Page 27 of The Trick of It

“Milk,” he answered, as though it were a confession. “Alas, I did tamper with it.”

She snorted and took a swig, sighing in pleasure at how it spread through her chest, and then, with renewed and clearer eyes, looked him over. “You seem much recovered.”

“Aye,” he agreed, tightening his lapels and giving her a snobbish view of his profile. “Good as new.”

“I hate catching chill,” she said, scooting back and bringing her legs up under her skirt to rest behind her on the seat. “Not so bad as a sour stomach, but close.”

“It wasn’t so bad,” he assured her. “No fever, and plenty of fussing, which is the best part of any illness. Besides, it convinced our cook to make a cawl for me, something she’d been vehemently opposed to prior to seeing me in such a sorry state.”

“I’ve never tried it,” she confessed. “Admittedly, I’m not even certain what it is? Something like haggis?”

Rhys pulled a face. “Absolutely not. It’s just a stew. A very tasty stew.”

“I like haggis,” she said mildly, tipping the flask back into her mouth. “The trick is not to think about it too much.”

“That’s always the trick,” he agreed, pulling a matching flask from his inside jacket pocket and spinning the lid free. “And good advice, besides.”

They jostled out of Brighton and past the barracks onto Lewes Road, the scenery growing grayer and rockier with dots of wilting grass visible through the fog.

Seph had always loved this time of year. The smell of rich, loamy decay. The tingling, wet chill. The colors. She found it more comfortable to move in than the oppressive heat of summer or the icy reprimand of winter winds.

She suspected this was not a popular opinion, however, and often kept it to herself.

“There was not enough time for proper inquiry,” Rhys said, having leaned back entirely on his side of the coach like the seat were a fainting couch. He had one leg dangling off, his heel tapping quick, uneven staccato on the floor, and one arm draped over the top of the upholstery while the other toyed with his curls. “If we’d gotten the missive sooner, I could’ve confirmed for certain with letters to my friends afield, but I did have a lot of time to think while I was stuck in bed.”

“Oh, dear,” she said with a blink. “That’s a frightening thought.”

“Ho ho,” he mocked, rolling his eyes. “Anyhow. I ran through the last few years in my mind. Merlin the Illusionist is still very much an active performer. We thought he was an old man because we were children ourselves. Can you recall what age he actually seemed to be?”

She wrinkled her brow, her mind reaching backward for those long bygone summer fairs.

Merlin, a man in a domino made of some sort of pitch-black agate, sprinkled through with silver dots like the night sky. He’d had a cape too, with the same pattern. He’d taken it off often after shows, so his face hadn’t been a secret, but the mask itself had been a thing of beauty.

He had performed many wonders, but he had also attended many of the other shows that were plentiful during the Brighton high summer. Including Seph’s. And Rhys’s.

And Seph and Rhys together, back when that had been a reality.

But no, she could not rightly place his age. He might have been twenty-five or forty-five or seventy-five, and he would have looked generically adult to a twelve-year-old girl.

“He had gray hair,” she recalled. “So not a young man, right?”

“Perhaps,” said Rhys, shrugging. “Our family’s barrister, Harcourt, has been white-haired since his university years. I have no idea how old he is, but to me, he looks exactly the same as he ever has.”

She nodded, dredging up the image of Julian Harcourt in her mind’s eye. Handsome, healthy, and upright. Likely in his forties or fifties at the latest. But yes, Rhys was right, he’d gone gray very young. Or white, as it were.

“Hattie remembers Merlin as old too,” she pointed out. “And she was older than us.”

“Perhaps he was older than young, but not elderly,” Rhys suggested, shrugging. “He stopped coming to Brighton, though, after … or around the same time as … well …”

He trailed off, pulling a face.

Seph felt a twinge of shame creeping up to her cheeks. “Yes, that’s how I remember it too.”

“Was he there?” Rhys said suddenly, as though the idea had just slapped him hard in the mouth. “The day you sabotaged the Changeling. Do you recall?”

She recoiled at the sound of it. Of the word changeling in his mouth. She opened her own lips to argue with his phrasing. To argue with his interpretation of events. To argue for the sake of it. And then closed it again.

“I don’t know,” she muttered, squeezing her arms around herself. “My focus was elsewhere.”