Page 3 of The Trick of It

“Sometimes.” She tittered again, as though she’d told herself a very funny joke.

It smelled so very good that Rhys was a little angry with himself at how fast he ate it. He shoveled every morsel into his mouth and swallowed without even chewing very much, just to get the grumble and ache to stop. Just to get it to be quiet.

And then he frowned down at the plate, empty and smeared with fish oil, and sighed. “Did you cook that, miss?”

“No,” she said. “How was it?”

“It was good,” he told her, awkwardly extending the plate back toward her. “But would have been better with skin. Don’t let your cook take the skin away.”

She raised an auburn eyebrow. “I shall endeavor to remember that. I am Willa, by the by. What is your name?”

Rhys hugged his arms around himself and did not answer.

“I’m afraid you embarrassed poor Malcolm today when you took his timepiece,” she continued, after noting that he did not wish to speak. “You have a good eye. It is Easterling silver, something my late husband used to carry. My boy Malcolm was using the numbers to challenge himself to sums at random. After today, I promised to get him a better one all his own.”

“But I gave it back,” Rhys pointed out, frowning. “He can keep that one.”

She shook her head, reaching into the pocket of her skirt and producing the thing, a round, glinting disc of clockwork and etching. “How did you get it from him?” she asked. “It was deep in his pocket.”

“I took it?” Rhys replied, his brows squishing together.

“Yes, I know you took it, young man, but how? Without him knowing, I mean. If I put it in my pocket just now and look away, could you do the same to me?”

He scoffed. “Of course.”

She smiled at him. A brilliant smile, a confusing smile, as she put the thing back in her skirt. “All right. I will turn around and count to twenty. If you get it without me feeling, hearing, or sensing anything, you may keep it.”

“‘Keep it’?” he said, balking. “Forever?”

“Forever,” she agreed, and then she turned her back to him and began counting aloud. “One, two, three …”

Rhys waited until the number ten. He was ten, so it followed that this was his favorite number. And when Willa turned back around, he was holding the watch in his lap, waiting politely for the end of the ruse.

“Well, now,” she said, looking pleased. “Aren’t you a talent?”

“I suppose you want it back now,” he said glumly. “I am sorry, you know.”

“No, you aren’t,” she replied with a click of her tongue. “Do you not have people, young man? Why has no one come to get you out of this place?”

“Had an uncle,” he said, shrugging. “He died.”

“Are you with the foundling home?” she asked. “Where do you stay?”

He wrinkled his brow, jutting out the hand with the silver fob so that she would take the cursed thing. “On the beach, usually. It’s warm.”

“It’s warm now,” she corrected. “It won’t be in a few months. What will you do then?”

“I don’t know,” he answered, frowning at her. “Ask me when it happens.”

She touched his outstretched hand, only enough to wrap his fingers back around the silver disc. “Would you like a room in my house, perhaps?” she asked. “With your own bed and fireplace? You can tell my cook yourself how to properly make salmon.”

He didn’t speak for a moment, hope and caution leaping and colliding in his chest. “For what?” he said. “What will I have to do?”

“Good question,” she said with a curt nod of approval. “You will have to give up thieving, I’m afraid. You will need to apologize to Malcolm. And you will have to submit to an education.”

“‘Education’?” he repeated warily. “I can read. Some.”

“Good,” she said. “Then you will have many books with which to do so.”