Chapter 30 #2
“We’d have to tell her why we’re asking. She’s unlikely to accept an excuse that we are just curious.”
“Then we tell her. She won’t panic.”
Nicholas swallowed his final sip of tea and stood. “Agreed, but we need to prepare first. Since there is a chance the demon has possessed her, I want to have a few charms on hand before we talk to her. Let’s go to my workroom.”
He walked over to the side table and scooped Sadie’s necklace into his palm.
Making a fresh charm using that glyph wasn’t the only thing he wanted to work on this morning.
Now that he knew what form her power took, he had an idea of how to help her while she was still mastering control of her magic.
A glyph that would help her instead of restricting her power.
Sadie rose and stared at the agate in his hand. “You won’t—”
“I won’t tell anyone about your power. It is your secret, Sadie.
” One she had learned needed to be kept.
He didn’t doubt those lessons had been painful.
“But you might want to consider admitting to being a water-witch. That way we can at least explain how you recognized what Jane was brewing. But it is up to you.”
She pressed her lips together and didn’t answer as she walked to the door. She had plenty to weigh and consider before making her decision.
Nicholas cast a ward over the door, needing to make sure she understood one more thing.
He waited until she turned to face him and took her hands in his.
“Before we go out there, I want to remind you of something, Sadie.” He leaned close, touching his nose to hers, staring into her brown eyes with all the intensity he could muster.
“Nothing about you is demonic. Nothing.”
???
Sadie hadn’t realized she needed to hear those words until Nicholas spoke.
Nothing about you is demonic.
Of course she knew that, but she had also internalized that her power was evil.
After all, the only thing that blocked it was a glyph meant to trap demons.
Sadie had lived with that knowledge most of her life.
Her parents and brother hadn’t helped, treating her as a pariah no better than a demon.
She might not have described her magic as demonic, but she had felt it all the same.
Staring into Nicholas’s hazel eyes, for the first time she felt almost at peace with her power. He was proof that people could accept her even when they knew her secret. He was hope that she could learn to control her magic. He was … everything she hadn’t let herself dream of.
Instead of agreeing or saying she understood, Sadie responded with the only words that felt right. “Thank you.” Thank you for always protecting me, even when the threat is my own mind, she added telepathically.
“Always, Sadie.”
Nicholas dropped the ward, his hand landing at the small of her back as she opened the door.
They walked out into the hallway together, and Sadie wasn’t sure if she was relieved or disappointed that they made it all the way to her room, where she quickly changed, then to his workroom without passing a single person.
There was no one raising a brow at seeing her step out of his rooms. No one smiling at the tender way he escorted her through the manor.
It felt like she had replaced one secret with a new one, this one shared between her and Nicholas.
Not that their night together was truly a secret.
Pippa must have figured it out, along with most of the servants at the manor.
But was it supposed to stay a secret from Madeleine and her other guests?
He had joked earlier that it wouldn’t make a difference if they saw her coming out of his room, but that didn’t mean he was actually prepared for it to become common gossip.
“Nicholas?”
He opened his workroom and gestured Sadie inside ahead of him. “Yes?”
“Are we—” She stopped, not sure how she wanted to finish her question. She tried again. “How discreet are we being?”
He moved to a table covered in stones of various sizes and colors and picked up an ordinary-looking gray one about the size of a robin’s egg, turning it over in his hands.
“I’m not going to announce you will be the next Lady Marstede in order to draw out the demon if it is working with Abigail, but apart from that, I’m not much of one for secrets.
I figure my preferences haven’t been hidden up until this point, so short of announcing an engagement, there isn’t an increased threat to you if we are as open as we want.
” He set the stone down on a clear workbench and looked up at Sadie.
“It is up to you, of course. I know women are always judged more harshly for liaisons than men. I don’t think it is possible for me to hide what I feel for you, but how discreet we are regarding our physical relationship is your decision. ”
Sadie wanted to argue that he was perfectly capable of hiding what he felt, for even after everything they had done and the freedom with which he had shared his thoughts, she still didn’t know.
There was tenderness that went beyond physical attraction, certainly, but Nicholas was, at his core, an inherently empathic, considerate man.
If it was more than that, if it was even halfway to the feeling Sadie had felt creeping up on her, wouldn’t she have heard something in his thoughts? Love was too big of a word to hide, wasn’t it?
But no, she wasn’t sure what he felt at all.
He’d mentioned an engagement, but that had only been a reference to how they could bait the demon into revealing itself, not anything to do with what he really wanted.
He’d said it so easily, he must not have been thinking of it in real terms, only as a ploy.
It was better this way, Sadie decided. She might have fallen for the baron, but even if he returned her feelings, they couldn’t very well have a future together.
His mother had only invited Sadie to stay at Marstede to make the other ladies look good in comparison.
As kind as Madeleine had been so far, she wouldn’t want Sadie as a daughter-in-law.
Nor would Nicholas want to tie himself to a telepath.
Sadie believed that he accepted her power, but he hadn’t lived through the distrust and ostracism that came with having her secret uncovered, and it always came out eventually. Sadie Winsel could disappear when that happened and start over. The Baroness of Marstede could not.
Not that Nicholas actually wanted to marry her. He didn’t want to marry at all, and she wasn’t fool enough to think a night with her had changed his mind.
“Sadie?”
She shook her head, realizing she had lost herself in thought and hadn’t responded to his implied question. “I’m not worried about my reputation. I don’t particularly want to announce that I am sleeping with you over supper, but otherwise I don’t feel the need to hide.”
So long as she had him, Sadie had no desire to waste time sneaking around.
“Does that mean I’m allowed to do this—” He stepped close and pressed a quick kiss to her lips. “—in front of others, or would that count as announcing things?”
She curled her fingers into his jacket and chased his lips with hers, claiming a slightly longer, though still sweet, kiss. “I will never say no to a kiss. I don’t care if people know I’m sleeping with you; I just don’t want to announce it to your mother.”
He raised a brow. “She’d probably throw a celebration if you did.”
“She would not. Madeleine would probably banish me from the manor. She invited me to make the other ladies look better.”
Nicholas shook his head and reached for one of the tools he had scattered around the room. “Is that what she told you?”
“More or less. She said your introductions to the ladies hadn’t gone well, and that she wanted me to stay and pretend to be a lady while still behaving the way I had when we first met. Her thoughts were all about how I’d be the perfect contrast to everyone else. I’d make them look better.”
“Sadie, I’m not sure exactly what you heard in my mother’s mind, but I guarantee you she never expected nor wanted you to make the others look better. She invited you to stay because she knew I didn’t have a chance of resisting you.”
He was wrong, but Sadie didn’t feel like arguing about how much his mother wanted him to marry one of the ladies she had invited. She changed the subject with no subtlety whatsoever, nodding at the tool he now held poised over the gray stone. “What are you doing?”
“Modifying the glyph that alerted you to the demon before into something that will hopefully give us warning of the demon’s presence, even if there is no immediate threat.”
He started carving, his movements sure and steady, and Sadie gave herself permission simply to enjoy being there with him, watching him.
Admiring him. He didn’t hesitate as he worked, nor did he need to reference a grimoire, though from what Sadie could see the glyph he was engraving was quite complicated.
The only sign that his work wasn’t easy was the intense way he concentrated, the tip of his tongue poking out of the corner of his mouth, the impatient flick of his head when a lock of red hair fell over his eye.
Engraving was very different from brewing.
When Sadie wanted to make a potion, she had to go through myriad small steps and assemble dozens of components.
Piecing runes together in just the right way to create a glyph was probably similar to selecting the right ingredients and methods of brewing, but the actual act of carving the charm looked far more tedious.
Sadie could watch a cauldron simmer for hours because she had to prepare other ingredients at the same time.
Just engraving the same lines over and over until magic infused a stone would bore her.
Though she wasn’t bored watching Nicholas do just that. The key there, however, was Nicholas, not the engraving.
He came out of the almost trance he’d been in after an hour of working on the charm, looked up and spotted Sadie and smiled.
Then the smile slipped. “I apologize. That must have been tedious for you. I suppose you didn’t really need to stay with me, though I’d also prefer you didn’t leave my sight so long as there is a demon on the loose. ”
“It’s fine,” Sadie assured him. “I found it interesting. And it confirmed that I am very glad that my affinity is for water and not earth.”
His lips quirked up. “I’m not sure how anyone could prefer juggling all the precise timing and multiple moving parts in brewing over the simple focus of engraving.”
“It’s more exciting.”
“So you were bored.”
She shook her head. “I truly wasn’t. I just wouldn’t want to engrave charms myself. Watching you, on the other hand, is pleasant.”
“Pleasant enough that you wouldn’t mind if I carved one more charm before we seek out Beatrice?”
“The containment glyph from my amulet?”
He shook his head. “No, we need a way to keep it on the demon—or the person the demon is possessing, I suppose. I won’t know what to carve the glyph into until we figure that out.”
“Then what else do you want to make?”
“A replacement for your amulet. I know a glyph meant to help people whose thoughts are constantly scattered achieve focus. If I modify it slightly, I think it could help you focus your telepathy so that you can gain control of your power faster. It might not help, but it can’t hurt.”
He rooted around in the drawers under his workbench and pulled out a ring. He pried the blue stone from the setting and began carving before Sadie fully realized what was happening.
“Is that a sapphire?”
“Mmhmm. They’re excellent vessels for mental focus runes.”
“But it’s a sapphire, Nicholas.”
He paused his movements and looked over at her. “So?”
“You can’t give me a sapphire. Especially not a sapphire ring!”
“The stone is too small to risk you carrying it in your pockets. The ring is practical.”
“It’s jewelry. Even if the amethyst wasn’t too much—which I don’t agree about—this is.”
Nicholas placed the sapphire on his workbench. “Sadie, since we are not announcing an engagement to go along with this ring, no one will think it came from me. So, it doesn’t matter if it is too much, because no one will know I gave it to you.”
“That doesn’t change the fact that you can’t be giving me sapphire rings.”
“Fine. I won’t give you sapphire rings.”
Sadie relaxed.
“I’ll only give you the one.”
“Nicholas!”
“Sadie.” He crossed his arms. “I’m not budging on this. The ring might help you control your power; that is more important than what I should or shouldn’t give you.”
“But does it need to be a sapphire?”
“Don’t you want it to be as powerful as possible? Will you really reject the one thing that might help you?”
Put that way, it did sound ridiculous. Sadie would accept the ring while she practiced her power, then return it afterward. That was a compromise she could live with, though she knew better than to tell Nicholas about her intention of returning it.
“If it actually helps, I’ll wear it.”
“Good.” He picked up the sapphire again and returned to carving a glyph on the tiny stone. “But you have to give it a solid chance, Sadie.”
“I will,” she promised, and meant it.