Chapter 9
MARIETTA
He stared challengingly at me across the table a week later.
“I don’t trust you with it,” I said.
“I’m hurt. Really, you don’t think I can do this simple task after all we’ve done together. After all the places I’ve opened that you thought could never be unlocked?”
We had spent another week visiting Carowell and the surrounding areas. Questioning people. Calling in favors. Watching vow marks disappear. Making another visit to Montranc and Kennen.
My brother had looked even worse than before, despair turning down his eyes and sagging his jaw.
Alcroft’s contact had come through and the trial had been delayed two weeks. But those days would slip through our hands quickly too.
“Gaining us access to Montranc is one thing,” I said. “Cooking is something entirely different.”
His amusement pleased me. He hadn’t been nearly so jovial earlier when we’d run into Arthur Dresden again. “How do you think I get by without servants, Marietta?”
“Well, Gabriel.” It seemed silly to keep calling him Noble after having my lips locked to his for most of the previous nights this week. “I think you get by because your dear Vivienne and Rosaire organize things so that you can.”
“Is that so?”
“Yes, it is.”
He leaned back in his chair and smiled lazily. “Would you like to make a bet, then?”
The challenge was too good, the banter a relief. It had been a trying day, seeing Kennen in poorer straits. “Yes, I find myself curious to see what you can burn over the fire.”
“Burn? I see.”
“Come now,” I scoffed. “You eat terribly. I’ve seen you ingest pints of tea and that horrible coffee you enjoy instead of having a full, hearty meal. If it weren’t for Rosaire’s soups and stews, delicious as they are, I think you might have withered away to a coffee bean by now.”
“A coffee bean?”
“Yes.” I nodded emphatically. “Perhaps I should start cooking regular meals.”
“My manly heart is enraptured.”
“You need to keep up your strength if you are to serve me.”
Gabriel’s chair legs smacked the kitchen floor. He leaned forward, nearly touching me. “If you need me to serve you, Marietta, you need only ask.”
My cheeks flamed under his intense stare, his one-sided grin. “Serve Kennen.”
“Well, that I am most unwilling to do. It’s you or no one.” He tipped his chair back again.
I snorted. “The city weeps.”
“I am in demand, it is true.”
His tone was nonchalant. But it gave me pause.
He used the rampant female attention slathered upon him whenever he needed.
But I’d met popinjays among the gilded, more than one cock of the walk, a score of libertines, Corinthians and dandies, and all of them would revel at a fifth of Gabriel’s gain.
Or be arrogant concerning it. Gabriel Noble was arrogant, yes, but it covered something else. Something deeper.
He didn’t seem to like it.
“Then it is decided,” I said. “You will try your hand at this meal, and when that doesn’t work, I will start cooking regular meals and we can stop relying on Rosaire for everything—though her soups and stews would be nice to continue.
” But from the amount of food he consumed in my presence, Gabriel didn’t eat enough.
“I will clean up after you when things go wrong.”
I really should watch my tongue. My cooking was average at best. But Noble was just too good at most things. He was going to be terrible at this, and it was going to be incredible.
And if he was a run of the mill cook like me, I would outdo him at being average.
“What a generous offer. I won’t have you bemoaning sending the real chef away.” There was something in his eyes as he said it. Something that cautioned me to be wary. I ignored it, too high on our banter after a trying day.
“Go ahead, Gabriel. Give it a go.”
He unfolded himself from his chair. “What would you like to eat?”
I clasped my hands together on top of the table. “I’ll leave it to you.”
“Clamfish with wine sauce?” He turned and walked to the enchanted sideboard. He pulled two slabs of fish from underneath then deftly tossed an onion from one hand to the other.
“Is clamfish with wine sauce to your taste, Marietta?” he said with a glimmer.
The high was still upon me, but the wariness gained legs. “Are you sure you should try something that complicated? I will settle for something simpler.” Let it not be said that I lacked stubbornness.
“No, no, no, Marietta. I can’t have you settling.
” He smirked, tossed a fillet knife into the air, made a flourishing cut with a sidestroke, then another.
He sent the knife twirling end over end until its handle landed on the handle of another.
A thicker knife bounced up and whirled along the return path and into his hand.
He caught it midair, portioning the fillets in perfect strokes as if born to the knife.
Vegetables and dry ingredients zoomed from the pantry, then filed themselves across the high cooking table.
My feet moved of their own volition to stand next to him, one hand resting on the table edge.
“There is a reason you don’t eat much at the table, isn’t there?” Cooks sampled as they went.
“There is.”
“Rosaire doesn’t make the soups, does she?” My voice was barely a whisper.
“She does not.”
I closed my eyes at the confirmation. Of course. Lucian had almost corrected me. “You must have gotten a nice laugh at my expense.”
He looked at me through the fall of his hair while he diced. “No. It’s just something I don’t share with most.”
“But Lucian assumed I knew.”
“Lucian is usually away at school where he should be.”
I tilted my head to study him as he crushed the garlic clove, minced the shallots, and washed, trimmed, and quartered the mushrooms, setting aside for the moment the interesting fact that he didn’t share this with others—and yet was sharing it with me.
“You never attended school, did you? You speak as if you did. You carry yourself as a graduate of the finest institutions when you want to. But Alcroft said something about wanting you to go to Gildonvale.”
“I had the best teacher possible. But no, I didn’t attend Gildonvale or Tarling or Harthouse. Nor Faversound or Westcamp.”
“But Lucian has. He does.”
“Yes. And he will finish.”
“Because you never had a chance to go?”
“Because he will have opportunities I never did.”
I looked around the kitchen then at his fine clothes, sleeves rolled up and baring his forearms. “You haven’t done poorly.”
He owned a house in Ember Square, one of the rising estate squares. And if my assumption was correct, an entire street here, powered entirely by him. I hadn’t seen a single person enter or leave any of the other surrounding properties. In a city where land and magic were king, he had a kingdom.
A non more powerful than any gilded, hiding in their shadows.
He didn’t respond.
I picked up a knife and quartered the carrots, trying to make myself useful—the challenge moot. If he was the one making the soups, stews, and bread I had been devouring every day, there was no competition. The Frostwoods’ celebrated chef wasn’t half as good.
I sliced another carrot. “What do you do with the ten thousand gold you collect from the paid cases?”
“A somewhat personal question, don’t you think?” He dropped his ingredients into the pot and then picked up my carrots and dropped them in as well.
“I could go back to asking you about schooling.”
“I could ask you why you haven’t married.”
“You could,” I said as airily as I could.
“Good. Why have you not married?”
“The mart had been dry. The pool that Ferris could sell me off to, small.” I kept my voice light. “And my own waters a dying prize.” Our house had been established with frost and cold quickening spells as our forte. Winters was now a moniker more suited to the frozen death.
I had scrambled and scraped, just like Ferris and Kennen, to escape our designation. But even before the estate veins collapsed, before we lost everything, I’d struggled. Other children picked up techniques easily while I fumbled through the same exercises again and again.
My family needed me to marry into strength. To buy our way into a family and square that could rejuvenate our magic. But nothing about my situation suggested upward mobility.
“I don’t need a looking glass to tell me where I rate on the marriage market, nor a broken power meter to tell me lie.”
“They haven’t seen how you use your tongue.”
“My tongue does have a way of saying things that are not particularly docile and genteel.”
One thumb brushed my lower lip, parting it slightly. “That’s not what I meant.” His eyes were dark and promising. “But I also deem that a plus. And the gilded never understand what they miss.”
I gathered heated, scattered wits. “My parents weren’t as concerned with the graces as they were with the races. When they died, we went into mourning. Things were…different when it was time to come back out.”
“Your parents spent their time spilling already empty pockets. They sold everything connected to your estate magic to pay their debts. Then they indebted you further.”
My hand tightened around the knife. “Yes. How did you know?”
It was a secret that we had kept close. Oh, there weren’t many ways to lose the power of a great house, so it wasn’t a hard conclusion to reach.
But once an estate was gone, one could no longer claim to be gilded.
Better to think that we were just poorer in magic in this generation and the next would be strong again. Hollow thoughts.
“I know much about you, Marietta. And your recalcitrant brothers.” He was nonchalant as he stirred the pot.
“I must make sure to delve into your past as well.”
“You can try. You might even succeed. Your industriousness knows no bounds.”
I stopped fiddling with the garlic nub. “That sounds quite close to a compliment.”
“My old aunt Tilly wasn’t half as industrious, though she never found herself in dire straits.” He stirred the pot and looked at me slyly from the corner of his eye. “We called her the old battle-axe.”