“I need to speak with him,” Isabel hissed. “I know he’s mad at me, but I didn’t say any …” She shook her head. “Look, you’re close to the family. You must know where he is. Can you just tell him to come see me at his first opportunity? Can you deign to do that much?”
Zachariah blinked lazily at her. “I’ll see what I can do, darling. But don’t mistake me for an errand boy.”
Isabel threw up her hands in frustration. “You boys are all infuriating. Sometimes I wonder why I bother at all.”
“What did you need to tell him?”
Isabel stilled and stared at him. “What?”
“I can relay a message for you, if you’d like.”
Isabel shrugged, looking away. “That’s between Emmett and me.”
“Suit yourself.”
Isabel dropped back into her seat and crossed her arms, looking pointedly away from Zachariah. It didn’t seem like the subject would be brought up again.
I turned aside to find Maxwell’s face inches from my own. We stared at each other for a moment, outlined in the dim glow of light from the dining room, and I held my breath. Was he … was he going to kiss me? My eyes dropped to his lips. They were close, parted, as if ready to inch forward to meet my own. I felt a tremor run through my body, anticipation for the contact.
“I wasn’t expecting that,” Maxwell said after a few more excruciating seconds, sighing as he straightened.
I blinked, then let out a breath, blood rushing to my cheeks despite myself. Thankfully, Maxwell wouldn’t be able to make out my reaction in the dark interior of this chamber.
Why had I been thinking about kissing Maxwell anyway? I was here to seduceAmbrose.And I … I wasn’t here to court boys at all, not really. I was only using Ambrose to get what I needed: my life back. I had to remind myself of that. None of what happened here had any real bearing on my existence. The only thing that truly mattered was fulfilling Vrykolakas’s quest. Everything else was a distraction.
We had just stepped out of the panel at the back of the closet when we heard a commotion from without. A woman screamed, a man cursed, and people stampeded by in a hurry.
“What in the world …?” Maxwell waited for the panel to slide back into place before I peeked my head from the closet and, seeing no one, ventured out. Maxwell followed suit, pausing as we noticed Ambrose suddenly standing on the other side of the dining room door. He stared at us, and I could guess how scandalous we appeared.
“It’s not what you’re thinking,” Maxwell assured him, hurrying over. “There’s a spy post at the back of the closet.”
Ambrose’s eyebrows shot up. “Is there now?”
“I’ll show you sometime.”
Ambrose nodded and he met my gaze. Did I imagine relief there? “Very good. You both disappeared so suddenly. I didn’t know what to make of it.”
“You picked out a bottle of wine quickly enough,” I observed.
He shrugged. “I ran into a servant. He’ll add an adequate vintage to the basket.”
I nodded somberly. “Something tells me her focus will be elsewhere, anyway.”
Ambrose chuckled, before the sound of footsteps drew our attention back up the hall, where two servants were chasing Beezle along the corridor in our direction.
“You little beast,” one of the men shouted, waving a broom.
I stared at the scene for a moment before bursting out laughing. As soon as Beezle noticed me, he made straight for me and leapt into my arms.
The pursuing men stopped all at once, one of them leaning against the wall and gasping for breath.
Ambrose crossed his arms, a glower pinching the space between his eyebrows. “What’s going on?”
“Apologies, my lord,” one of them answered. “That little terror was getting into the food in the kitchen. Scratched the cook up good when she tried to shoo him away.”
“Then I expect he was hungry,” Maxwell said. He waved them off. “We’ll take it from here.”
The men grumbled as they left us.
