Chapter 21: CHAVIAS - In My Sanctuary

Night Manor, Mane Country

CHAVIAS

Chavias crept into Night Manor now and again, to check on Sabine Delacroix.

The silver snow angel.

This afternoon she scurried about in an obvious attempt to busy herself.

He’d caught her once using a fistful of rushes to beat dust from the tapestries, another time she was on the floor scrubbing and he resisted the urge to plead for her to stop.

It won’t work.

But this is no job for a lady to be doing.

As she moved to the washbasin to squeeze out her gray rag, he swept a hand before him and the room turned to clean stone.

Turning she froze mid-step as she glimpsed the floor.

But he turned his shoulder against the doorframe and vanished from view across the hall before she hesitantly emerged looking for him.

Each time he returned now, he found the house more comfortable than the last. Looking at the dark halls, he noticed the dust on every sconce and knew it wouldn’t be long before she was dragging a chair down the hall.

Cleaning those as well.

He felt a pang of conscience. I had no time to get it cleaned for her.

If I’d waited Radix would have gotten his hands on her. A little voice defended his zeal.

Today she was balanced on a chair cleaning dust off the mantle. White-blonde hair cascading in thick waves down her back. Swaying about her hips as she scrubbed.

A tantalizing view.

Is there anything about the woman that isn’t mesmerizing? A slow assessment from glimpses of narrow ankles up to those hips and the shining hair and delicate shoulders completed by her perfect profile as she turned, was answer enough.

No.

Thadeus cawed as he flew from the upper floor.

Must be an open window somewhere.

The crow landed on a chair near the mantle she scrubbed. Tipping his head curiously to watch her.

“Will you continue to lurk about me in dark shadows or come out and speak to me?” Her eyes slid to the bird and returned to what she was doing.

Stiffening, he grimaced. She does have a knack for sensing my nearness. How quickly I’d forgotten.

“I wondered,” She continued as she climbed down from the chair and scooted it several inches to climb back up and commence her work on the other corner. “if you intend to tell me if I’m to be Lady or mistress within these walls?”

Mistress?

“What?” His horror was blatant.

She didn’t pause her work and he tapped into the depths of her mind, now in a rare state of openness. She wished to turn to and look at him but resisted the urge. Believing he’d leave immediately.

She’s right.

“Neither.” He answered in a more somber tone. “You’re to be my ward.”

I won’t lay a hand on you. I didn’t bring you here for that.

“Huh.” She said thoughtfully.

He abruptly found himself locked from her mind. Feeling walls coming up around him and blocking him from all her vulnerable thoughts?

How? What is she thinking?

How’d she lock me out?

Did she find me there? It should be impossible… Yet she was now utterly unreadable.

“And may I inquire why?” She said acidly.

“You may inquire whatever you wish.” Stepping from the corner he leaned against the wall, entering the lowering light peering in from the far window.

It doesn’t mean I’ll answer, Pretty Thing.

It was pointless to lurk, as she had so aptly put it, at this point.

“But you have no intention of answering me.”

Very accurate.

She’s no dimwitted maid. But I already knew that.

If he hadn’t had unearthen hearing, he wouldn’t have caught the unhappy grumble. “You seem to leave as abruptly as you appear.”

“I can never stay long. I’ve…more pressing…matters I must check in on.”

A fancy way of saying I must return to my slavery.

“More pressing than your Ward?”

Anything I say to that will be construed as insult. He shifted in discomfort. Unfolding bulging arms to glare at her.

Not missing the derision in her tone he sought to change the subject. “How much more will you do to get this Manor to rights?”

Changing the subject seems altogether safer than running this course. She has me dodging blows like some foolish young buck unable to suitably parry a woman’s verbal daggers. He felt himself tensing under her dark look.

“Are you commanding me?”

Commanding? To clean the Manor?

Hell, no.

“No!” He was taken aback. “I merely asked what you’d desire here for you to be content?”

She sighed. “There’s great potential for this place. It’d be quite beautiful. It’s a shame you neglected it to such disrepair.”

He tensed. It wasn’t me.

But he tightened his jaw and held his silence.

Thadeus lifted from the chair and flew to his shoulder.

Rewarded by her heavy sigh and relenting tone. “Was it lovely before?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea.”