Page 4 of The Trick of It

He licked his lips, dry and slick from the food, and clenched his teeth, looking down at the silver treasure in his hand.

“You can say no, my boy, and I will respect that,” she assured him. “You can also have that timepiece, no matter what you decide. It is yours now.”

“Rhys,” he mumbled, blinking away the hot pressure that had suddenly started to build behind his eyes. Strange, stinging heat pricked at the corners on either side of his nose. “Name’s Rhys.”

“Lovely to meet you, Rhys,” she said gently. “Do you want to come home with me?”

He looked up at her.

He knew there were tears on his cheeks.

And he nodded.

Even if this is a trick, he thought, it’s a good one. Sometimes tricks are good.

He followed the lady called ‘Willa’ out of his jail cell and up to her mansion, clutching the silver timepiece so hard that he was surprised it did not dent.

In the end, he did get a room. He did give an apology. And he was provided an education.

The tall lady with the thin nose was Willa Selwyn, the Baroness Selwyn, and she now had six ducklings when she appeared on the Brighton streets.

Rhys Caradoc was an orphan.

But he was no longer an only child.

Part I

Setting the Stage

Chapter One

Fifteen Years Later

October, 1817

The pocket watch was still missing.

Rhys Caradoc had intended to sleep in today. It was, after all, the night after a major triumph and quite a lot of celebratory drinking.

But for what must have been the thousandth time since returning to Starling’s Rest back in May, he found himself roused from slumber, certain he’d thought of yet another place to look for the damned thing.

It wasn’t there, of course.

He’d tossed his mattress that first day back. He’d cleared the closet after a week. He’d emptied all the drawers after a month.

It was gone. And worse, he knew the only idiot stupid enough to have moved it or lost it was himself. Some earlier version of himself he couldn’t remember very well anymore.

So dawn cracked the horizon with Rhys on his arse, surrounded by books on Welsh language and Celtic myth, old trick boxes, feathers, and sparkly bits, with his head pounding and his patience frayed at both ends.

He thought he’d never sleep properly again until he found the blasted thing.

He’d left it here. That much, he was certain of. He’d left it here because he’d wanted Willa to hold it as collateral every time he left. He’d wanted her to know he’d come back.

Now she was gone and so was the watch.

Wasn’t that just perfect?

He could almost hear old Hughes in his mind, chuckling at Rhys’s misfortune. He could hear his crackly voice, worn rough by years of his well-chewed pipe, observing the state of the room and chortling, “Ha! Twpsyn!”