Chapter 8
MARIETTA
I removed my mask and gloves in the carriage. Utilizing the light from the gas lamps and my small pocket mirror, I attempted to smooth away the smudges around my eyes.
“Leave it. The extra kohl makes you look smoky and sensual.” Noble leaned languidly against the back of the seat across from me.
My cheeks warmed. I had never been called smoky or sensual—not that it would have been at all appropriate.
But I found that it suited my current sensibilities just fine.
I ran my fingers down the nightspider silk of the low-cut dress—feeling even more naked without my gloves—and watched the man across from me.
Noble had changed into an outfit fit for a laborer.
It was too big for him, hanging from his defined edges, but I had a feeling it was that way on purpose.
He had another cap on, this one set at a jaunty angle.
It would allow him to hide his eye color mostly in the shadows.
His cheekbones appeared flatter. I hadn’t been paying close attention, but he’d worked some magic with a charcoal pot.
He was still going to turn women’s heads, but in the guise of a rakish deckhand instead.
He looked like the kind of man ladies had strict orders never to speak to.
The carriage turned a corner. “Remember that we are just here to soak up information and to see which patrollers and watchmen are friendly and which are not. If the chance comes to ask questions, or the topic of the murderer is broached by someone else, you have to be enamored with everything about the murders and murderer—like one of the women who attend every execution and then touches herself on the spot.”
The mirror dropped from my hand into my lap. “Pardon?”
He waved away my question and shock. “Just be enamored and try not to act too bright. I know it will be difficult for you.”
I held my tongue at his obvious amusement and stowed the mirror without looking at him. Better to change the subject. “Does Alcroft owe you favors as well?”
“No. We trade them as a matter of course, but I’ve never done a job for John in the way I’m doing this one for you. His asks are free.”
“So once you become friends with someone, you are free to hire?”
“Are you looking to become my friend, Marietta?” He looked amused.
He didn’t give me a chance to answer. “John enjoys intrigue and gossip. As does Lucian. They know how I work and will push as much as they can to be included, like toddlers trying to find their limits, even though they know better. They will try to get under foot as much as possible. Shoo them away if they bother you.”
What should bother me was that Gabriel Noble only answered questions he wanted to answer.
We pulled onto a street one over from Greville and the White Stag. We couldn’t very well exit an expensive carriage in front of the pub, especially as we were currently dressed. Noble spoke with his driver for a minute as I waited on cobblestones worn and smoothed by years of enchantments.
I took a steadying breath, flexing my naked fingers. Enchanted gloves would mark me as someone who didn’t belong. I knew I couldn’t wear them. But the idea of going into a crowded establishment without magical protection was terrifying.
Warm fingers lifted my marked wrist. My breath caught as the stars pulsed just the faintest bit.
They had been doing that since the kitchen.
He slipped a wooden token attached to a cheap stretchy band over my hand.
It covered the vow marks—magic immediately twining between the plain wooden charm and mark, as if imbued by the same mage.
“To cover the marks? But they aren’t visible to others?”
“This is for other things.”
The token’s enchantment sparked. Oh. A lighter variation of the spell in my gloves marched inside. Protecting and sheltering me from ill intent.
The urge to kiss him was ridiculous. “Thank you.”
“Of course.” He slipped an arm around me and I leaned into him as we walked around the corner toward the pub where Kennen had been arrested. I could do this.
“What if Master Penner is here tonight?”
“I manufactured an appointment to receive a certificate of merit from a group in Windmark today. Festivities to last through the dawn. He’ll never make it back in time to visit the pub tonight.”
Smart. Another example of Noble’s forethought, but another point against taking an unpaid case as big as mine. Gaining a toehold into a spot ripe for favors, I could understand. But was Kennen’s case worth the complications?
The acrid tang of cheap enchantments mixed with spilled ale and singed wood as we stepped inside.
A wayward levitation charm sent a tray of glasses spinning through incense smoke, crashing into a card table and igniting the reshuffling charm on the deck.
The players were arguing whether spiking drinks with Loosened Lips Syrup counted as cheating.
The number of patrons and activity was jarring. So many active people in one space—no wonder Kennen had been drawn here.
Jostled in two directions, Noble pulled me more securely against his side, fitting me perfectly under his arm. My cheeks warmed. A skin cooling spell failed, so I channeled willpower—tavern wenches didn’t blush.
A table opened as we passed. Not the best spot in the room, but a place to hunker down and watch how the different groups interacted. Even though it was far from a corner, one side was next to a wall.
Noble pulled two chairs next to each other so we were sitting side by side facing outward, backs protected.
He tipped up my chin. “Are you ready, Marietta?”
I swallowed. Tavern wench. Kennen. I was doing this so my brother could live. No one would recognize me here. I had no future to preserve now.
The cacophony of the pub blurred into the beat of my heart. Beat, beat, beat in expectation.
“Yes,” I whispered.
“Without a smile?” His fingers traced a line from my jaw to the back of my neck and down around my collarbone. His fingertips were light and comforting, and my body leaned into his for more.
Ridiculous for him to call me smoky and sensual when those were qualities he exuded.
His eyes pinned mine and the only things I could think about were more hissed words like stunning, sexual, sinful, strong, steadfast. The last one would have provoked more thought if Noble hadn’t laughed lightly and scattered it entirely.
“I’m forgetting myself.” His gaze turned roguish. “These aren’t the actions to take dressed as I am.”
His fingers landed on my thigh. He caught my body’s jump beneath his hand and held me in place, stroking up my leg slowly. “Come now, love, we are playing a part, remember?”
My smile strained as his fingers traced a pattern up and down my thigh, working my dress up inch-by-inch as he went.
My ankles came into view. My calves. The bottoms of my kneecaps.
His fingertips dipped under the material and between my knees, and I slapped his hand in instinctive reaction, then pushed my dress back down.
He gave a raucous laugh, the sound foreign to my ears and entirely unnatural on him, then pulled me in for a hard kiss that left me dazed. Instead of the subtle surrender of his earlier sensual domination, this one was brusque, harsher, and lacking in any type of subtlety.
He was doing this to create a character. I knew that. But my heart raced and my cheeks grew hotter. The token’s magic, the vow marks beneath, pressed against his chest under my wrist, thumping a strange place inside me. It might be distinctly impossible for this man to kiss badly.
Parts of this role were not difficult to participate in at all.
When I looked up, a waitress stood across the table from us. She wore an outfit similar to my own, her figure straining the bodice. She was smiling, but the lines around her eyes were hard. “Drinks? Grub?”
“Two blackfire stouts, and whatever you recommend to accompany it, darling.” Noble’s gaze was heavy-lidded beneath dark lashes. Wow.
The waitress raised a brow, but her eyes softened, as if he were just the type of character that made her compliant. “Right away, love.” She gave him a wink and barely spared me a glance.
He leaned back in his chair and splayed his arm across the back of mine. The hot glance he shot me made my skin heat and my toes curl, even knowing it was for show.
“I’m going to be the dock worker who is trying to hike up the tavern wench’s dress. After we have a drink or two, who knows what position you’ll find yourself in outside in the alley.”
I could only imagine.
He shifted, so that we were pressed all along one side, his head lowered toward mine. Was he going to do that again? Exposed, uncomfortable, and the slightest bit excited, I was horrified to hear hoots and calls.
“What are you doing now?” I pressed my hiss against his neck. “Didn’t we just establish ourselves?”
“I’m making us socially invisible to the rest of the pub, except to those who get off on this kind of thing.”
“What?”
His hand stroked the back of my neck, turning my head just slightly.
“If a chance to ask questions presents, we have to be here—you can’t use magic to disappear.
So we will become invisible like that.” Through the shifting bodies, a man and a woman writhed against a wall, their mouths fused, their hands in motion. No one was paying them any attention.
“We are not doing that!”
He had the audacity to laugh, a warm, rich sound vibrating against my breasts.
Our waitress returned with our drinks, sloshing them onto the table with another wink at Noble.
He winked back, the back of one finger dragging through the spill as he grabbed the mug in one hand and flipped her a gold piece with the other—his chest pressing against mine.
A small charm burst in the air around the gold as he blew her a kiss.
“Be so good as to bring another quickly, love.”
She grabbed the spelled gold and laughed, then spun back to work.