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 hadlied.
“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 tome.
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 windowagain, 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.
