Chapter Twenty-Two
The rehearsal had been a grueling endeavor. A successful one but grueling nonetheless.
“Two more days to get your blocking and lines,” she snapped at her troupe, “and then we begin costume rehearsals. Tomorrow, I wish to run through the entire production, but I will swap in understudies at random. Does that please you all?”
“Mais non,” Sister Jeanne said, frowning. “The leads should have priority.”
“The good Sister forgets the time she got mumps,” Lem said softly, “on opening night.”
“She does not,” the nun replied, pulling her wig off with a pout. “No one forgets the mumps. I looked like une femelle castor.”
“Do women beavers look different than the men?” Rhys asked, glancing up from his fossil, which he was currently shining with Libba’s brand-new tin of rose oil. “I thought they were all fairly similar.”
Sister Jeanne glared at him, picked up her skirts, and flounced off the stage, leaving him to shrug and continue his polish.
“Benvolio and Paris,” Libba said, stepping aside to allow for her irritated Juliet to get past her to the backstage stairs.
“You have fittings with Miss Thresher on the morrow. Not at Starling’s Rest this time.
You will be going to her new storefront a few doors down.
There is no sign yet. Do you know where it is? ”
The men nodded, letting a bit of the steel out of Libba’s shoulders. “Capital. Dismissed.”
It was only then that she heard the chuckle from the front seats of the orchestra pit, her eyes falling down to find Jasper slumped and watching, with one ankle drawn up over his knee.
Her heart immediately gave a kick against her ribs.
She blinked at him, momentarily stunned, and then resolved to shake him out of her vision, turning to Rhys to snatch the rose oil from his hands.
“Hey!”
“That is not boot polish, you little shit.”
Rhys grinned up at her. “It’s done, anyhow. Isn’t it bonny?”
She squinted at it, at the curling impression of something ancient and long-dead in the streaky silver-gray rock. “No.”
“It’s an oddity, don’t you agree?” Rhys asked, pushing himself to his feet. “A curiosity.”
Libba only stared at him, incredulous.
“Seph should have it,” he said, reaching forward and tucking it into Libba’s skirt pocket. “Don’t tell her it’s from me. Do tell her there are more up in the quarry, though. I think they’d sell.”
“What … Rhys?” she called after him, but he was already hopping off the stage, still half in costume and swaggering toward the exit without so much as a visit to the dressing rooms.
She stood there stupidly, watching him until the sunlight had vanished behind the door as it swung shut again.
She took a breath, closing her eyes briefly, and lowered her head so that when she opened them again, Jasper was in her vision. “He hates Seph,” she said, rather than greeting him. “What game is this?”
“What game is it ever, with that one?” Jasper replied, dropping his crooked leg to the ground and giving a long, languid stretch, which lifted the hem of his tunic up to reveal a tantalizing strip of flesh at his waist. “Little shit will never bother him, though. You need to be more creative if you want to chastise him properly.”
She sighed, walking to the edge of the stage and collapsing down to dangle off the edge. “Suggestions?”
“Someone at the Cauldron called him ‘Taffy’ once and he broke the man’s finger,” Jasper said thoughtfully, tilting his head. “Though Rhys was more prone to outbursts at seventeen than he is today.”
“‘Taffy’? Like the sweet?” Libba asked, wrinkling her brow. “That’s hardly stinging.”
Jasper shrugged. “All I remember was him shouting, ‘I’m from Newport, Saes!’ and then grabbing the bloke’s wrist and bending all his fingers backward until one popped.”
Libba blinked several times as Jasper dissolved into a fond, nostalgic chuckle. “Oh.”
She frowned.
Malcolm had alluded to Rhys getting into scraps the night of the pub brawl. She just hadn’t taken it very seriously. He didn’t look strong.
“Ah, maybe like the River Taff?” Jasper said, his eyes popping open, gold and shining. “Yes, I think that must be it.”
“Well, that is stupid,” said Libba. “If someone called me ‘Thamesy,’ I’d probably be more confused than offended.”
“But if someone called you a ‘little shit,’ you’d be beside yourself,” Jasper pointed out. “We’re talking about a different animal entirely.”
She nodded, swinging her feet into the empty orchestra pit below. “I told you to meet me at the Rest,” she said, after a moment. “Tonight. What are you doing here?”
“Well, I was nearby,” he said, giving an odd, little chuckle and scratching at his hair. “And I thought perhaps the Rest was the worst place for whatever business it is you were alluding to back at the quarry. Erm … What were you … referencing, by the by?”
She flattened her mouth, staring at him long enough that he gave another nervous chuckle and pushed himself to his feet, like he couldn’t stand being seated any longer.
“I was delivering the list,” he said, shaking himself out and beginning to pace, “to the Templeton-Raths. Lib, I think it goes without saying that I no longer want to marry the heiress. I think you know that.”
“I don’t presume to know anything that goes on in that kettle of yours,” she said sharply. “What’s the matter? You don’t like cats?”
He tossed her a smirk and rolled his shoulders. “I certainly like them less today than I did a few weeks ago,” he said wryly. “It was a stupid plan from the start. I suspect you always knew that.”
“It can’t have been that stupid,” she retorted, “because it is working.”
He gave a long, irritated sigh. “I know. Blast and damnation and so on. Perhaps I can simply pivot to getting the forwarding office position, wave them all back to their island, and never think about it again, but, Lib, that doesn’t really work, either.”
She raised her brows. “Why not?”
“Because of you,” he said. “They will wonder if I am marrying Princess Bloody Xandine.”
“Say you are not,” she said, shrugging. “Easy. She goes back to Bayt, rejected and forlorn, and the story concludes.”
He paused, his hands flexing. “Paul Rath might wish to stay in touch with her, you know.”
“Many men have wishes I will not grant,” she replied, lifting her chin. “That is no obstacle, unless, of course, I decide to grant them.”
He sighed, spinning around to say something barbed and immediately clicking his teeth together as members of the company emerged, chattering together to make their exit, down the stairs next to Libba’s perch on the stage.
She smiled at them. Waved them off. Wished them a good night.
Some of the others lived above the playhouse itself and would stay.
And, truth be told, it was feeding the petty corners of her soul to watch Jasper Townsend squirm about this.
It served him right, for leaving that scent in her hair all day.
“Is there anywhere,” he said through his teeth as the door swung shut again, “in this bloody town where we might talk without interruption?”
“To my knowledge?” she said, raising her brows. “No.”
He narrowed his eyes at her, and through the slits of his pale lashes, examined her dangling over the corner of the stage, from the tips of her swinging toes to her scented hair. “Come down here,” he said suddenly, his voice gone a bit ragged. “I know a place.”
“I’ve things to do,” she lied, gesturing vaguely at the stage behind her. “I can’t go traipsing off to your secret bowers. You were supposed to meet me at the Rest tonight.”
“I can’t do that,” he snapped. “If I see you in that pink robe or that silver turban again, I’m going to lose my bloody mind. Come here, Lib.”
It surprised her enough that she felt compelled to obey. She never could resist the pull of a narrative that wasn’t going in its expected direction.
She pushed herself off the rim of the stage and landed like the cats of which he was now so wary, her knees bent and careful, at the top rung of the orchestra pit, and then, as though the impact had felt like nothing, stood and lazily brushed any dust from her skirts.
He didn’t react at all, his lips still tightly pressed together, his eyes still glinting and molten. He held out a hand, a callused, dockyard hand, and gave a curt nod when she accepted it, pulling her by their interlaced fingers toward the door.