Page 55 of The Trick of It

Sleep hadn’t come, of course.

Only a certainty that they were going to have to have a long, careful, thorough conversation before any other touching or kissing or distressing discoveries that turned her insides hot could occur.

God, but he had put his hands on her breasts. It hadn’t been incidental or accidental or any other things that rhymed. He had squeezed and stroked and fondled her nipples with those thief’s fingers of his.

She groaned, rolling onto her side and clenching her legs together.

That dress had been cut very low on her bust, she remembered. She had really started to bloom that summer and she’d wanted to show off her new assets.

Had he noticed?

Had he been avoiding looking when he’d told her he didn’t see her in that way?

And more importantly, did that dress still fit?

Yes, a long conversation. A calm, rational, serious conversation needed to happen.

They had the whole ride to Lewes. They had two weeks during which they could meet and discuss things like business-minded, fully matured individuals.

She told herself that a few times. Not too many, certainly, and then there was the sun, peeking up over the horizon like it had any business arriving so quickly.

When the rap came to her front door, she was already dressed. She was ready. She was holding steaming tea. And still, her heart had leapt all the way into her throat and threatened to escape out her mouth.

She hurried down the stairs, her bag packed by the door, trunk partially down the stairs from her own feeble early-morning efforts, and braced herself for the next phase of the trick they were performing, for the unscripted, unpracticed, utterly thrilling magic of it.

But it wasn’t Rhys at her threshold. It was Liberty Lennox.

“Morning,” said the other woman, her attention focused on the palm of her own hand. “My glove has a hole.”

“Libba?”

“Let me in,” she suggested, dropping the offending gloved hand at her side and stepping into the shop. “I suppose you ought to give me a quick training, hm? Prices and practices and hours and so on.”

“Pardon?” Seph managed, her tea clutched to her chest. “What?”

Libba sighed, rolling her eyes heavenward. “Of course he didn’t think to ask you. Or tell you, even. Rhys asked me to mind the shop while you two are off doing whatever it is there is to do in Lewes. Lewes? Really, at least go to Bristol if you two are running off together.”

Seph blinked a few times, her mind clearing a little in the midst of that ramble. “We’re not running off together,” she said primly. “We’re honoring a dying man’s final request.”

“Certainly,” Libba said, sweeping around to look at the new displays. “Of course you are. Oh, are these the birds I’m not to sell?”

“Erm, yes,” said Seph, forcing herself into motion toward the table. “The others are for sale, though, but I haven’t marked them yet. I’ll write down what I paid for them, so just try to turn a profit. And tell customers there are more coming.”

“Goodness, but they’re beautiful, aren’t they, these birds?” Libba clicked, running her fingers over the crest of feathers on the male hoopoe’s head. “Tereus did draw the best transformation, the bastard.”

Seph grimaced. “What?”

“Philomela and her sister,” Libba continued, glancing up, “got to be a swallow and a nightingale. Hardly fitting, considering he was the real villain of the story.”

“Libba,” Seph said slowly. “I do not have a classical education.”

“Oh,” Libba said, blushing a little and dropping her hand. “Right. I’m sorry. Shall I tell you the story? It’s rather horrible.”

But she didn’t have a chance.

Rhys arrived then, along with their foster brother Errol, who apparently had stepped in for his father for today’s drive to Lewes. Both young men were visibly windswept and chuckling together over some conversation that had happened on the way.

“Did you ride up top?” Libba asked Rhys with a frown of disapproval. “Your lovely curls are all frizzy.”