Chapter 16
MARIETTA
My heart stopped.
The veins of the house pulsed.
I lifted shaking hands. He had connected me to the house. Pulled my magic into the circuit. Was that the step before pulling one’s magic out—
Knock. Knock. Knock.
I spun and whacked my elbow against the chest. The front door.
What if it was Gabriel? My pulse slammed back. My breath grew short and my head grew light.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
No. Gabriel would simply walk in on cat feet. He could have murdered me where I sat, with my back to the door. I pushed off the hardwood and crept into the hall. A creaking board echoed my distress. Who would knock at the door?
Knock. Knock. Knock.
Rosaire and Vivienne had keys. So did Lucian.
Thorne Worley, come to murder me? He could have dispatched me in the alley.
Besides, whatever Worley’s motivations, Gabriel had lied.
“What would you say if I told you I did? That I know everyone in those pages?” I had thought him deliberately provocative, not playing some twisted game.
His eyes. He had looked away when he said he didn’t know the women in the club. That should have given me the truth right there.
“Would you feel betrayed? Have you fallen for me, Marietta?”
Spirits. I closed my eyes.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
He had every reason to kill those women. Maybe if he had told me that he knew them, explained—
“Gabriel, open the door,” a cold distinguished voice intoned. “I know you are in there. You are slipping. I heard the creak.”
I paused on the stairs. I could slip out the back, but what if this man, whoever he was, knew about the other door? What if there were others with him? The house magic wasn’t flagging him as a threat, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t a threat to me.
I slipped back into my room, secured my pistol, and opened my window facing the street.
Leaning my head through the open frame, I checked the front stoop. A tall, severely dressed man was already looking my way, cataloging everything about me from the shoulders up. I hadn’t changed my clothes. I looked like just another maid.
Albeit one sticking my head from a window. “Master Noble isn’t here presently. You can find him in the market. Good day.”
“Hold.” The man didn’t move from his position, but his eyes narrowed. The wards pinged. He was probing them. “Who are you?”
“I’m Felicity, the maid.” I took a stab at my distant cousin.
“You are not a maid.”
“I assure you I am.” I poked clumsily at the wards, asking if I could wield them. It was an express rule of conduct that one never grabbed the spells of another’s house.
“And I assure you that you are not. Come down from there, or I will assume that even though your speech and bearing are above a maid’s, your manners are not.”
“I do not wish to converse with you at present. You may call for Master Noble at a future date or time, or you may search him out. Good day.”
I pulled my head back through the frame and waited twenty beats of my racing heart. When I looked through the window again, he was gone. I grabbed my traveling case with shaking hands.
Notes, gifts, lockets, remembrances. It would take far too long to pack everything. I would have to abandon most—take the memories and leave the physical behind. I grabbed only the items that were portable and held monetary value.
Tears pricked my eyes.
No. Not yet. Later, when I was settled somewhere safe—a boardinghouse or neighbor who had never heard the name Gabriel Noble—then I would allow the tears to fall. Then I would figure out what I was going to do.
I gave myself three minutes, and when the time was up, buckled my case and headed for the stairs, the journal secured in my shoulder bag. I would take whatever documents in the kitchen I could stuff inside.
Two minutes for the documents was all I could risk. I had already been here far too long. Gabriel could return any minute. He would walk through the front door. I would go through the kitchen.
I shoved the first handful of papers into my bag. My hand was on the second handful when the papers became lead. A housekeeping spell.
I whirled, hand going for the pistol in my pocket. The lining threads sewed themselves around my wrist, trapping it and my gun there.
The man from the front stoop stood in the shadows, pistol in hand. “If you attempt a counter, I will shoot you. Move. Now.”
A counter? I had never been great at housekeeping spells, but I could recognize mastery in another.
I backed against the table as he walked toward me.
“Who are you? How did you get inside?” I had locked the door.
He remained motionless, tall and stately, and full of disdain—the pistol held calmly in his hand. “I used a key. Who are you and what are you trying to steal?”
Small relief to be thought a thief. But he wasn’t in the house because he was after me.
“Simply a maid cleaning up.”
“Gabriel never lets anyone touch his personal items or messes.” He motioned at the table. “Try again.”
Gabriel could be home any minute. “Everything I have packed is mine, or for my brother. I so do swear.” I held up my free hand so the vow could light a solid gold.
A rough edge meant the journal’s ownership stretched that truth. I swore and pushed at the magic. The journal was now mine. The vow threads wobbled between solid strength and frayed edge.
“Magic seems to be trying to decide. Your full name, Felicity?” His tone was both commanding and conciliatory—as if accustomed to control and deference.
I dropped my hand. “Felicity Rose. My brother is in trouble. I must get to him right away.”
Two out of three should be enough for household spells. I tried to tug my trapped hand free.
“Sit.”
“Undo the spell.” I poked the wards. They hummed, tangled around the household spells, issuing no threats. “Or don’t.”
I stepped forward. He looked capable with a pistol, but I didn’t think he would shoot me. There was something upright and noble about him.
Same impression I’d had of Gabriel.
“I must leave. Good day.”
“Something in your bag is not yours. Remove it. Now. Then I will consider your request to leave.”
I knew the facts of the case. Gabriel had filed the papers. Kennen had what he needed to defend himself. I pulled the papers out and dumped them on the table.
“There is still something in your bag. Remove it.”
“It is only a journal. I had it before I appeared in this room.”
The bag was torn from my grasp. Large hands deftly removed the book and flipped the cover. His expression froze. The distraction was enough for me to rip away his spell and seize the housekeeping spells. You feel like lead. His pistol dropped. I pulled my own from my pocket.
Surprise registered then vanished behind a perfect mask. “So you truly did have a weapon. Who would have thought a lady so armed?”
“Quite.” I motioned to the journal. “Put it back in the bag and the bag on the table.”
I needed the journal. It was the only link I had. And now that I had the code, I knew all the answers were inside.
His pistol pointed at me again. “We seem to be at an impasse, Felicity Rose.”
He moved quickly and was adept at household magic, but these house spells leaned toward me. A notion I could gibber over later. “You can impasse all you like. I am going to leave and it will be with that book.”
“Octavia Winstead’s journal?”
I gripped the spells harder. “Her name isn’t written inside the cover.”
“I know. What I don’t know is who you are and why you are here.” He flexed the household spells in my grasp. “Though I’m beginning to divine an answer to both.”
“I need that journal, and I need to leave this house. I’m not going to ask again. Put it in the bag.”
“You are related to the Winters boy, then. Lady Second Winters, I presume? You have the look of your parents.”
My pistol wavered. I steadied it. “You knew my parents?”
“No. But I saw them once.”
“Who are you?” I whispered.
“Merely a butler. Or, I was a butler, I should say. Once a butler, always a butler.”
His mannerisms and carriage. The way he spoke. Dignified and censorious. Haughty, with a note of deference.
I swallowed. “Whose butler?”
“I was the butler to the Steelcrest estate. The personal butler of High Lord Steelcrest. Orion Crane, at your service.” He gave a small bow, pistol steady.
Another Steelcrest servant, but this one with a key to Gabriel’s Ashfield house. I flexed the wards and put the table between us.
“Something amiss?” he asked casually.
“Plenty. How do you know Gabriel Noble?”
Shadow passed over his face. “I see.” Darkness edged by resignation.
“What do you see?” The wards brushed. Someone was coming. I edged toward the door, case firmly in one hand, pistol in the other. My need to leave suddenly outweighed my need for the journal.
The front door clicked open. Gabriel. I readied myself to open the back door and bolt.
“I see that you know nothing about me,” the man said.
“Gabriel? Marietta? You won’t believe what I found.”
I sagged at the sound of Lucian’s voice. Then tensed again. I couldn’t trust him either.
He halted in the doorway, staring at the butler. “What the devil are you doing here?”
“Language. I’m here to discover what you’ve gotten yourselves into.”
“Nothing,” Lucian said quickly. “Go back to the country.”
Crane raised a brow. “I think not.”
I dropped my case and snatched the journal from him. Both men immediately turned. My case clattered across the floor.
My pistol never wavered. “I’ll let you two argue it out. Good day.” I kept moving toward the door. I would shoot first.
“Marietta, why do you have a gun?” Lucian asked. “Why do you both have guns? What is happening?”
“Nothing to worry over.” I clutched the journal, stepping back another foot. I couldn’t afford to divide my attention against a butler who had mastered household spells.
“You are not leaving with that book, Lady Winters.” Crane shifted the magic just enough to raise a shield and level his arm.
“I am.”
“Which book?”
Crane hesitated. “A journal that is not hers.”
Lucian stiffened. “Octavia Winstead’s, then.”
I wanted to scream from the frustration and absurdity, the secrets and lies. “I will send it back after my brother is released.” I clutched the book to my chest but held my pistol steady. “I won’t tell anyone,” I whispered. “I just want Kennen released.”
Two piercing stares pinned me.
“You won’t tell anyone what?”
I shook my head. Crane’s eyes narrowed and he lowered his pistol. “You have the advantage, Lady Winters. What do you mean?”
“I won’t implicate Gabriel. As long as Kennen is released, we will disappear.” Spirits, Ferris. I hadn’t spared a thought for my older brother. Gabriel would be angry when he discovered me gone. He could reach Ferris before I could.
My brooch. I could trade it for a cab cart. We could flee to the countryside, or Silvan. Make a fresh start. Give up everything.
“Implicate whom?” Crane asked.
Lucian’s face was pale. His lips tight.
I inched toward the door and Crane’s gun rose slightly. “I can’t let you go until you tell me what you think you know, Lady Winters.”
“No. I said I wouldn’t implicate him, and I won’t.”
“Tell me.”
I kept shaking my head, as if the repetition would make him understand.
“Yes, tell him, Marietta.”
I swung toward the kitchen door and the pistol was ripped from my grasp. Gabriel stood there, leaning against the edge, arms crossed, my weapon hanging loosely from his fingertips. “Tell him what you suspect.”