“Hm,” said Seph, breaking off a few sprigs of dried rosemary from the bundle over her window. “Mine likes them so undercooked, the whites still jiggle. Also disgusting.”
Libba gave a little huff and a nod. “Do you carry hourglasses? Perhaps we should gift them both one for seven minutes exactly.”
“Idocarry hourglasses,” the other woman confirmed. “That one, I can help with.”
“They are likely figuring out I am a fraud right now in their drawing room while the servants unpack their trunks,” Libba moaned, wrinkling up her brow and huffing out another sigh. “I speak fluent French! Willa had us all learn, even Rhys! What the Devil was I doing?”
The sizzle of the eggs hitting the pan resonated in her chest.
Seph withdrew a long, serrated knife and took out half a baguette, considering which angle to slice it from as the eggs bubbled. “Well, Xandine isn’t French, though,” she said. “She’s African… or… where are you making her from?”
“We were still deciding,” Libba moaned. “Hattie had suggested this little island off the eastern coast of Northern Africa, where there’s a heavy influence from Arabs, Dutch, Portuguese, Spanish, and so on. It sounded perfect, but then the costumes are so heavily inspired by the Bedouins, we weren’t certain if being from an island made sense.”
“Bedouins are nomads?” Seph asked, the yeasty equivalent of sawdust exploding around her as she sawed the baguette. “So are my people, and we are from Ireland. Also an island. Didn’t stop us.”
Libba paused, turning to stare at her friend. “That is an excellent point.”
“And the language,” said Seph, tapping her chin with the glinting edge of her bread knife in a way that likely would have been alarming had anyone else done it. “If someone spoke Irish Gaelic and heard us talking Shelta, they’d think we were pretending too. Maybe your people also speak a cant.”
Libba blinked. “Isn’t Shelta just a cousin to Irish, though? Like say Dutch and English?”
Seph shook her head. “It’s more like Pig Latin and English. The root is Irish, but a lot of it is made up of rhymes andreferences and then borrowed from other languages too. There are words in Romani, some in German and Polish, a few English speckled in. That’s why it shocked everyone so badly when Hattie launched into a full oration that year at the showcase when we were young. It’s not just a language; it’s a puzzle.”
“That sounds a hell of a lot more complex than Pig Latin,” Libba replied, making Seph laugh.
“Of course it is,” she said, moving the eggs off the fire and dousing it. “It’s a real language, not a child’s game, but it’s a better comparison than Dutch. Do you want Stilton or Swiss?”
“Both,” Libba said, affronted. “What a question!”
“Right, what was I thinking? Cashews are in this tin. Catch!”
And Libba did, shaking the tin like a tambourine to enjoy the clatter before she peeled the lid off. “I should’ve come to you the day this all started,” she said absently, choosing a particularly fat, glossy nut and popping it in her mouth with a sigh. “You are perfect, you know.”
Seph chuckled again, arranging the plates. “I know,” she said. “I’d ask you to tell my family that as they prepare for the cold season, but I don’t think they’d hear it. So fret not; you’re not the only one who feels like a cracked egg right now.”
“They’re still mad you want to stay?” Libba asked, crunching into a second nut as the other woman nodded. “I don’t know what they expect you to do. You opened a shop here. You have a home.”
“That’s what I say too,” Seph agreed, rummaging for the cheese, her voice echoing out against the back of the pantry. “They think I’m turning my back on tradition, but in truth, we’ve been in Brighton since I was little because of the war. It was never my tradition in the first place.”
“I left,” Libba said softly. “To London. And I hated the idea of coming back here. I can’t remember why anymore.”
“Well, that’s different,” Seph returned, pulling out her treasures and slapping them on the cutting board, sending up another cloud of bread dust. “You moved to live elsewhere permanently, like Jasper wishes to do with Ceylon. That would be just as offensive to my people as staying.”
Libba frowned, watching the white and yellow slices fall off the edge of the knife and be transferred to the steaming plates. “I don’t think he really wants to do that,” she said, though she didn’t sound particularly convincing, even to herself. “I think he wants the idea of it, the prestige and accomplishment, but I can’t imagine he actually wants to step foot off Brighton shores.”
“Well, he’s going to a lot of trouble for something he doesn’t actually want,” Seph pointed out, carrying the plates over and sliding them onto the table as she took her seat again. “Why do you think that is?”
“Because he’s an idiot,” Libba said, half a smile tugging at the corners of her lips. “He is always attempting some harebrained plot to instantly change everything about his life, instead of attempting to fix the pieces that displease him, one at a time. It’s who he has always been.”
“It’s who hewas,” Seph agreed, using the heel of her fork to cut off a chunk of cheese and push it into her eggs. “When we were children. There might be more to it now.”
Libba cut into her eggs, watching the perfect yolk separate from its crisp, white edges. “Perhaps,” she said grudgingly.
Seph chewed her eggy cheese and tilted her head to the side, swallowing and taking a little breath. “Do you really think he’s an idiot? Is that your opinion of Jasper Townsend?”
“Of course,” said Libba. “But I don’t mean it cruelly. Malcolm is an idiot too, and he’s a bona fide genius.”
“Hm,” said Seph. “So you don’t think he isstupid?”
