Chapter Seventeen
They had endured another half dozen rounds of charades before the evening was called to a close, yawns starting to pop up between the Templeton-Raths and Raths one at a time.
After Jasper’s mistake and her ridiculous improvisation to solve it, Libba had found that she no longer cared whether they won or lost at charades. She was wholly distracted and only able to perform in little, bursting pockets of Xandine when she could recall that she was supposed to do so.
He’d almost ruined everything.
Not just by calling her ‘Lib.’ No, and that had been bad enough.
He had kissed her back. He had slid those warm fingers of his around her waist, touching the bare skin exposed at her hip in the process.
It had only been a peck. Only a quick, cursory thing. It had been meant to be a muzzle, not a declaration.
And everyone had seen it.
She was still numb in her extremities, still tingling and sparking under her skin at the absurdity of it. The first and most obvious rule of a stage kiss was that both parties knew it was an act. Jasper wasn’t an actor.
Was he?
That hadn’t felt like an act.
She was itching to dress him down the instant they were alone again.
“Shall we give you a ride back to your home, Mr. Townsend?” she suggested pointedly as they were exiting the manor and saying their goodbyes. “We would be happy to do so.”
He turned to her, his eyes narrowing. “I am heading into town, actually,” he said. “I promised to meet a friend for a pint after this.”
She hesitated, pressing her lips together.
He meant Malcolm, didn’t he? They had talked about this some time ago, about ensuring that Mal was out of the house, distracted at the gaming tables when she had to go in or out of the Rest in costume.
And he had remembered to set it up, even without being spoken to for the last week by Libba herself.
“Of course,” she said. “A ride to town, then?”
“No, thank you,” he said curtly, turning to the other women to say his goodbyes. “Mrs. Templeton-Rath, ladies, I must thank you most heartily for such a wonderful evening.”
She felt a flash of hot, itchy annoyance, and decided to meet his strike and do the same with the gentlemen, fluttering her lashes and letting them kiss her knuckles as she excused herself from their company.
Jasper pointedly noticed her drawing closer to Mr. Rath, her childhood friend’s eyes lingering over her hand, a muscle in his jaw ticking before he turned his back on her entirely to focus on his beloved future wife, Miss Pippa Templeton-Rath.
The instant the door was shut, she marched to her carriage and slammed herself inside.
Evidently, she would have to shout at him some other time.
She would have to settle for screaming into a pillow for tonight.
That was fine. She’d done it before.
“Liberty …” said Lem, frowning at her in the dark across the carriage seats. “They did not notice.”
“They notice more than they let on,” she snapped back. “It’s a lucky thing Miss Rath was so taken with you because she clearly dislikes me.”
He paused, something like a smile flickering around his mouth before he tamed it back into order. “She barely spoke to me,” he said, sounding for all the world like a reasonably oblivious man. “Ayomide is a beautiful name.”
“Don’t try that with me,” Libba told him. “I taught you how to act. And you can’t have her, Lem. She can never find out who you really are.”
He sighed. “I suppose that is true. Though as of tonight, England has no stance on who I really am.”
She huffed and turned her face toward the window. She didn’t need to be reminded of that failing too.
When they got back to the Rest, she bid him an abrupt good night and fled his company before he could spark her guilt again. Between that and her current pique of rage, the rage was preferable. It was energizing. And most importantly, it was dignified.
Anger was always more respected than sadness in this world.
She was relieved to see that the house was mostly darkened and made her way there without concern for running into anyone except perhaps Hattie on one of her moonlit sojourns for food.
And Hattie already knew, so that wouldn’t be a problem.
As it was, she didn’t see anyone in the halls.
She made it all the way to her bedroom, exhaling in relief as she turned the knob.
She was already anticipating the feeling of release from this costume and the comfort of her night things when she crossed the threshold, but alas, her room was not empty.
Rhys was sat on the floor, a fat beeswax candle on the rug in front of him, balanced on what looked to be a tea saucer.
His tongue was half out, caught between his teeth as he rolled a slip of thin, translucent paper around a pinch of glittering powders, twisting the ends into narrow stoppers and setting the little completed tube in a line of over a dozen identical creations along the edge of her rug.
“Rhys!” she snapped, hissing under her breath until his head snapped up, eyes slightly bloodshot from looking too hard for too long at something so small in poor lighting. “What the Devil are you doing in my room?”
“Libba!” he hissed back. “Why are you dressed like a bloody Capulet?”
She glared at him, looking down at herself and then back up at him. “The Capulets are not the villains, you know,” she told him, rather than answering.
He scoffed. “They certainly are more villainous than the Montagues. Only one house produced the likes of Tybalt, though both houses are stupid. Stupid is worse than violent.”
She was already crossing the room, pulling her earrings off and loosening the ties at her waist, and shook her head with a sigh. “You’re not wrong, I suppose. What are you crafting down there?”
“Ah! I’d an idea. You cast me as Mercutio because you see him in me and me in him, yes?”
“Yes,” she agreed, pulling the copper rings from her fingers and dropping them in the little porcelain dish on her vanity one at a time, each with a different chord of clang. “Absolutely.”
“So, why not let him perform an illusion or two?” Rhys said excitedly. “It will elevate your production and advertise my own offerings outside the Odalisque. I made these for the Queen Mab speech.”
She sat and began to separate her hair into three sections to braid it, eyes falling on the strange, little curls of paper on her floor. “What are they?”
“Sparks,” he said. “Watch.”
He lifted the candle on its saucer and scrambled to his feet, snatching up a handful of his paper twists with him. He was still fully dressed from his day, cravat askew, waistcoat half-unbuttoned, and his expression was wild with enthusiasm.
He waited for her full attention, watching her fingers fly through the process of her plait with impatient, rapid blinking and then letting his shoulders sag in relief when she tied off the end and gestured for him to proceed.
“‘If love be rough with you,’” he said to her, “‘be rough with love.’”
She pressed her lips together, her throat flexing.
“‘Prick love for pricking, and you beat love down,’” he said, wiggling his eyebrows and setting the candle on the sideboard table next to her door. “Etcetera, etcetera. ‘Come, we burn daylight, ho!’”
And he flicked his fingers out, causing three rapid pops and fizzing sparkles of light that leaped into the air and bounced off the mirror next to her door.
Libba startled enough that she found herself clutching either side of the stool under her while Rhys grinned at her manically through the thin fog of smoke and scent of sulfur.
“Christ and St. Genesius, Rhys!” she yelped, gasping in a gulp of breath and trying to swallow her heart back down. “You’re going to set my room on fire!”
“What? No.” He flicked another sparking paper into the flame to demonstrate, making another loud crack. “Perfectly safe. Ruby showed me.”
“Get out!” she said, pointing at the door. “I’m going to kill you one day.”
“Certainly, certainly, but on that day, you’ll let me make the pretty flames?” he said, bending daintily and giving a performative little puff of air to extinguish his candle, as though he hadn’t lit the lanterns on her bed and vanity as well. “Please?”
“Yes, all right. Now get out of here before I strangle you.”
“See?” he said to her, swiping the remainder of his little twists from the ground. “You are my sister, no matter how oft you protest.”
“Out!”
“Good night to you too,” he sang, prancing out. “Chwaer.”
She glared at the door for a time in his wake, and then, despite herself, chuckled.
Rhys’s chaos was never welcome, exactly, but sometimes it was exactly what one needed to reset the temperament. If he was anything, he was diverting.
And fairy fire would be a fine addition to the play, she told herself as she carefully removed the costume and applied her cold cream, sighing at the way it eased the heat in her cheeks and jaw and melted away the worry from her forehead.
Lem was probably correct that no one had noticed anything terribly amiss, beyond the obvious shocking behaviors of a foreign princess.
But why had Jasper kissed her back?
Why had he done that?
And if he was going to meet Malcolm at the tables tonight, did that mean he would be asleep in the parlor come morning?
If she stayed awake long enough, would Jasper return to this house tonight?
And, most importantly, was that what she wanted? More than sleep? More than avoiding the confrontation? More than the inevitability that even in her dreams, he’d be there in the parlor, waiting for her?
She sighed and crawled into bed but did not bother to extinguish the flame at her bedside.
She knew she wasn’t going to fall asleep.
And besides, at least the Jasper here in the waking world would still be wearing his shirt.
That thought, that last thought, made her fling the blankets back and push her bare feet into the carpet.
Rhys had forgotten one of his little twists of paper, one of his little miracles of spark and flame.
“‘If love be rough with you,’” she said, rolling it between her fingers and aiming at the candle next to her bed, “‘be rough with love.’”
She flicked it hard and when it exploded, the pop and pinpricks of golden light satisfied something that otherwise would have remained lodged and crooked in her soul.
The haze of silver smoke smelled unpleasant, and nothing like cherry and almond, and that was exactly what she needed to blow the damned flame out and put her face in the pillow.
Neither the dream version or the reality of Jasper Townsend would defeat her tonight.