“Or we are looking to make connections where none exist because Abigail gets on our nerves.”
“Right. If Abigail really was the cause, it wouldn’t only happen in the forest and that once in the foyer.”
“Exactly,” Nicholas said firmly.
He only wished he felt as certain as he sounded.
Twenty-Five
???
After the incidentin the forest, Sadie and Nicholas ate a delayed luncheon and returned to the kitchen. Mixing up the butter, sugar, milk, and a hint of vanilla into a creamy frosting and spreading it over the cake didn’t take long enough. Sadie no longer wanted the day and her time with Nicholas to end.
“We should add decorations,” he suggested once they’d covered the entire cake in a nearly uniform layer of white buttercream.
“Decorations?” Sadie asked, setting down the spatula she had used to smooth out the frosting.
“You know, designs in different colors, roses and such. Like the cakes sold at the fancy bakeries.”
It was an excuse to continue their time together. “An excellent idea,” Sadie agreed.
The cake did not look like those sold in professional bakeries when they finished. Sadie’s skill at brewing transferred reasonably well to baking, but not to making her creations look nice. Nicholas turned out to be quite talented at drawing designs with icing—unsurprising given his skill at carving tiny runes into stones—but no matter how hard they tried, neither could form a rose.
Perhaps if they had let Mrs. Benson show them the technique, that might have changed things, but attempting to figure it out on their own stretched out the activity even longer.
With Nicholas’s power once more infusing her charm, no thoughts—unpleasant or distractingly pleasant—invaded Sadie’s awareness, and she was able to enjoy herself fully. He didn’t push for more information on her magic. He didn’t tell her that if she simply trusted him, he’d give her everything.
But he showed her.
He showed her what being with him without the pressure of her secrets could be like. Gentle teasing, heated looks, and—worst of all—a feeling of being accepted for exactly who she was.
By the time Sadie retired for the night—in Nicholas’s room—she had more or less forgotten about the way Abigail’s awful thoughts had overwhelmed her in the forest. It was only when Sadie riffled through the bowl of stones on a table in the bedroom, trying to figure out why she had seen Nicholas placing a dried pea in the bottom in his thoughts earlier, that she remembered the incident with Abigail. Looking at the stones, many with glyphs already carved on them, she realized how well Nicholas understood his magic. He didn’t just engrave charms with the same glyphs people had used for generations; he pieced together runes and created his own.
And when he looked at the glyph on her amulet, he worried about what it was doing to her. She couldn’t dismiss his worries; the glyph had come from a forbidden grimoire, after all. But she also couldn’t ignore the fact that if he hadn’t activated it earlier that day, she might have started gibbering from the thoughts that had pounded at her.
She had never experienced anything like it. Yes, the thoughts she had picked up in the foyer the other day had been of the same ilk, but this had felt like an attack. Could Abigail also be a telepath projecting her thoughts?
It didn’t make sense. If she were a telepath, she wouldn’t go around screaming her hatred in people’s minds. Though hatred was too tame a word for what Sadie had heard.
Finding the pea and fishing it out of the bowl, Sadie admitted that perhaps the problem was simply that Abigail was that cruel of a person. Sadie had dealt with meanness plenty in her life, but never anything quite so self-centered and vengeful. Abigail wasn’t hurt that Nicholas had spurned her attempts at seduction; she was outraged. And seeing him with Sadie?
She shuddered. No matter how much she tried not to judge people for their private thoughts, thoughts she knew full well could sound far more extreme than a person would ever behave, Sadie would be watching herself around Abigail in the future. In fact, she’d make it a point to retrieve the charm Nicholas had given her in the morning, which she hadn’t been carrying since that day. It would do her no good tucked under the pillow in her guest room, and for the first time she thought she might actually benefit from the magical protection.
But that was a task for the next day. Tonight, Sadie would absorb all the hidden glimpses of Nicholas she could from his room. Starting with the collection of dried peas carefully tucked into unlikely places that made no sense.
???
“So, Sadie,” Madeleineasked over breakfast the next morning, the curve of her lips just a little too sly. “Did you notice anything of interest while you were in Nicky’s rooms last night?”
The peas must have actually been some ploy of the dowager’s. It explained why each woman had a private breakfast with the Huxleys the morning after sleeping in Nicholas’s room. Madeleine wanted to ask questions without giving anything away to the women who hadn’t yet had their turn.
“As a matter of fact, I did.” Sadie reached into her pocket and pulled out the five peas she had gathered. Placing them on the table, she looked at Nicholas. “I can almost understand how one ended up on the bedside table. You must’ve been sitting up in bed having a midnight snack, and one fell. Then, in all the days since, no one noticed it right there, even as it dried out.”
She thought the look he sent her way was meant to convey that he was not amused, but she could see his lip twitching. Sadie shrugged. “In fact, I can explain most of these away. You simply have a passion for eating peas in odd places and are a bit of a slob.” She tapped one pea with her index finger, then slid it away from the rest. “But what, in the name of all the spirits, were you doing to end up with a pea under the mattress, Nicholas? Honestly, I could barely sleep last night, trying to figure it out.”
He stopped trying to hold back his grin, his lips curving up as he leaned forward. His voice was low, too quiet for Madeleine to hear. “Do you want me to show you?”
Sadie’s cheeks grew warm. How did he make talking about placing a pea under his mattress sound suggestive? Well, she knew how. He opened his mouth and spoke in that private tone, and her mind turned banalities into salacity. Not that Nicholas talking about showing her anything with his bed was a banality.
