not get on well at all.
Ferris would be very angry that an outsider was aware of our economic straits. Even to help Kennen, he would not divulge such information. It was why I hadn’t discussed anything with him before embarking on this mission.
I walked back and looked around my room. The most important items were packed. I nodded to Noble and we carried my boxes and case into the same unmarked carriage.
Sharp eyes watched us depart. The carriage took a number of turns that seemed unnecessary, as if we were going in circles, or evading followers.
But Noble had busied himself with Kennen’s journal, and I could only stare numbly at my wrist as each wheel turn took me toward an even more unknown future.
Twenty minutes later, the carriage stopped. Noble opened the door and I stepped onto the smoothed cobblestones of an Ashfield neighborhood. An older part of Midtown, but neat and maintained.
The street was well-lit, but there was an air of disuse about the lane. No lights shone from the houses. It was as if they were uninhabited—their plain fronts hiding hollow insides, like empty boxes stacked side by side.
Noble leapt down, all insouciant grace and easy movements. He picked up the two heaviest boxes from my stack and walked toward the front door, leaving me to follow uncertainly in his wake.