Page 56 of The Trick of It

“Bracing!” Rhys exclaimed as answer.

“You don’t seem to care when my hair gets messed up,” Errol pointed out, running a callused hand over his sandy-blond mop. “Why’s that?”

Libba ignored him, asked for the key, and suggested they all get on their way, her eyes already starting to shine with a worrying enthusiasm as she took in the displays, one by one.

It did give Seph a bit of a curl of concern in her chest, but the men were already moving the trunk from the stairs and tossing her bags into the carriage, and it seemed to her that it might come across as lacking in gratitude if she made more of a fuss than simply letting the Starlings toss gravity around the way they always did, almost always to impressive and positive results.

Besides, Libba was right. Rhys did have mussed curls. His coat was rumpled with the cool whip of the wind. His collar had been curled open by the jostle. And it was all very distracting.

“I’ve been working at that blue box all night,” he told Seph, producing the little puzzle cube from his coat pocket to show her. “It’s harder than the tandem one. Have you played with yours?”

She blinked at him, her mouth going oddly dry. “I haven’t.”

“Shame,” he said, tilting it back and forth to make the shell hidden inside rattle. “Maybe if we’d both solved different parts, we could get it to crack open together.”

She only blinked at him, still holding her teacup, unable to form any words.

His eyes, green and bright, like he hadn’t struggled with slumber at all, passed over her dress, a creamy maple-colored underdress with a goldenrod pelisse atop it. “Good colors,” he commented, voice a touch lower, as though he did not want to be overheard. “Suits your hair.”

Her skin pricked up in gooseflesh, mercifully hidden under the fabric, which swept the full length of her arms and legs and ran like chilled silk over her torso for good measure. It both made her wonder if she had imagined last night entirely—and made her utterly certain she hadn’t.

She was forced to step to the till to jot down some simple instructions for Libba, bent over the tabletop with her quill scratching and her backside brushing the spot to which she’d been pinned last night. When she’d finished and set the quill down, she saw the little piece of fool’s gold glinting in the sunlight next to her discarded teacup.

She snatched it up, tucking it into her pocket on instinct.

It was supposed to be protection, wasn’t it? That had been the game they were playing.

God help her.

And she looked up to see him haloed in sunlight, reclining against the door to her shop, a smile on his face that was somehow both soft and edged, his eyes locked on her from where he stood.

“Ready?” he asked, raising those dark brows.

“Of course,” she lied.

And she stepped out into the open, wondering what exactly was going to come next.

Chapter Eighteen

Rhys’s siblings were not cooperating with his machinations this morning.

First, Libba, in all her willful glory, had taken off from her flat before Rhys could swing the carriage past to retrieve her. This had put a significant dent in his plan to gauge how much one could hear of what went on inside the carriage from up in the driver’s box.

He’d ridden halfway across Brighton in the windy hell of the driver’s box for nothing.

It had been a perfect plan because Libba was incapable of sitting silently. She was almost as bad as Rhys himself, in fact. But then she hadn’t been there. She’d walked.

Bloody Libba.

Now Errol was giving him guff as well.

“Just wear them!” Rhys insisted, waving the earmuffs back and forth. “Your da already dragged me to and from Lewes not a full day ago and caught a sniffle for his trouble. I won’t forgive myself if you catch the same!”

“Rhys, I don’t think sniffles get you through your ears,” Errol said, looking faintly amused as he stroked the leather reins. “But if it calms you, I will pretend to wear them until you’re out of eyeshot.”

“No!” Rhys cried. “I will know if you take them off!”

“Get in the carriage, Rhys,” Errol said, shaking his head with a chuckle and a rummage of his sandy hair. “Sunlight’s burning.”