Page 47 of The Trick of It

“That’s not what we’re here for!” Rhys shouted over her. “Need to ask you about inheritance rules. And travel. That’s all.”

Mr. Harcourt sagged with immediate relief, releasing a little breath and letting his folio sag at his side. “Oh,” he said. “All right, then. What’s amiss?”

To Seph’s credit, her immense credit and valor, she did not bring up what the barrister had said until after Rhys had laid out their predicament and gotten an answer. She waited until he was told to just tack additional days onto the end of his calendar year to make up for whatever time he needed to spend in Lewes, so long as it did not exceed a month.

She waited until they had departed the Lanes.

She waited until they had re-entered the carriage.

She even waited until the horse had started trotting again, dragging them along toward King’s Road.

And then she exploded. “You tried to sue me?!”

He froze, green eyes wide and caught, like prey in a snare. “Erm,” he said.

“Rhys Caradoc!” she exclaimed, shrill and thin.

And then she began to laugh. She laughed in that way that she knew would hurt, would ache in her face and stomach, tears springing to her eyes as it escaped her.

Right away, his stiff, defensive posture sagged, those wide eyes going slack as his mouth turned down at the corners. “Yes, yes,” he groused, crossing his arms over his chest. “Chuckle well. Ho ho.”

“You … You tried,” she gasped, hiccupping through her amusement. “You actually spoke to a barrister.”

“You sold my secrets!” he barked, forehead wrinkling up. “You shattered the wonder. You … You did it to … to stoke my ire!”

“To heat your blood?” she asked, whisking away tears as they crawled down her cheeks, her chest convulsing with another hiccup. “Yes, I suppose I did. You thought I couldn’t.”

“I what?!” he cried, staring at her in some suspended state between baffled and horrified. “When did I say that?!”

She braced her hand on the side of the carriage, twisting her fingers through the curtains to support herself as she put her other hand on her spasming chest. “‘Not partial to blondes, am I?’” she mocked in a deep, Welsh voice. “‘Princesses in storybooks have that hair, like gold. Doesn’t stir anything in a man. Too pure. Not for me.’”

Then she dissolved again, collapsing forward with her face in her hands as the hysteria wound through her deeper, tugging here and there at the bones in her ribs.

“I knew it!” he shouted, slapping his thighs. “I knew you were doing it at me. I knew you were selling those tricks to goad me specifically. They all called me paranoid. They called me childish. They said … They claimed I was … I never said that bloody thing about princesses.”

She tried to tell him he had, but she couldn’t catch her breath. She could only nod. And point.

“I did not,” he insisted, sounding less certain by the consonant.

“‘Rhys, do you like my new costume?’” she managed through ragged breaths. “‘Does it flatter me?’”

“What?!”

“‘Couldn’t tell one way or the other, Seph,’” she continued, mocking his voice again. “‘Just don’t see you that way, is all.’”

He could only stare, his mouth hanging open, until she finally began to regain control of herself, dragging deep, tattered breaths into her lungs and holding them there for a few seconds at a time.

She knew her face had gone cherry red. Her hair was falling out around her cheeks.

She didn’t care at all.

She felt …

Better?

“Ahh,” she sighed, her shoulders softer and looser than they’d been in months as the carriage ground to a halt outside her shop. “I needed that.”

He was still gawping at her like an owl.