Jasper pointedly noticed her drawing closer to Mr. Rath, her childhood friend’s eyes lingering over her hand, a muscle in his jaw ticking before he turned his back on her entirely to focus on his beloved future wife, Miss Pippa Templeton-Rath.
The instant the door was shut, she marched to her carriage and slammed herself inside.
Evidently, she would have to shout at him some other time.
She would have to settle for screaming into a pillow for tonight.
That was fine. She’d done it before.
“Liberty…” said Lem, frowning at her in the dark across the carriage seats. “They did not notice.”
“They notice more than they let on,” she snapped back. “It’s a lucky thing Miss Rath was so taken with you because she clearly dislikes me.”
He paused, something like a smile flickering around his mouth before he tamed it back into order. “She barely spoke to me,” he said, sounding for all the world like a reasonably oblivious man. “Ayomide is a beautiful name.”
“Don’t try that with me,” Libba told him. “I taught you how to act. And you can’t have her, Lem. She can never find out who you really are.”
He sighed. “I suppose that is true. Though as of tonight, England has no stance on who I really am.”
She huffed and turned her face toward the window. She didn’t need to be reminded ofthatfailing too.
When they got back to the Rest, she bid him an abrupt good night and fled his company before he could spark her guilt again. Between that and her current pique of rage, the rage was preferable. It was energizing. And most importantly, it was dignified.
Anger was always more respected than sadness in this world.
She was relieved to see that the house was mostly darkened and made her way there without concern for running into anyone except perhaps Hattie on one of her moonlit sojourns for food.
And Hattie already knew, so that wouldn’t be a problem.
As it was, she didn’t see anyone in the halls. She made it all the way to her bedroom, exhaling in relief as she turned the knob. She was already anticipating the feeling of release from this costume and the comfort of her night things when she crossed the threshold, but alas, her room was not empty.
Rhys was sat on the floor, a fat beeswax candle on the rug in front of him, balanced on what looked to be a tea saucer. His tongue was half out, caught between his teeth as he rolled a slip of thin, translucent paper around a pinch of glittering powders, twisting the ends into narrow stoppers and setting the little completed tube in a line of over a dozen identical creations along the edge of her rug.
“Rhys!” she snapped, hissing under her breath until his head snapped up, eyes slightly bloodshot from looking too hard for too long at something so small in poor lighting. “What the Devil are you doing in my room?”
“Libba!” he hissed back. “Why are you dressed like a bloody Capulet?”
She glared at him, looking down at herself and then back up at him. “The Capulets are not the villains, you know,” she told him, rather than answering.
He scoffed. “They certainly are more villainous than the Montagues. Only one house produced the likes of Tybalt, though both houses are stupid. Stupid is worse than violent.”
She was already crossing the room, pulling her earrings off and loosening the ties at her waist, and shook her head with a sigh. “You’re not wrong, I suppose. What are you crafting down there?”
“Ah! I’d an idea. You cast me as Mercutio because you see him in me and me in him, yes?”
“Yes,” she agreed, pulling the copper rings from her fingers and dropping them in the little porcelain dish on her vanity one at a time, each with a different chord of clang. “Absolutely.”
“So, why not let him perform an illusion or two?” Rhys said excitedly. “It will elevate your productionandadvertise my own offerings outside the Odalisque. I made these for the Queen Mab speech.”
She sat and began to separate her hair into three sections to braid it, eyes falling on the strange, little curls of paper on her floor. “What are they?”
“Sparks,” he said. “Watch.”
He lifted the candle on its saucer and scrambled to his feet, snatching up a handful of his paper twists with him. He was still fully dressed from his day, cravat askew, waistcoat half-unbuttoned, and his expression was wild with enthusiasm.
He waited for her full attention, watching her fingers fly through the process of her plait with impatient, rapid blinking and then letting his shoulders sag in relief when she tied off the end and gestured for him to proceed.
“‘If love be rough with you,’” he said to her, “‘be rough with love.’”
