Never be rid of Armand.
“Didier, help me!” she cried, no longer caring that she spoke to a figure invisible to Nicholas.
She heard the baron unlock the chamber door, muttering about a “demented female.”
“Hurry!” she urged the boy.
Didier scrunched up his face and then spoke. Simone did not understand the meaning behind her brother’s words, but her desperation knew no bounds. She turned toward Nicholas to see him stepping across the threshold.
“Didier wishes your permission to ride Majesty as you allowed Evelyn!”
Nicholas froze in the doorway and slowly turned to face her. His eyes blazed so that Simone took an involuntary step back.
“How do you know of Evelyn?” he asked in a deadly whisper.
Simone swallowed convulsively, and she opened her mouth to speak, but no words issued forth. Nicholas reentered the room, dropping his boots as he strode toward her.
He reached her and seized her roughly by the elbow, shaking her. “How do you come by this personal knowledge of me?”
“Let go of me! I know naught of any Evelyn,” Simone insisted. “I am merely repeating what Didier told me!”
Nicholas hesitated, glaring at her with a fire that should have turned the chilled room to sweltering. Finally he spoke, and the disgust in his voice wounded Simone more than she ever could have imagined.
“Why, you manipulative viper.” He dropped her arm and backed away. “Of course you learned of her from Lady Haith. You are not so clever as you would have me think, Simone—nor I so dense.”
“You shall not speak to my sister in that manner!” Didier shrieked and rose to stand on the bed. The fire in the hearth released a curled lick of flame with a loud crack. Simone gasped as the red-orange finger flicked the hem of Nicholas’s chausses and set them alight. The baron jumped and stomped his foot with a hoarse shout, stumbling backward over his discarded footwear.
“Didier, good heavens!” Simone cried, rushing forward to slap at the flames. When the chausses were extinguished to little more than a fringe of blackened, smoking hem, she spun back to face the bed.
“That was entirely unwarranted!” she scolded the boy.
“He said hateful things to you,” Didier replied, his expression not in the least repentant. “You have done naught to deserve such name calling.”
“You cannot go about setting people afire merely because you do not care for their words, Didier, and I would think that by now you had learned to what ends arson should bring you. Lord Nicholas clearly does not understand our predicament. My lord—” Simone turned to apologize to Nicholas and to try to convince him that the strange events he’d recently witnessed were but a tiny sampling of the fantastic reality of Simone’s life during the past year.
But the room behind her was empty, the door left standing ajar.
Chapter 7
Nicholas maneuvered the winding corridors feeling as though he’d been dropped from a great height. Beads of sweat dotted his forehead and his heart pounded. How the wench had managed to nearly burn him alive without Nick seeing her so much as move toward the hearth, he did not know.
He halted before a chamber door identical to his own and raised a fist, pounding insistently. “Tristan! Tristan, open the—”
As if his brother had been waiting with his hand on the latch, the door swung wide. Tristan was still dressed for the feast, and Nick charged past him into the room.
“Good eventide, Nick,” Tristan said lightly, closing the door after his brother’s entrance. “How goes the wedding night?”
Nick halted in the center of the chamber, his breathing labored. Haith sat calmly in a dressing gown, brushing her undone mane before the fire.
“Lady Haith, I’ve an issue to take up with you,” he said through clenched teeth. “Several issues, actually.”
Tristan appeared at Nick’s side, a frown darkening his features. “Nicholas, I warn you—you have already upset my wife once this day. Should you value your comely face from further damage, you will guard your tongue.”
Nick opened his mouth to tell his brother that he could take his threats to the devil, but Haith spoke instead.
“’Tis alright, Tristan.” She rose from her seat and placed the ornate hairbrush on a small table. “’Tis my guess that Nick is merely confused and seeks us for answers. Although, in truth, I did not expect him so soon.”
“Confused?” Nick railed. “As I stand here, my new bride flies about our chamber speaking to herself. She tried to set me ablaze!” He shook his foot forward in example. “She’s mad, I tell you!”
