Page 61 of The Trick of It

She groaned in protest, dropping her forehead against his and reveling in the warm breath of his chuckle. “Can’t you make him do another loop of the countryside?”

“Probably could,” he said, twining her hair around his fingers, “but then the same thing would just happen again. We might as well get this part over with and send any and all of my siblings as far away from our doings as possible for a while.”

“Oh,” she said, lashes fluttering as she considered his words. “That is true. But there are still twenty whole minutes …”

“Mm, yes,” he said, leaning into the pull of her leaning body, “but we need those to unwrinkle and rearrange. Me, especially. Unless you want to tumble out onto Merlin’s drive looking freshly ravished.”

She gave a dramatic, heavy sigh. “I suppose not.”

“I suppose not as well,” he returned, amusement evident in his tone. “I’m just glad I wore dark trousers.”

She opened her mouth to inquire as to why, but he shook his head, still smiling at her, eyes still half-closed. “If I talk about it, it’ll make it worse,” he assured her. “But I’ll explain later, the next time we are alone. Suffice to say, you’re not the only one who gets a little damp when excited.”

She raised her brows, blinking at this tantalizing bit of information, but did not press further. Instead, she pulled her abused pelisse and Rhys’s discarded fingerless gloves from the floor as she flopped off his lap and onto the cushion beside him, her legs dangling over his lap.

She shook the pelisse out a few times, but there was not much wrinkling, just a bit of grime. That was the benefit of a nice, heavy wool. And Rhys’s gloves were black, so they were in decent shape as well.

He assisted in helping her arrange her hair back into order and she straightened his collar and refolded his lapels. They avoid eye contact during the exercise, lest it be derailed entirely. And by the time the carriage had finally ground to a halt, Seph was not certain she had ever felt quite so giddy in her entire life.

She spared one more look at him, flushed and cheeky and gorgeous, and gave herself a full body squeeze, wrapping her arms around her ribs, just to remind herself that this had happened. That this was real. And that it wasn’t yet over.

Rhys didn’t wait for Errol to come around and open the door. Indeed, Seph thought that might have been uncomfortable, no matter how it played out. They heard the other man’s boots hit the pebbled drive just as they too emerged out into the overcast afternoon light, blinking at the loss of pleasant shadow that had held them all the way here.

Errol looked discontent, sandy hair sticking up every which way under a pair of truly ridiculous earmuffs.

“You can take those off,” Rhys said to him.

“What?!” Errol shouted back.

Seph did not involve herself. Instead, she ran her eyes over the grounds, somewhat removed from the city proper and sitting upon an elevated hill just beyond Lewes Priory.

Indeed, the house itself, a squat grange house covered in orange and yellow autumn vines, appeared to have been built from the stones of the ruined monastery below. Barbaric, perhaps, but beautiful, somehow, too.

“Ah, look at that,” Rhys said, nudging her with his elbow and nodding down past the horizon at the river winding its way through Lewes. “It does look a bit like an injury, doesn’t it?”

She opened her mouth to agree but was interrupted by two neat lines of people, circling the house on what appeared to be some sort of grounds tour. It was led by a man in servants’ livery and made up of the eccentric motley whom they had seen at midnight in the ruins down below, with Madame Ivanova’s purple coat glowing like a bruise between the somber black cassock of Father Wheeler and the Russian-style day suit that Master Yuri wore: white, with red buttons and piping.

At the rear was Lavinia Winterstone, who immediately turned and saw them, her face brightening from what appeared to have been resigned boredom to sudden delight. She waved off her compatriots and lifted her skirts, trotting over the lawn and into the drive to greet them, brown curls bouncing and grinning widely all the way.

“Ah,” said Errol, pulling the earmuffs down into his hands. “The girl in the road.”

Nini came up a little short, her eyes widening as she looked from Seph to Rhys and back again. She pressed her lips together as though she’d just caught a secret and was preventing it from escaping.

Seph immediately felt her cheeks heating.

“Mrs. Winterstone,” Rhys boomed, loping forward with an outstretched hand to shake her much smaller one. “You’ve been victorious. Here we are, at your behest.”

“Here you are,” she agreed, shaking his hand and looking up at him with a squinting consideration, a knowing smile playing around her mouth. “You just missed luncheon. If you come with me, I can have plates made up for you before everything is put away. You too, young man,” she said to Errol, who startled at being addressed.

They trudged obediently after her, the loamy scent of the trees and lichen around them whipping up in tiny cyclones of dried leaves and brittle twigs that snapped underfoot. Nini seemed comfortable here, as though she had visited many times before, and ushered them into a rear entry near a crumbling gazebo, pink-cheeked and evidently chuffed that they had arrived.

“You’ve missed our two new joiners,” she told them as she pulled the door shut behind her, motioning at a kitchen maid to prepare a few plates of repast. “We’ve just received a Breton mesmerist and occult enthusiast, and an elderly lady with a child who reads fortunes. Or a child with an elderly lady who reads fortunes. That was unclear to me. Here we are. Have a seat.”

Seph fell into a rickety, wooden chair and found a plate proffered in front of her, piled with sourdough, pulled chicken, a slab of cheese, and what appeared to be very tiny pickles. Her stomach immediately rumbled in approval.

“I’m afraid Merlin didn’t account for the latecomers at all,” Nini continued, climbing up on the chair next to Seph and dropping her elbows on the table to support her face in her hands. “So now we’ve a bit of an issue with accommodations. I’ve promised to help today, as he is rather poorly and can’t manage it himself.”

“What sort of issue is bothering him?” Errol asked through a mouthful of bread, as though it were any of his concern at all. He glanced down at Rhys helping himself to the portion of chicken on his plate and nudged it closer to the thief so that he could have an easier time of it.