Chapter 14
Fourteen
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Now that each lady’d had her chance to walk with Nicholas privately, his mother decreed it time for more general, group activities. They played parlor games, walked the grounds as a group, and took turns reading aloud from a popular novel.
At first, he’d been relieved. Oh, he hated spending hours every day listening to Abigail giggle and pretending he actually enjoyed the games, but he didn’t have to be alone with any of the women. In a group, he could essentially avoid Sadie and all the temptations she represented.
But as the days dragged on, and Sadie followed his example and maintained that distance, he realized that wasn’t what he wanted at all.
It reached the point where he almost asked his mother to start the evening games of chess again, though he’d been grateful for the pause when the afternoon games started.
But he’d already played against Helen, Abigail, and Beatrice.
Which meant that if they started again, he’d have Sadie sitting across from him within three nights at most.
He couldn’t even sit close to her in the sitting room where his mother organized their afternoon games, because she always chose the same chair, and the closest seat was a divan. If he sat on one end of that, Abigail would take the spot next to him.
On the third afternoon of parlor games, Nicholas decided to sit on the divan anyway. He angled his body toward Sadie, ignoring Abigail as she raced to sit next to him.
Sadie narrowed her eyes at him.
He smiled. Spirits, but he preferred her glares to Abigail’s simpers. “How about a friendly wager on today’s game?”
“We don’t even know what Madeleine has planned yet.”
“Afraid you’ll lose?”
She snorted. “What stakes are you proposing?”
He leaned a little closer and lowered his voice so that Abigail wouldn’t hear even if he hadn’t erected an aural ward at the same time. “If I win, you have to tell me your secrets. If you win, I’ll arrange for you to have an entire morning in the brewing room by yourself.”
She crossed her arms. “If I win, you’ll keep Jane out of the brewing room for an entire day, and if you win, I’ll help you convince each of the women who still want to marry you that they really don’t.”
He hadn’t really expected to get all her secrets.
He also didn’t need her help getting rid of the other women.
It didn’t matter if they still wanted to marry him by the end of the month, since he wouldn’t be proposing.
“I’ll keep Jane out of the brewing for an entire day if you win, but if I win, I want your real name. ”
She thought it over. “It’s a bet.”
He dropped the aural ward and leaned back.
“What were you two whispering about?” Abigail demanded. “It’s not polite to keep secrets.”
Nicholas couldn’t help it. At the mention of secrets, he looked over at Sadie and raised a brow. They started laughing at the same time.
Before Abigail could object further, his mother entered the sitting room. She held a stack of slates he hadn’t seen since he had been a boy writing out his lessons. A servant followed her carrying rags and chalk.
Once the materials were passed out to everyone and the servant had left, his mother clapped her hands together.
“Today’s game will determine the seating arrangement at supper.
It’s called connections, and the goal is to score as many points as you can by answering the same as your partner for each question.
But, instead of partners, you ladies will all be hoping to match Nicholas’s answers. ”
Everyone turned to look at him, and he did his best not to groan.
His mother paused long enough to look at each person in turn. “I want honest answers. Winning would mean nothing if you lie to achieve your aim, after all. Any questions?”
Abigail began asking how closely answers had to match and if all questions would be worth the same number of points, but Nicholas didn’t listen to his mother’s answers.
He was too busy trying to figure out what Sadie was already writing on her slate.
After a moment her chalk stopped moving, and she angled the board just enough that he could see the words: Now how do we decide who wins the bet?
He picked up his own chalk, about to write that they’d have to save the bet for a different game, but then Sadie grinned and wiped her board clean. She wrote again, this time making no effort to keep him from reading each word as it formed. If I get more points than Abigail, I win.
Oh, she was evil. If he wanted to win, he’d have to try to match Abigail’s answers and then suffer through sitting next to her all through supper. All just to get Sadie’s real name.
He met her gaze and mouthed, “Deal.”
Sadie’s real surname didn’t matter, but he would not give up this chance to eliminate any of the secrets between them.
The game started simply with questions about favorite colors, foods, and the like.
Nicholas couldn’t be too obvious in trying to match Abigail’s answers—he did not want her or his mother to think he wanted her to win.
On the other hand, Abigail cared more about winning than the truth, so all he had to do was tailor his answers to what he thought she’d think he’d put.
Which was a twisty thought process that turned out to be much harder than he expected.
Sadie’s task, with one more guess involved, should have been even harder.
Yet she was eerily good at picking the same choices as he did.
Then again, he had to anticipate Abigail’s thoughts, which followed no logic he understood, and Sadie only had to anticipate his, even if his were based on what he thought Abigail would say.
Nicholas had no idea how long his mother intended the game to last, but he knew no matter how many more questions there were, he wouldn’t be winning his bet with Sadie.
Which meant he could stop trying to match Abigail.
In fact, he could actively try not to match her and avoid the flirtatious smiles she gave him every time they answered the same.
His mother looked down at the paper in her hands and asked the next question. “What do you notice first when you meet someone new?”
Nicholas looked down at his slate, smiled, and picked up his chalk.
???
Sadie hadn’t cheated that much during the game.
It didn’t take magic to guess what Nicholas would put when he was trying to think like Abigail.
On the rare instances when she had read his thoughts, it had been purely accidental, a case of him thinking so hard she couldn’t miss them.
She’d purposefully gotten a few of those questions wrong, just to be fair.
The latest question had everyone but Nicholas’s thoughts pressing against her. She reached up and gripped her amulet, absently tracing the glyph on the back as she scrawled her own answer. What would Nicholas think Abigail would say when she was trying to respond like him?
Their eyes, Sadie decided.
Madeleine announced that their time was up and asked each woman to turn over her slate and share in turn. Abigail actually had put eyes as what she noticed first.
After Jane shared her answer—height—Madeleine turned to her son. “Nicholas?”
He held up his slate, but didn’t read what it said. Because of how they were seated, Sadie didn’t have a clear view, but based on how Jane’s eyes widened, his answer wasn’t predictable.
Madeleine read what he had written aloud for everyone who couldn’t see. “Nicholas says what he notices first is how willing someone is to contradict him. Which means there are no points earned this round.”
They all erased their boards, and Sadie knew she wasn’t the only one wondering about Nicholas’s answer. For once, though, other thoughts didn’t swamp her because she was too focused on her own to notice them.
That had not been an answer chosen to match Abigail.
“Next question: If you had to spend all day in part of Marstede, where would you choose?”
The brewing room. Sadie would gladly stay an entire week in there.
The whole month, even if she had to sleep there.
But she couldn’t write that as her answer.
She should write one of the parlors, which would almost certainly be Abigail’s answer, but she couldn’t bring herself to lie so much on this question.
For the first time, knowing that she had to hide her answer hurt.
And so she gave the most honest answer she could without exposing all her secrets.
“The spring,” she shared when it was her turn, making everyone frown, as there was no spring on the parts of the estate they had visited. Everyone except Madeleine and Nicholas, that was. The dowager listened to her answer with a small smile. And Nicholas?
He looked at her with enough heat in his hazel eyes turned mostly green that she couldn’t help but remember what had happened when they had stopped by the bank of that spring. He continued looking at her when he flipped over his slate and told everyone that his favorite spot was also the spring.
Liar, she mouthed at him. The corners of his eyes crinkled, and she realized she had just contradicted him. Just as she had when they first met. He wasn’t picking his answers based on Abigail anymore, but on her.
He’d avoided her for days after the incident at the spring, and now he wanted to make bets with her and tease her in front of everyone? Granted, no one—except possibly his mother—knew he was teasing her, but that didn’t change what he was doing. She thought he had made his decision.
Had she been disappointed that he wouldn’t trust her enough to follow through on the path those kisses had led them toward?
Of course. But she’d also been relieved.
If he didn’t trust her, then she didn’t have to feel guilty about the secrets she was keeping.
Her real name was the least of the bunch.