Chapter 24
Twenty-Four
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Sadie had decided on baking because there would be other people in the kitchen. She needed that external barrier while she was with Nicholas. If she had thought Madeleine would have let her get away with it, she would have tried to talk her way out of spending the day with him at all.
They pushed through the door, and Nicholas’s attention immediately went to one side, to the stools in front of one workbench. No, to one stool. The stool.
She felt her cheeks heat and realized she might have made a mistake. Yes, the cook and her helpers were bustling around the space, but the reminder of what had happened here loomed larger.
“Cake,” she said desperately, a little louder than she had intended.
The cook, a tall woman with hawkish features, looked over at them. “Cake? I don’t have any cake prepared. My lord, you are supposed to give me notice for things like that! Or is it that Miss Abigail? I tell you now if she is demanding cake, she will just have to wait.”
“No one is demanding cake, Mrs. Benson,” Sadie informed the cook. “We are going to bake a cake, if it won’t be too much of a disturbance to have us in the kitchen?”
At this point, Sadie wouldn’t press if Mrs. Benson objected.
She didn’t know what else she could do with Nicholas that would keep them around people, but being with him here was probably a mistake.
Though he kept suppressing them, thoughts of the other night rose to the surface of Nicholas’s mind constantly.
The manor’s cook squinted at them. “I suppose I can spare you that counter over there.” She pointed toward a counter—luckily not the counter. “If you’re going to make a mess in my kitchen, though, you are responsible for cleaning it up, too. Guest or no guest. Baron or no baron.”
“Of course, Mrs. Benson,” Nicholas reassured her. “We’ll leave your space cleaner than we found it.”
Sadie glared at him. “Don’t promise the impossible. Do you see how clean she keeps this place?”
The cook cackled. “I like this one, my lord.”
Hazel eyes locked on her. “So do I, Mrs. Benson. So do I.”
Sadie spun to the work area the cook had directed them toward. “We’ll need flour, sugar, butter, and eggs,” she told Nicholas without looking at him.
While he gathered the ingredients, she found bowls, a wooden spoon, whisk, cake tin, and measuring cups. When Nicholas joined her, she made short work of cracking the eggs and adding a scoop of sugar then handed him the bowl and the whisk. “Beat these.”
He accepted the bowl and began to stir. “Sadie, are you ever going to look at me again? I will even accept glares, if that is all I can get.”
She obligingly glared at him. “We’re not doing this.”
He sighed. “Fine. For today only, I’ll pretend nothing happened. But only if you will as well and start talking to me again.”
It wasn’t that easy, since his promise wouldn’t extend to control over his thoughts, but Sadie wanted to accept.
She wanted to go back to the easy conversations they had shared.
And even if no promise could actually make the other night not have happened, pretending would probably work better than ignoring. “Fine.”
Nicholas set the bowl of eggs and sugar down. “Did you enjoy yourself in the brewing room yesterday?”
Not sure how to answer that question, she looked in the bowl, then shoved it back at him. “Those aren’t done. You need to put some muscle into it, Nick. You are beating, not just stirring.”
He groaned. “Sadie, I know I just promised to pretend nothing happened, but that means you can’t call me Nick. I can’t be held responsible for my reaction to hearing that name from you after—”
She slapped her hand over his mouth, then snatched it back the instant she felt his lips against her palm. “You can’t say things like that!”
“If you call me Nick, I can’t help it.”
“Whisk the eggs, Nicholas.” Sadie said as sharply as she could manage.
He beat the eggs. “You haven’t answered my question, Sadie.”
She tried to remember the question past the heat his reaction to her calling him Nick had conjured.
“Did you enjoy yourself in the brewing room?” Nicholas repeated.
Right. That question. Sadie didn’t bother to check if any of the kitchen helpers were close enough to hear—she knew Nicholas would have erected an aural ward before asking her that. He might want to untangle her secrets, but he wouldn’t expose her to others. “Yes and no.”
He tilted the bowl, as if he knew what texture he was trying to achieve, then continued whisking. “I can guess at the yes, but why no?”
“Because it is a reminder of what I’ve given up. What I have to give up.” She held up a hand. “And don’t tell me I don’t have to. I do.”
Sadie measured flour into another bowl, then looked for a heat-glyph to melt the butter. To her surprise, Nicholas changed the subject.
“Did Pippa learn anything from Abigail’s maid?”
“Nothing conclusive, but everything she has heard supports our theory that Abigail is pregnant. And the maid did confirm that she was Prince Benedict’s lover and that he was the one who broke things off between them only a week before your mother’s invitation arrived.
” A thought occurred to Sadie. “Drop the aural ward for a moment.”
Nicholas looked at her in confusion, but nodded after a moment. “It’s down.”
She spun to face the rest of the kitchen. “Mrs. Benson, has Abigail ever requested any ginger tea?”
“Requested?” The manor’s cook scoffed. “More like demanded. Her maid came in here the first day and informed me that her mistress requires a ginger tea with lemon every morning before she even gets out of bed, and since it must be hot when she wakes I must send up a fresh pot every half hour from sunrise until she requests breakfast.”
Sadie turned back to Nicholas with a satisfied smile.
“Is that supposed to mean something?”
She rolled her eyes. “Ginger tea is the next best thing to a nausea potion for morning sickness.”
He shook his head. “I almost feel sorry for her.”
“Don’t. Feel sorry for the babe, but not Abigail. She either wasn’t careful enough to take a contraceptive brew, or she purposefully didn’t, hoping to entrap the prince—and now you. Either way, she deserves to deal with the consequences.”
Nicholas shook his head. “It might not be that simple. Things are different in the city among the nobility. Being caught buying a contraceptive potion could be as damaging to a lady’s reputation as being caught leaving a man’s bedchamber. Abigail might have honestly been doing her best.”
Sadie raised a brow. “For someone who loves to act surly, you are far too nice. I will grant you that there is a chance Abigail’s pregnancy was accidental, but how she has handled the entire situation has been very deliberate.”
“And annoying,” Nicholas muttered.
Sadie almost joked that dealing with near-naked women must be one of his most onerous duties, but she wasn’t sure she could handle the thoughts her words would trigger.
She wasn’t afraid of hearing how much he had enjoyed seeing Abigail in the sheer nightgown—she knew Nicholas better.
What she feared would be seeing how he thought of her.
And knowing, without a doubt, that was the direction his mind would go was even scarier.
She felt closer to Nicholas than anyone save perhaps Pippa. But Pippa was such a friendly, nice person who got along with everyone. She had practically adopted Sadie when she moved to Lamsdel. Being her friend was effortless because of who Pippa was. Sadie didn’t have to share herself.
So, perhaps she felt closer to Nicholas after all. He wouldn’t accept a superficial personality. She might not have told him her secrets, but she hadn’t hidden from him either.
Almost half of her month at Marstede was gone. For once, Sadie decided to ignore one-third of her grandmother’s advice. She would live in the present, and she would remember the lessons she had learned from the past, but she wasn’t going to worry about the future. She’d be living it soon enough.
Sadie showed Nicholas how to fold the dry ingredients into the wet and they talked about anything and everything except magic and what had happened in that very kitchen two nights before.
If Nicholas’s thoughts turned in those directions, then they did so only deeply enough that Sadie never heard nor saw them.
They were so engrossed in their conversation, that they didn’t even leave the kitchen while the cake baked, and instead leaned against the counter talking the entire time.
“Do we get to eat it now?” Nicholas asked when Sadie pulled the cake from the oven.
“No. It needs to cool, then we frost it, and only after that do we taste our efforts.”
He grinned, “So you are saying we still have plenty of time remaining before this activity is finished?”
If Sadie had been thinking clearly when she chose her activity, she wouldn’t have picked a cake to bake.
Something like scones would have only required her to be with Nicholas for an hour or so.
But while she would have said she wanted to avoid him if Pippa had asked, the truth was, Sadie enjoyed being with him.
A truth her subconscious knew even as her conscious mind shouted that this was dangerous.
But only if she started hoping for a future with him.
Sadie wasn’t thinking about the future, though. Not now. So she gave herself permission to ignore the warning bells and smile back. “Exactly.”
Mrs. Benson marched over a moment later and inspected their cake, sniffing appreciatively.
“It looks good, but it will be a while before you can finish it. So, off with you both. I have chicken to roast and peas to shuck, and all manner of things to get done before luncheon, and you two are in the way. You can come back this afternoon to frost your cake.”
“Of course, Mrs. Benson,” Nicholas said meekly. “We’ll get out of your hair.”