Page 20 of The Trick of It

“She liked folklore,” Rhys corrected. “She was a godly woman.”

“She was a good woman,” Errol corrected with half a smile. “I don’t know about godly. But yes, she always encouraged us to embrace all the odd, little nooks and crannies of our histories. Jack o’ the Lantern was one of our favorites.”

“For most of us,” Ruby corrected. “Malcolm doesn’t like it.”

“Malcolm is easy to scare,” Rhys replied. “Remember the banshee?”

Errol sighed.

“What banshee?” Ruby asked, echoing Seph’s thought exactly.

“It wasn’t a banshee,” Errol told them, opening the side door to the Rest and ushering them all inside.

“Not a believer, Mr. Cagney?” Seph asked, curious despite herself.

“It’s not that,” Rhys told her with a snicker.

“It wasn’t a banshee,” Errol said again, knocking the door shut. “It was a boggart.”

Seph was not certain how to respond to that. So, she simply said, “Oh.”

“Go wait in the parlor,” Rhys told her. “Ruby, will you take her to the parlor? I need to get something from my room. Where is Hattie?”

Ruby scoffed. “When did I become your lady’s maid?”

“Hattie’s probably in the dining room,” Errol said gently, placing a hand on Ruby’s shoulder. “I’ll take Miss Boswell to the parlor. Might I get you some tea to warm up while you wait for … well, for whatever it is Rhys is doing?”

“Yes, thank you, Mr. Cagney,” Seph said, tossing a little smile at Rhys’s affronted expression. “How lovely it is to encounter an actual gentleman.”

She hadn’t been to this house since the baron and baroness’s wedding some four months prior, and very much enjoyed this peek behind the curtain into the more private halls in its belly. She had always loved Starling’s Rest, gray and glinting on its green hill.

Every room of it she’d gotten to see had lived up to her fantasies of what it must have been like on the inside.

Willa Selwyn had decorated in bold colors and flowing patterns, and every trinket on the walls was fascinating enough to be a centerpiece in her shop. Once she’d been deposited in the parlor, there was so much to busy her mind with that she could have been content for hours.

The upholstery on the armchairs featured long-legged ibis birds in varying powdery shades. Their knees and the tips of their wings glinted silver against the fire in the hearth, rimmed with what she suspected was real metallic thread.

On the little table between the chaise and the sofa was a book of fabric samples, likely left there by Monica Thresher, the ward who had become a modiste. Seph was tempted to rifle through it but knew that might be impolite.

Instead, she drifted toward the hearth, where several little figurines were placed between fat, ivory candles and a hand-drawn vellum card that sat in the center, propped against the bricks. She picked up the card and considered the charcoal sketch of the shore and the shingles of the Brighton beach.

It was a very clear impression, even in broad and undetailed strokes.

Brighton, it read.

Home, she thought.

She sighed, placing it back on the mantel.

It was that kind of thinking that had pushed her family away, after all.

“Welcome, Seph,” came a warm and soft feminine voice, bringing her attention back around to the arch leading into the parlor.

The Baroness Selwyn, once little Miss Hattie French, was smiling in the frame, carrying a tray with teacups and biscuits.

“Hattie,” said Seph, smiling. “Did Errol give you his errand?”

“He gives me whatever I request,” she answered with a thoughtful, little gaze to the side. “Yes, he always has. He’s a good man, our Errol.”