Sadie could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times she had deliberately tried to use her power, and most of them had been since coming to Marstede. If that was the first step to learning control, then she had a long way to go. She wasn’t sure it was a path she wanted to take. There was a reason no one wanted to spend time around a telepath. Thoughts were supposed to be private.
But maybe, in certain situations, listening to surface thoughts wouldn’t be that much of an invasion? Sadie had caught snippets from Nicholas on the other evenings as he played chess, his thoughts concentrated on the moves in the game and possible strategies. He hadn’t had room in his thoughts for anything truly private.
And if practicing could lead to control, wouldn’t that be better in the long run?
She began collecting the ebony pieces sitting along the side of the board. “All right, I think I have an idea of how to play. Let’s start a real game.”
???
Nicholas would havesworn that Sadie hadn’t taken in a word he had said while explaining the game. If he was understanding what she hadn’t said correctly, she was a witch who had never learned to control her power, and he’d been the first person to tell her that all witches had to learn control. It was no wonder that she hadn’t cared about the rules of a game after a revelation like that.
Then again, he was probably completely wrong in his conclusions. It made no sense. She wouldn’t be able to hide it if she constantly allowed instinct to control the magic. Unless her power was something so obscure it didn’t come up in normal life. But he’d wager another month with a houseful of guests that wasn’t the case.
Once they started their game, she was suddenly hyper-focused. She needed a prompt or two before she remembered how to move certain pieces at first, but with each turn, she grew more confident. He set aside the mystery of her power and allowed himself to get lost in the intricacies of the game.
Sadie turned out to be his strongest opponent in a long time. She might not have known how each piece could move, but she grasped the strategy better than many seasoned players. She anticipated his every gambit, countering them with the worst possible action for him before he had a chance to try. His turns took longer and longer as he mentally worked through several moves, trying to see the best path to victory. In response, Sadie seemed to know how to move her pieces almost before he set his down.
It was the most frustrating game of chess he had played since first learning how.
He loved it.
Nicholas knocked over his king, conceding defeat before Sadie could gleefully trap his king with her queen. He propped his elbows on the table, steepled his fingers, and considered Sadie. “You lied about not knowing how to play, didn’t you?”
“According to you, I lie about everything.”
“Not everything. I’m fairly certain your name really is Sadie, though not Sadie Pentry.” He laced his fingers together and propped his chin on his hands. “You like swimming, too. Oh, and you did walk to Marstede, though there was never a carriage that broke down.”
She leaned back. So long as he didn’t mention magic, she seemed quite relaxed about him uncovering her lies. “Three things? You believe there are only three truthful things about me? It’s a wonder you haven’t thrown me out of the manor.”
“No, I believe you havesaidthree truthful things about yourself. Your actions are far more honest than your words.”
“And you assume that a kiss equals a desire for marriage?”
“No,” he said slowly. He had panicked after kissing her, but after several days to consider it, he had accepted that Sadie not only wouldn’t try to entrap him, she wouldn’t take advantage of him either. He owed her an explanation for his reaction. “My fears that afternoon weren’t really about you. I lashed out because I felt trapped by this entire situation, not you. I apologize for acting like you wouldbehave like… well, like Abigail.”
Sadie cocked her head to the side. “So, if you could guarantee it wouldn’t lead to a marriage, would you kiss Abigail?”
“What? No!” Nicholas straightened, dropping his hands into his lap. “I have no interest in kissing Abigail. Even without the threat of marriage hanging over my interactions with her, I don’t want to spend time with her. I certainly don’t want to sleep with her.”
He couldn’t believe he was having this conversation. Sadie, on the other hand, seemed perfectly comfortable. “What you are saying is that your physical desires are not divorced from personality.”
“Exactly.”
“Then why,” Sadie asked, suddenly leaning forward and hitting him with an intense stare, “would you panic that I am the type of person who would expect marriage after a single kiss, when you only kissed me because I am not that type of person?”
In the deepest reaches of his mind, Nicholas squashed the thought that maybe he had kissed her because hedidwant her to demand marriage. He wanted to spend more time with her, that was all. It was only his mother—and women like Abigail—who’d assume that meant he was secretly dreaming of marriage. “I wasn’t thinking about it that logically at the time. I wanted to kiss you, Sadie, that was the only thing going through mymind at that moment. Afterward, all I could think was that you’d misinterpret my actions.”
“I don’t care that you warned me that kissing didn’t change your views on matrimony. That wasn’t the issue, Nicholas. I appreciate that you were upfront about that, actually. But then you acted like I was an Abigail.”
“I never should have treated you like you would use that kiss as leverage, I’ve admitted that. You jumbled my thoughts, Sadie.” He expected her to preen at knowing her kiss had left him so flummoxed, but she winced instead. “I’m not trying to say it is your fault. It wasn’t. The fault is mine, I just wanted you to know that I wasn’t thinking clearly. I’d never have said what I did if I had taken a moment to consider it first.”
As ridiculous as it was, given how many lies he knew she had told him, he trusted her.
“Why?” she whispered.
“I didn’t plan on being attracted to any of the women my mother invited. I reacted poorly when I realized your presence makes this entire month something other than I anticipated.”
She shook her head. “No. Why do you trust me? You’ve said it yourself, I’m lying to you. I’m keeping secrets. How can you be sure I’m not really like Abigail?”
