Chapter 28
Twenty-Eight
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Nicholas honestly didn’t know how he ended up seated across from Sadie with a chessboard between them. Had his mother nudged her in that direction while Beatrice distracted Abigail?
If so, then he owed them both his thanks.
Despite sitting next to Sadie through all of supper, he felt that he hadn’t had any time with her.
Her attention had been elsewhere, her answers monosyllabic.
He suspected she had been using her magic, trying to discover the demon.
He just wasn’t sure what power would be able to do such a thing.
Nicholas wouldn’t ask. Not tonight.
Tonight, he wanted to enjoy the way she played as if she could read his mind. Enjoy her.
He reached for a pawn and moved it. “How do you think everyone would react if I suggested a trip to the spring to swim instead of visiting one of the local villages again?”
Sadie gave him a look that was probably supposed to be quelling rather than seductive. Too bad every look of hers seduced him. A sentiment he wasn’t hiding very well, based on the way her cheeks turned pink.
“The spring isn’t big enough for that many swimmers,” she told him as she moved her own piece.
“That isn’t what I asked.”
“Fine, I’ll play. Your mother wouldn’t roll her eyes, because she is Madeleine Huxley, Dowager Baroness of Marstede, but you’d know it was what she wanted to do. Helen would shrink in on herself and hope someone would offer her an excuse not to go.”
“Beatrice would complain that her books are too likely to get splashed,” Nicholas added. “Jane would ask if any potion ingredients grow in the water. And Abigail …”
Sadie laughed, then glanced over her shoulder toward the other women. No one reacted to her laughter, and she looked back at Nicholas. “Did you put an aural ward around us?”
“Of course. I want our conversation to remain private.”
“Then why trail off before stating what Abigail would do?”
He shuddered ostentatiously and moved his knight. “I simply didn’t want to contemplate her reaction.”
“But you know exactly what she would do. She’d be the first one at the spring and she’d strip down to her skin without hesitation to go swimming with you.”
He shuddered again.
“Be honest, you can’t hate the sight of her that much.”
“I absolutely can.” He let his eyes wander over Sadie, not ogling, but appreciating the view she made in the silk evening gown. “Your bare shoulders do more for me than seeing any part of Abigail.”
And the memory of her swimming was one he’d always treasure, though he knew he should feel guilty.
Sadie’s cheeks turned a brighter shade. “Attention on the game, Nicholas,” she chided him.
Her tone told him she knew exactly what he was thinking about … and that she didn’t truly mind.
“Shouldn’t you be celebrating my distraction?” Honestly, it wouldn’t astound him if she tried to distract him that way in order to ensure her victory. All she’d have to do was lean forward a little, and he’d be hard pressed to even look at the chessboard.
Instead, she straightened her spine. Bewildered, but taking the hint, Nicholas focused his attention back on the game. A few seconds later, Sadie made her move, the exact one he’d been thinking would be the worst thing she could do to block his gambit.
That had happened constantly in their last game, too.
Not too surprising, since Sadie was clearly a talented chess player, despite her claim of never having played before coming to Marstede.
But still somewhat surprising. Nicholas was playing with an entirely different strategy than he had employed in their last game, and she couldn’t know that after so few moves.
She should have moved her bishop if she expected him to play the same way he had last time.
But she always seemed to know exactly what he had planned.
Exactly what he was thinking.
He studied her again, his hand hovering over his knight. Could she literally read his thoughts? It would explain why she didn’t try to distract him as they played. She relied on his thoughts to know how to move.
He moved his knight without worrying whether the new placement was any better than the old, and didn’t look at the board. Then Nicholas let loose the thoughts he usually pushed away until he was in the privacy of his own bedroom or bath.
Sadie, naked, walking out of the spring and directly to him, wrapping her arms around him and kissing him.
Her on her knees once more, but not in the kitchen, in his bedroom.
He pushed open her dressing gown to find her wearing nothing beneath it.
Instead of coming in her mouth, he tossed her on the bed, threw wards over her wrists and ankles to keep her in place, and climbed over her.
Across the table, the real Sadie’s breathing grew ragged, and he knew.
She was a telepath. She was reading his mind, seeing everything he was imagining.
Suddenly she bolted to her feet, the chair clattering to the floor, she had pushed away from the table so forcefully. Without looking at him, she fled the parlor.
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Sadie didn’t know where she was running.
Away.
Away from Nicholas and his knowledge that she had been reading his mind. Perhaps she’d run all the way back to Lamsdel, gather her things and then flee the village. She’d find a new home and try yet again to live anonymously, suppressing her power. Suppressing herself.
It didn’t matter that she had decided earlier to tell him, to ask for his help in controlling her power. She had planned to ease him into it. Not have him figure it out like … like that.
“Sadie, wait!”
Nicholas’s voice, the pounding of his feet behind her, spurred Sadie to greater speeds. She spotted a door that led outside and corrected her course.
“Please, Sadie,” Nicholas called as she ran outside.
She took the path toward the Gloaming Forest, but her breath was coming harder, her steps slowing.
“Sadie, I’m sorry. Please, let me apologize.”
The words penetrated, and Sadie nearly tripped, she stopped so suddenly. Nicholas wanted to apologize? She was the one who owed him an apology. By the time she turned, he had reached her. He lifted one arm, then dropped it again.
“Sadie, I’m so sorry. I never should have forced such thoughts on you.”
“You’re apologizing about what I saw in your mind?”
“Of course. I never should have … making you witness such things was inexcusable.”
Sadie choked. “They’re your thoughts. I’m the one who overstepped.”
“You didn’t do anything.”
She gaped. She wasn’t purposefully using her power now, like she had been when they were playing chess, but her amulet also wasn’t active and she caught enough glimpses of Nicholas’s thoughts to know he meant exactly what he said.
She glanced back at the manor. She didn’t want to be standing there, having this conversation where anyone who stepped outside could hear.
Nicholas could ward them against eavesdroppers, but instead of asking him to do so, Sadie began to walk.
She looked over at him, silently giving permission for him to walk next to her.
“I was reading your mind. How are you not mad about that?”
Nicholas’s brow furrowed. “Why would I be mad? You’ve already admitted you struggle to control your power, and I don’t think you were rooting through my thoughts for my darkest secrets.”
“I wasn’t,” Sadie assured him. “I tend to hear what I call surface thoughts, the ones people are about to speak aloud or want to say.”
“Well, there. Why would I be mad about that?”
They’d reached the treeline, and between the canopy and the falling twilight, the shadows embraced them.
Sadie felt more comfortable spilling her secrets in the darkness, for they weren’t meant to be in the light.
And though it was ridiculous for her to be telling Nicholas why he should be mad, she couldn’t trust his blasé attitude.
What if he still didn’t understand? “You should be mad because it violates your privacy. Even if I only hear surface thoughts, some are never meant to be heard.”
Nicholas grabbed her hand, tugging until she spun to face him. “I have no desire to keep secrets from you, Sadie.”
“You cannot possibly be this accepting!”
“Says who?” He leaned closer, his gaze intense enough that Sadie instinctively took a step back. Then another as he crowded closer. Another.
Soon she found herself pressed against a tree … except that wasn’t rough bark at her back. He’d cast a ward, saving her dress from catching on the bark, protecting the bare skin near her shoulders and neck from even an accidental scratch.
“Who says I can’t accept you as you are, Sadie?” Nicholas asked.
She struggled to draw a breath. Partially, it was his nearness, the overwhelming nature of being caged in by him. But mostly it was shock, as Nicholas subverted every expectation life had taught her to have. “Everyone,” she whispered. “Everything.”
“Then everyone is wrong. Your magic doesn’t define you. You are so much more than your power. And frankly, I’m not convinced your power is so scary either. So what if you can read my thoughts? I can imprison you in my wards, a far more serious threat.”
“But you can control your power,” Sadie protested.
“Not around you, I can’t.” He pressed a hand against the ward behind her, directly next to her head. “In case you haven’t noticed, I have a habit of trapping you in with me.”
She licked her lips, and Nicholas tracked the motion of her tongue with predatory focus. “I don’t mind being trapped with you.”
He closed the distance between them, his lips against hers, but not kissing. “I don’t mind having you in my head.” I want all of you.
Sadie gave in. Perhaps he’d change his opinion when he had time to think over the implications of her power, but for now, his words, his thoughts, seduced her.
She couldn’t do anything but live in this perfect moment—she wouldn’t apply the lessons from the past nor plan for the future. She’d drown in the present.
His lips were already there. All she had to do was shape her own, and they were kissing.
He groaned and pressed impossibly closer, and Sadie wrapped her arms around him, telling him without words that she relished the pressure, that she didn’t feel trapped but cherished.
Good, because I don’t think I can let you go.
His thoughts were a perfect response to her own, and with a start, Sadie realized she had telepathed her own thoughts into his mind. Nicholas reacted to her sudden stillness immediately, pulling back. And though the summer night was still warm, she felt a chill without him pressed against her.
“It was too much, wasn’t it?” She clenched her eyes closed. It hadn’t taken long for her to lose control and prove to him why he shouldn’t want to be around her.
His hand cupped her cheek. “That’s what I was going to ask, so why are you acting like you did something wrong?”
She blinked into the soft hazel of his gaze. “You didn’t pull back because I shoved my thoughts in your head?”
He pressed his forehead against hers. “Sadie, I pulled back because you stopped kissing me. Because it seemed like you suddenly regretted it.”
“Not because you don’t want to deal with me and all the issues my magic causes? You aren’t realizing that you want me to disappear?” She hated how much she needed reassurance, but Nicholas accepting her was too good to be true. And things that were too good to be true didn’t happen to her.
“Have I said—or thought—anything that suggests I would ever want to see less of you?” Nicholas had pulled back enough to look her in the eyes, but suddenly his own squeezed closed. “Sorry. I shouldn’t be thinking of you that way.”
Sadie hadn’t seen his thoughts that time, and for once she was disappointed. Knowing how Nicholas saw her, thought of her, was a thrill all its own. And that was a realization in itself. If he really was so accepting of her power … then she wanted to revel in the freedom it gave her.
This time she pressed her hand against his jaw and waited for his eyes to open. “You don’t have to apologize for your thoughts. I didn’t actually see whatever it just was, but I … I liked seeing what you were thinking earlier.”
His mouth opened, but it took him a few seconds to respond. Suddenly he grinned. “The spring isn’t too far away.”
Sadie shook her head, then kissed him before he could apologize for making the suggestion. “The manor is closer, and the bedroom fantasy appeals to me more. Nick.”