Page 44 of The Trick of It

He set the fork down, taking up his napkin and dabbing at his lips.

He knew the cousin she meant now. A shrill, silly ninny of a girl who had spent at least two summers throwing herself directly into his path and interrupting several rehearsals besides. He had seen the resemblance once it had been pointed out, but she was such a ridiculous, empty-headed creature that the longer he’d spent around her, the less he could see any likeness at all.

“Vaguely,” he said. “I think so.”

“That’s so fascinating,” Seph said, her fingers running circles around the rim of her cup. “I thought you’d remember her better, given how close the two of you were.”

“‘Close’?” he repeated, giving an incredulous little laugh. “I barely knew her.”

“And yet,” she said, “you put your tongue in her mouth and had her sitting in your lap the last time I saw you together. Bit intimate, isn’t it, for someone you barely knew?”

He stared at her, heat flaring up into his cheeks as he gave an incredulous, high-pitched bark of laughter. “What?!” he said. “Back then? Seph, I was sixteen. I’d put my tongue anywhere a girl would allow it.”

“Yes, I recall,” she said primly. “It is only that you overcame your aversion to girls who look like me to do so. And so, I thought perhaps she was special in some way.”

He was gaping at her. Balking, truth be told. The edges of his face felt cold. The chair felt like it had shrunk around his arse.

“What?!” he managed to say again, somehow.

“Oh, nothing, Rhys,” she said with a sneer and a huff, tossing her napkin from her lap to the top of her plate. “Finish your breakfast. I’ll see you in the coach.”

And then she stood up and stalked off, her silver-and-coal dress swishing in the morning light.

Two colors, he thought.

Shades of gray.

Chapter Fourteen

They made it less than a mile out of Lewes before the carriage was forced to stop, a jerking, unplanned halt that threw both Seph and Rhys out of their mutual stony silence and into the walls, floors, and doors of the carriage, ultimately colliding with one another.

“Myn brain i!” Rhys choked, stabilizing Seph about the upper arms as she clawed at his coat, her feet skidding against the slick floor of the compartment before she anchored herself. “Mr. Cagney?!”

Seph gave a delicate cough, shoving herself off him and flopping back on her seat as Rhys prized the door open and leaned his head out.

“Girl,” said the driver. “In the road.”

Seph sighed.

“She’s all alone, wee thing,” Mr. Cagney continued. “I’ll go talk to her.”

“No!” said Rhys, giving Seph a meaningful and emphatic glare. “No, we know her. Seph!”

She glowered at him, crossing her arms. “We do?”

“Good show,” came an American woman’s voice from farther afield. “Thank you kindly for not trampling me.”

Seph straightened, frowning, which seemed to satisfy Rhys, judging from the way his hard stare dissolved into relief.

“Coming?” he asked, hopping out and holding his hand out to her. “Come.”

“Fine,” she said, accepting the offer, scrambling down out of the coach more out of curiosity than anything else.

Privately, she was grateful for the interruption. She wasn’t certain she could have endured the entire trip back to Brighton in the silent suspension of ice they had been fostering, even if it had been her own doing.

She’d been searching her mind for something to say to crack that ice since about twenty seconds after she’d stormed away from the breakfast table. Alas, nothing had come.

“Mrs. Winterstone?” Rhys called, trotting ahead of Seph to meet the other woman halfway. “What are you about, spooking our horses?”