By the time Eloisa finally retired for the night, somewhere well after two in the morning, Sophie was ready to scream if she had to smile and act happy for one more minute. Her nerves were stretched thin from trying to work out if anyone was talking about her or had seen what she’d done. Several times she’d caught the Domina watching her, but her expression hadn’t seemed any more disapproving than usual, and Sophie hadn’t been escorted from the ballroom by a squad of Red Guard, so she had to believe that no news of her mistake had reached the Domina’s ears. She didn’t think the Domina would hesitate to disturb even the queen’s party if she heard what Sophie had done. It seemed, for now, that she had gotten away with it.
The question was, could she stop herself from making such a blunder a second time?
“Can we go now?” she whispered to Cameron as they watched the queen and her party leave, the Domina at their heels.
Her heart fell when he shook his head ever so faintly. “We need to stay and say good night to everyone as they leave.”
Fortunately, the court seemed to be as tired as Sophie, and soon enough after Eloisa’s departure, they started coming up in drifts to wish her well for her birthday and make their excuses. She braced herself in case the man who’d grabbed her appeared, but apparently he had decided that discretion was the better part of valor and hadn’t returned to the ball.
Still, it took close to another hour for everyone to make their good-byes. Sophie wanted nothing more than to sleep when they finally got back to their apartment, tempted to crawl onto the bed fully clothed.
But they needed a plan more than she needed sleep. “What are we going to do?” she asked as she removed the queen’s pearls and put them back in the warded drawer at the top of her dresser along with the emerald bracelets.
Cameron came up behind her and started to unlace her dress. “We’ll talk about it in the morning.”
“It is the morning,” she pointed out.
“Later in the morning,” he said. “It’s late. Or early. And I, for one, would prefer to wish you a happy birthday properly.” His hands slid into the dress, coming around under the heavy satin to clasp her breasts over the corset. “What do you think?” he asked, stroking softly. “Want to forget all this nonsense for a time with me?”
Warmth spread over her with each touch, sliding through her body slowly, out along her arms, and down through her body to pool between her legs. “Yes, please,” she said, and let him carry her to bed.
It went quickly. Hot and urgent as it had been the first time, both of them mindless with it. But as Sophie came back to herself, lying in his arms in the darkness, the fear and worry returned.
“What are we going to do?” she whispered again.
Cameron pulled her closer, rolling to curl around her, his big, warm body a shield against all the things that threatened her.
“Just you and me,” he whispered. “We’ll be fine. Go to sleep.”
To her surprise, she did.
CHAPTER TWENTY
On first day, Sophie couldn’t sleep. She lay in the dark, listening to Cameron breathe beside her and worrying. One more day. They had one more day of their marriage week, and then she had to return to the ladies-in-waiting and Cameron to his duties with the Red Guard.
He’d taken advantage of their current newlywed status to hide them away for most of seventh day after the temple services, patiently demonstrating battle magic for her, so she could see what it looked like, knocking a cushion off one of the chairs over and over again. Then he made Sophie try to do the same—until she was clear that she could feel the difference between earth and blood magic and know which one she was reaching for. And knew how to brace herself for the recoil from the blood magic. It took some time to get used to feeling the same pain she inflicted on anything alive returned to her. And Cameron only made her knock the pillow at him for that particular lesson. Even that was enough to convince her to try to avoid hurting someone with blood magic in the future.
“Good,” Cameron said when she told him she thought she had absorbed his lessons. “Now we’ll try illusions. I’ve never been very good at them, but you need to know. Can’t have you conjuring a glamour out of midair in the middle of the queen’s next audience or something.”
Despite his protests that he wasn’t skilled at illusions, the small ones he produced—first a flight of butterflies dancing through the air, then a glamour to turn his dark hair pure black, then a ward that made him disappear in front of her eyes—seemed strong to her. Her first attempts to do any of the same had been complete failures, so he’d called a halt to the lessons and dragged her down onto the carpet to make love to her.
On first day, they emerged from their rooms, visiting her parents in the morning and going to the Inglewood suite for lunch, keeping up appearances of being happy newlyweds with nothing to trouble them. Cameron had taken her down to the stables to meet the mare carrying the foal that Liam had promised her for her birthday. The sheer number of presents she had received from the court had astounded her.
She had piles of silks and perfumes and small baubles and trinkets. Honoria had given her a small silver-chased dagger—suitable for a witch, yes, but Sophie had tested it and the edge was razor-sharp. So she’d put it in the purse she usually carried. And then there was the gun Cameron had presented her with. He’d shown her how to load it and promised that he’d take her somewhere to practice her marksmanship as soon as he could.
She’d gone to put it away when they’d been getting ready for bed but instead had slipped it into the drawer of her nightstand. Then she’d changed her mind again and put it under the pile of pillows she slept on.