Chapter 3
MARIETTA
I was mildly annoyed when the servants took one glance at Gabriel Noble and allowed him to pass without comment. Probably hoping I’d sold him my virginity. Hoping they might get paid for once, if so. The servants weren’t stupid. They knew things were dire.
Every skilled worker had fled when the prime cook had left, to be replaced by round after round of those less adept. I was surprised this last batch had remained as long as they had. Ferris was a crafty one with his promises and lies.
While the two male servants might be hoping I would toss my skirts for the mysterious man I’d entered with, the two maids hovering in the doorway were obviously hoping to toss theirs instead, if their glazed expressions were anything to go by.
I bet the four had gathered as soon as I’d been found missing—waiting for the gossip my return would deliver.
“Lady Marietta?” The comment was directed to me, but the maid’s eyes never left Noble.
“Retrieve my traveling case from storage please, Penny.”
“Yes, Lady Marietta.” Glassy eyes stayed fixed. “I look forward to wherever we are going.”
Sable, the other maid, pinned Noble with a more avaricious gaze as he visibly scanned the layout. Her eyes took in everything from the tilt of his head to the curve of his backside. She swayed a step in his direction, as if called there by an invisible force.
I had been thinking about taking one of the maids, as a buffer against Noble, but I’d rather struggle with all of my fastenings—I’d rather put my dress on backward—than deal with this.
“I don’t require your presence on the trip. Please retrieve my case.”
Noble shot me a knowing look, edged with something that resembled irritation—but for the first time, I didn’t think it directed at me. “Show me your brother’s bedroom.”
I led the way upstairs. Kennen’s room was messy—I could never find a thing in it. Noble might find it right pleasant, judging by his own study.
“Hmm. Cast more light.”
I activated the switch on the bedside’s ever-lamp.
His gaze held mine for extended seconds.
Then he reached into the air and flicked two fingers.
Light bloomed overhead, like aethered sunlight.
He had connected to someone else’s household spells, however meager, as if it were a simple task.
Want circled in the way it always did when another mage did something of which I was incapable.
I cleared my throat uncomfortably as he began poking around, picking up and examining objects, nodding or humming at different things—a discordant sound in the charged atmosphere.
“I’m going to pack. Don’t disturb Ferris—he’s in the next room over. He’s not…pleasant when disturbed after a rough night. Or day.”
“Not pleasant how?” Noble’s sharp eyes held mine, searching for something. He must have found it, because his shoulders relaxed and he waved me away. “I won’t pester your disreputable brother.”
The two maids, standing attentively in the hall, followed me into my room.
“Who is he, Lady Marietta?”
I frowned. “Just a man.” I took the case from Penny. Stunned and dreamy, she didn’t look capable of relinquishing it on her own.
Sable, always the more brash of the two, elbowed her way past. She was eyeing me with the smug disdain she had taken to displaying after the invitations had dried up and the neighbors had turned their backs. The servants were no doubt serving out gossip to anyone offering a filament of gold.
One part of me understood it—they hadn’t been paid in weeks. Bitter and hungry, they were getting revenge and putting food on the table. The other part of me was angry beyond measure that they were contributing to the current fiasco.
“What are you doing with that man?” Sable asked.
“Packing. Are you going to help?” I took an armful of clothing and dropped it in. I didn’t have a large wardrobe, but without the painstaking care manual packing required—or the right spellwork to make everything easier—dresses took up a lot of space.
Sable ran a finger along the edge of the case, deliberately not using the packing spells she excelled at—spells she knew I was terrible with even at my rested best. “What’s his name?”
“His name is none of your business.” I grabbed another handful of undergarments from the linen press—an extra chemise and shift, two pairs of stockings.
Penny wandered over, still looking dazed, but began helping me fold and place with her own limited magic.
Sable continued to watch. I was getting tired of people watching me.
“If you aren’t going to help, get out.”
Sable smirked and sashayed from the room.
“Don’t mind her, Lady Marietta,” Penny said after Sable’s skirt disappeared around the door frame. “Always trying to reach upward.”
Weren’t we all. “I appreciate your help, Penny.” She had always been sweet. Daft, but sweet.
“Of course, Lady Marietta. I can pack your essentials, if you’d like.”
“Yes, that would be wonderful.”
Penny went into the connected room where I kept my perfume and pins, my toilette and jewelry.
A guttural female laugh made me peek around the door frame, expecting to see Sable and Noble. The two male servants Ferris had recently hired stood in the hall instead, angled toward me.
“Why are you up here?”
They gave me varying stares. One smirking, one intense—both uncomfortable.
I carefully dropped my hand and wrapped my fingers around the pistol in my pocket. “Go fetch an extra lamp and my parasol.”
The moment stretched. Finally, they turned and walked down the steps, gazes promising. I inhaled a shaky breath. Any life I’d once envisioned had been dashed with my parents’ deaths and debt. Now I was on par with the servants—and more vulnerable in some ways.
I placed a hand against my chest—heart beating as if it would never slow. I reached for the house spells, weak and frayed like me. It was like trying to lift a wet eel.
Another delighted laugh echoed. I crept down the hall until I stood just outside Kennen’s room.
“It’s as I said, my lord, I’m here to serve you. I can help with anything you need.” The emphasis was hard to ignore. Sable lowered her voice, but I could still hear, as close as I was. “I know where all the good stuff is. People paying prime money for that. I won’t charge you a coin.”
The implication of everything the maid would give for free wasn’t lost on me, but the fact that the servants had been selling Kennen’s belongings overrode all else.
The itch brimming under my skin, anger and despair, became agonizing.
I knew, knew, they were profiting from the scandal, but I’d assumed through gossip, not thievery.
“How many things have you sold? And what were they?” Noble asked. His voice turned entrancing, like a siren’s song coaxing for more.
“Small things—a watch, a handkerchief, some knotted ties—nothing as good as I can get for someone like you. There’s a journal listing all the deepest schoolboy desires of the Vein Ripper.”
Wetness dripped down my cheeks in impotent rage. I wanted to barge in, to grab the maid, shake her, squeeze until her thieving hands popped off. I wanted to demand what right she had to do this.
A last bit of sense held me in place. I didn’t know where Kennen’s journal was. But as soon as the slovenly bitch produced it, I could shake her until there was nothing left to shake.
“I want it, and anything else he’s hidden.” His voice was melodious and deep. Spellbinding. The words curled around the door and wrapped me in silken straps. “I know a resourceful girl like you can find it all.”
She giggled. I could feel her excitement—the way the air stirred as she pressed toward him, enraptured, hungry for his approval.
Her sensations echoed along the snares wrapping around me.
I clawed at the spun silk, shredding too hard, too wild—fraying and unraveling the enchantment in a messy tangle as I thrashed.
I couldn’t command light, but make me feel trapped?
I’d try to tear down a wall with a fish.
“The journal is just over here, my lord.”
Something scraped across the floor. The night table?
“He hides everything here that he doesn’t want his wretched, useless sister to find.”
Pain. I stared at the pendulum in the hallway clock, willing its steady swing to keep me from sobbing.
“Is that how he thinks of her?”
“It’s what we all think. Too sharp-tongued for being so plain and spellweak. No one wanted her even before Third went round the spell.”
Something fell and smacked the floor. I continued to watch the swing of the pendulum, ticking each plain, sharp second.
“Here it is.” A swish of a skirt and the solid sound of a book hitting a palm.
What would Noble do with Kennen’s journal? Half-formed thoughts of him selling it just like the servants raced through my head. He had given me no reason to think he’d live up to his name. And if my own house was profiting, what was to stop a stranger from doing worse?
“Have you read it?”
I squeezed my eyes closed, the sensation of fainting washing over me—a constant companion since our decrease in food stores. I’d given him access to everything. What had I done?
“Neh, I can’t spellbreak. That’s for footmen to learn. I can do lots of other, better things, though.”
“Of course you can. You seem very diligent.”
Sable cooed. I thought somewhat viciously that she likely had no idea what diligent even meant. There was no sound for a moment, and then she moaned, low and breathy—the sound of a woman experiencing the finest of delicacies. The hair on my body rose, my stomach heaved.
“Now be a good girl and fetch all the rest.”
“Yes, right now, I’ll fetch everything.”
There were a lot of shuffles and bumps. And an awful, grating titter—like a carriage wheel rubbing against its post.
“Ah, perfect. And that as well. You are a gift from the heavens, Sable.”
The carriage wheel scraped along a jagged rock. “Anything for you, my lord. Anything.”