“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 coulddothis.
“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 qualitiesheexuded. 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 betweenmy 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.
