“You need to go to the end of the hall and turn left. Now. You’ll see when you get there.”
Standing around arguing wasn’t going to accomplish anything, so Sadie started walking. What was to the left in the next hallway? If Sadie recalled correctly, that was the direction of the family suites. Was Pippa trying to make her visit Nicholas in the middle of the night? No, he was staying in a guest room tonight.
She walked a little faster, and made it to the corner.
Nicholas was at the end of the hall, standing outside his own door. He had no jacket or waistcoat on, and his shirt sleeves were rolled up his arms. Even with half the glow-glyphs lining the halls extinguished at this hour, Sadie could see the strong lines of his back, the strength of his shoulders, through the thin silk shirt.
She was so distracted thinking about running her hands over that expanse, then slipping them under the shirt and feeling the warmth of his skin directly, that it took her several heartbeats to notice the door was open, and Nicholas wasn’t alone.
When she realized he was talking to Abigail, she almost backed away, her stomach in knots. That wasn’t something she wanted to see. But then it occurred to her that those lovely muscles she’d just been admiring were all tense. He didn’t want to be there.
Of course he didn’t want to be there. She knew he couldn’t stand Abigail.
She took a step forward.
“—need you to show me,” Abigail was saying, her hand on Nicholas’s forearm.
He shifted, and Sadie got her first glimpse of Abigail. A flash of lightning brightened the hall for an instant, searing the scene into Sadie’s mind. The other woman had already dressed for bed but she hadn’t grabbed a dressing gown to wear over her nightgown. And that garment was not one meant to be worn outside of an intimate setting.
But Abigail clearly felt no shame standing in the doorway in her sheer nightgown, trying to convince Nicholas to enter the room with her.
The baron, for his part, very obviously was not looking at the body on display for his benefit. He kept his head up, angled too high for him to even be looking at her face.
Sadie couldn’t really stomp in her bare feet on the soft rugs that ran down the center of the halls, so she waited for the rumble of thunder to pass and yawned—loudly—instead.
Nicholas whipped around, and the relief he felt when he spotted her was obvious. “Sadie, what are you doing up at this hour?”
She didn’t need her magic to know that what he really meant was “Sadie, thank the spirits you are up at this hour.”
She crossed the remaining distance between them. “I thought to go get a mug of chamomile tea from the kitchen; the storm is keeping me awake.” She stopped at his side and smiledat Abigail. “Oh, that fabric is so fine! I wish I could afford a nightgown that expensive.”
She pretended there was nothing out of the ordinary about walking up on a practically naked woman talking to the lord of the manor in the middle of the night. If Abigail couldn’t seduce Nicholas, her next goal would be to cause enough of a commotion that people would see him talking to her and assume something improper was going on. Sadie’s complete lack of reaction would throw her.
Though she kept her attention on Abigail, Sadie noticed Nicholas shifting. He didn’t step away, but somehow he was now behind Sadie. Not fully, of course, but enough that she was pretty sure she was being used as a shield against Abigail.
She didn’t blame him. In fact, she wouldn’t be surprised if he had also erected an invisible ward between himself and the seductress trying to trap him.
Abigail wasn’t flustered at being caught. She turned her attention to Sadie and glared. For a moment, Sadie imagined she had seen a rim of red around the other woman’s pupils. Oh yes, Abigail was enraged by the interruption.
The sultry tones were gone in an instant, all pretense forgotten as if Nicholas were no longer standing right there. “It wouldn’t do you any good to have clothes like this. No one would care to look at you.”
That insult might have hurt more if Sadie couldn’t still remember the look in Nicholas’s eyes when he saw her in the spring. It did take her off guard, however. She had expected subtler insults from Abigail.
Sadie stretched out her arm, stopping Nicholas from shifting back in front of her. She didn’t need him to be her shield. Not from this. If Abigail had decided to show her claws, Sadie would flex her own. “From where I was standing, it seemed more like no one was interested in looking atyou, Abigail.”
“Not even a little bit interested,” Nicholas muttered.
Another burst of lightning lit up the hall and Abigail’s eyes flared red again. What an odd trick of the light. It only added to the venomous quality of the glare.
Nicholas must not have expressed his lack of interest that bluntly before. Sadie wondered if his lack of politeness now was because of her presence. Was he trying to prove to her that he wasn’t interested in Abigail?
Well, she didn’t need any proof, and they didn’t need to enrage the woman enough that she started screeching and pulled everyone from their beds. The thunder would only cover so much noise. She eyed Abigail and yawned again. “I really could use that cup of tea. Nicholas, could you show me where to find everything in the kitchen?”
“Of course.” He held out his arm and she accepted it as if she weren’t dressed for bed and his escort at this time of night was a perfectly normal thing.
Leaving Abigail standing in the doorway, they walked away.
It was at that moment that the last of the power Nicholas had infused into her amulet faded away, and she caught Abigail’s thoughts.
