If not for his parents’ voices.
“Gracious,” his mother said, her voice wobbled by the rapid flap of her fan. “Did you see that kiss, Wallace?”
“I did indeed, my dear,” her husband replied meaningfully. “Actors!”
Part VII
Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
By the timethe sun had begun to set, Hattie was certain she’d wish to sleep for the next several days.
Her throat was parched, her feet sore, and her stomach very full as she leaned against a pavilion stake, watching Ruby create sparking flashes of fire from a sheet of paper and swishing them into a staircase shape.
It had been the first chemical trick Ruby had ever learned, Hattie recalled with a tired smile. And yet it remained one of her most requested performances.
Elias was standing next to her, clearly dazzled as the golden sparks reflected in the blue of his eyes. “She doesn’t burn herself,” he observed, sounding for a moment like that little boy Hattie had once met in a kitchen, many years ago.
“She does sometimes,” she said with a little smile. “We all do.”
It made him grin and wind an arm around her, pulling her close.
“Did you collect the keepsake cards?” Hattie asked. “All seven of them? I was concerned someone might take one.”
“I have them here,” he said, withdrawing the little stack from his jacket pocket and thumbing through them. “One, two, three…”
“Three,” she echoed, tasting mint and sugar on the air. “Seven. There should be seven.”
“You are mistaken,” he replied with a chuckle. “There are eight.”
She turned to him, frowning, as the crowd gasped and applauded the next fizzing eruption of light from Ruby’s table. “No,” she said. “There were seven. I counted.”
He was still smiling at her and held the stack out. “You are the smarter one of the two of us,” he said wryly, “but I do think I can count below ten.”
She took the stack, an odd trepidation in her chest, and flipped through them.
Eight.
There were eight.
“Someone has added one,” she said, turning them over in her hands, squinting at the print and script on either side of each in the low light.
“Or you just counted wrong,” he said. “Stop that. You’ll go blind.”
She frowned again, handing them back to him. “I don’t think blindness is so swift.”
“But it might be,” he replied, still teasing, still watching her in the late glow of dusk. “We can look at them again when we get home.”
They were interrupted by Rhys, striding over with his tiger-striped trick box under his arm, his face twisted into a resigned glower. His kohl had smudged as the day had worn on and was in thicker, more theatrical lines around the spiky shadows of his eyelashes in the dimming light.
He paused in front of Hattie and then knelt on one knee, holding it out like a defeated general below a white flag.
“Yes, thank you,” she said, snatching it up. “And the rest?”
“Monica will have it,” Rhys muttered, scrambling back up to his feet.
To Elias, he simply regarded him for a moment and then said, “Your mother has wandering hands,” before stalking away.
