Page 87 of The Trick of It

All that was in the trunk now were the things they didn’t use to rehearse or hadn’t needed yet. Her old medieval dress. The bedroom slippers they’d swapped for real shoes. And the waxed, red ropes from the escape trick.

She needed to remind Rhys that he had wanted to integrate the ropes into their act. If they were going to do that, they needed to figure out how in short order.

She smiled to herself, stroking her fingers over those ropes as she rummaged in the trunk. For all their references to them, neither had made use of the things. Yet.

And the ropes weren’t her target tonight, anyhow.

It was the dress.

She wanted to see if it still fit her.

There was a tall, standing mirror in this room, facing the window, where it often created multiples of the moon. She padded over to it and held the dress up to her body, considering the fabric and how much of it her body would fill.

She set it gently on a footstool and shimmied out of her pajamas, the red-and-blue striped ones tonight. She did not have stays handy in here to wear under the dress, but perhaps that was for the best. It had its chemise sewn into it, a gold underdress that needed to remain together rather than bunching or wrinkling apart during performances.

She used to perform with her hair loose down her back rather than pinned or braided. It had always been a useful distraction for audiences unaccustomed to seeing such a thing. So she unbraided her nighttime plait and shook it loose, standing naked over the dress.

And then, deciding nothing was to be gained by waiting any longer, she loosened the ties at the side of the thing and tugged it over her head.

It took some doing, twisting and tugging it down her body and then leaning over to arrange her breasts to sit correctly inside the bodice, but she did get it on. There were three velvet tethers on the side, along the waist and ribs, where the fabric could be tightened to fit her form closer. She secured them one at a time, her back to the mirror, and murmured reassurances to herself all the while.

It felt good on. It felt like it fit.

All the same, she braced herself, shaking her fingers through her loose hair one more time before she turned on her heel and confronted her reflection. She held her breath, just in case.

And when she did turn, it was not herself she saw, but Rhys, bleary and bracing himself against the door frame that led to the conjoining chamber.

She startled, her body jolting as she stumbled a little from the surprise.

He had entered without making a single goddamned sound.

She could see herself partially, behind him, like a third specter in the room. The dress fit her like it had been sewn onto her body, a perfect fit. But she couldn’t study the reflection directly. She couldn’t look away from the expression on Rhys’s face, the soft part of his lips, the heavy glint in his dark-green eyes.

“Rhys …” she began, putting the flats of her hands to her ribs, uncertain if she wanted to explain or apologize or deflect with a joke.

“Ask me again,” he rasped, his voice still crackling, still lingering partially in his dreams. “Ask me what you did last time.”

“Rhys,” she said again, her own voice soft and wobbling.

“The first time I saw you in that dress,” he continued, pushing himself off the wall and prowling closer to her, his footsteps still feather light, “the last time. It was the day it all went wrong.”

He circled her, pulling the heavy curtain of her hair to the side to breathe in the nape of her neck, one arm snaking around her waist and pulling her back against him as he peered up at her eyes in the reflection, at his own other self, holding her firm.

“When I walked into the tent and saw you there, looking like this.” He paused, giving a dry chuckle to himself and nodding at their reflection, at the swell of her cleavage over the V-necked dip of the gown’s collar. “Looking like that. My mind filled with so much panic and noise that all I could do was stammer some ridiculous lie and flee before you could see what you’d done to me.”

“What I’d …” she repeated, trailing off as he pressed his arousal into her backside. “Oh.”

He squeezed her tighter. “I had to find someone to take it out on,” he rasped against her, his hips beginning to rock. “Or I’d go mad. I thought … I thought it would ruin things. God, Seph. I should have taken it out on you.”

“Rhys,” she managed to say one last time, desperate, heat crawling along her throat, down between her breasts and over her heart, up along the delicate line of her cheeks and jaw.

“I want to try again,” he whispered against her skin, sending gooseflesh erupting down the column of her spine as he tilted his eyes up, his face half-hidden in her hair and flesh. “Let me try again, Seph.”

She swallowed, her throat flexing over the pink-red flush that had branded it, and gave a silent nod, small and quick.

He released her then, exhaling in what sounded like relief as she stepped backward and around to face him, to look him in the eye again and see both this Rhys and the one from the past. The one who had hurt her so.

They circled one another, their feet moving in the mindless tattoo of their slipper-switching ritual, pacing gently on the sprawl of the rug beneath their bare feet.