He gave a long, irritated sigh. “I know. Blast and damnation and so on. Perhaps I can simply pivot to getting the forwarding office position, wave them all back to their island, and never think about it again, but, Lib, that doesn’t really work, either.”
She raised her brows. “Why not?”
“Because of you,” he said. “They will wonder if I am marrying Princess Bloody Xandine.”
“Say you are not,” she said, shrugging. “Easy. She goes back to Bayt, rejected and forlorn, and the story concludes.”
He paused, his hands flexing. “Paul Rath might wish to stay in touch with her, you know.”
“Many men have wishes I will not grant,” she replied, lifting her chin. “That is no obstacle, unless, of course, I decide to grant them.”
He sighed, spinning around to say something barbed and immediately clicking his teeth together as members of the company emerged, chattering together to make their exit, down the stairs next to Libba’s perch on the stage.
She smiled at them. Waved them off. Wished them a good night.
Some of the others lived above the playhouse itself and would stay.
And, truth be told, it was feeding the petty corners of her soul to watch Jasper Townsend squirm about this.
It served him right, for leaving that scent in her hair all day.
“Is there anywhere,” he said through his teeth as the door swung shut again, “in this bloody town where we might talk without interruption?”
“To my knowledge?” she said, raising her brows. “No.”
He narrowed his eyes at her, and through the slits of his pale lashes, examined her dangling over the corner of the stage, from the tips of her swinging toes to her scented hair. “Come down here,” he said suddenly, his voice gone a bit ragged. “I know a place.”
“I’ve things to do,” she lied, gesturing vaguely at the stage behind her. “I can’t go traipsing off to your secret bowers. You were supposed to meet me at the Rest tonight.”
“I can’t do that,” he snapped. “If I see you in that pink robe or that silver turban again, I’m going to lose my bloody mind. Comehere, Lib.”
It surprised her enough that she felt compelled to obey. She never could resist the pull of a narrative that wasn’t going in its expected direction.
She pushed herself off the rim of the stage and landed like the cats of which he was now so wary, her knees bent and careful, at the top rung of the orchestra pit, and then, as though the impacthad felt like nothing, stood and lazily brushed any dust from her skirts.
He didn’t react at all, his lips still tightly pressed together, his eyes still glinting and molten. He held out a hand, a callused, dockyard hand, and gave a curt nod when she accepted it, pulling her by their interlaced fingers toward the door.
Chapter Twenty-Three
The flat wasin a nicer part of Brighton than Libba had anticipated. It was one of three, stacked atop each other in a neat set of rows, each with a vine-embraced trellis balcony extending from the front-facing window.
Jasper’s was the one at the top.
He did not let go of her hand as they entered the building, nor as they climbed the stairs.
He also did not speak a word the entire time.
He only released her once they had reached his door so he could fish in his trousers for the key, a motion that brought Libba’s attention back to that particular garment and its contents with worrying alacrity.
The inside was neat, if sparse, she noted, as the door swung open.
The interior felt summarily masculine. Spartan and maritime in theme. She stepped into the first room, arranged for sitting and reading, and blinked rapidly as her vision fell on a large corkboard behind his sofa.
It was covered,coveredwith flyers and programs. Old ones, from before she’d gone to London. Some were hand-drawn. Some featured the crooked, spiky scrawl of her own hand. Her shows. Fifteen years of Starling family showcases in the summer pavilions of Brighton. Even Rhys’s illusionist events featured here, tacked between and behind the larger pieces.
She took a step closer. There were newspaper cuttings too. An advertisement for Ruby’s perfumes. Malcolm’s rise to junior banker in London. Hattie’s tenure as a translator in the winter palace of Russia.
He had collected souvenirs from her shows. In the left-hand corner was a fresh, crisp flyer with red ink forPygmalionand next to it, tattered and yellowed with age, a childish stamping print that readThe Marvelous Human Abacus.
