Chapter Twenty-Five
They fell into passion twice more.
Once in the night, groggy and giggling as they explored with hands and mouths and different positioning. She climbed atop him. She touched him. She kissed him. And they shared laughter and teasing until those things were lost to the power of something stronger.
Then again in the early light of dawn, half-dreaming and boneless and languid, drawn together like inseparable forces, unrushed and still, somehow unquenched.
It seemed that they had talked for hours in the darkened room, but Libba, upon fully waking, could not remember what had been so important that they had avoided the bigger things, the necessary things, that they ought to have been discussing.
At least here in the end, she could see him fully, dusted with the soft glow of dawn. She could run her eyes along him without concern or excuse and memorize every dip and freckle of his form.
He lay there. And he let her do it, a soft smile hovering over his mouth that looked more fond than smug.
In reverse, Libba thought to herself, she would have been smug.
“I might stay in today,” he said, arching and stretching his arms out, every tendon beneath them straining against his skin. “I can’t imagine focusing on consignments. I’d say you could stay with me, but …”
“‘But’?” she prompted, sharply, her eyes narrowing a hair.
He grinned at her then, flashing his teeth. “But you threatened your troupe with a full, five-act gauntlet of understudy swapping today.”
“Oh, blast,” she said, blinking and frowning. “You’re right. I did.”
“And it is a shame,” he said, sighing and rolling onto his side, the sheet tucking and pulling around his thighs as he moved. “A damned shame.”
She reached out and traced the line of his jaw, the shape of his bottom lip. “I could come back.”
“You could,” he agreed, catching her hand and pressing a kiss into her palm. “And you should. But if you are going to do that, I must get up, after all, and see to business, as I will be just as likely to want to sprawl tomorrow.”
“It is the way of things,” she agreed with a shrug and a smirk. “At least I will not be alone.”
“You’ve never been alone,” he said, so seriously that she had to turn away from him, flinging her legs over the side of his bed and searching for her discarded clothing.
He did not comment on it. He simply went to his side of the room and began to dress as well, his eyes lingering on her as she layered piece after piece back onto her body.
“Oh, my hair,” she said ruefully, reaching up to touch it. “Where did that ribbon get to?”
“This?” he asked, dangling said ribbon until she came close enough to swipe for it, at which point, he claimed a final kiss.
A soft kiss, lingering and sweet.
“Tonight,” he said, as she turned to leave. “You’ll come back?”
“I’ll come back,” she agreed. “Tonight.”
She huddled her coat around her body and set off for the Rest at a clip, her hair escaping the sloppy tie she’d made at the nape of her neck as she went.
She did not linger in her thoughts. She did not revel in them. She did not conjure up recent memories.
There would be time for that later.
She slipped in through the garden-side doors and took the long way around to her room, just in case the others were milling about.
And for the second time this week, she entered her private sanctum to find someone else lingering within it, waiting for her.
“Ruby,” she said, frowning and clipping the door shut behind her. “Did you get lost again?”
Ruby grinned at her, fully dressed and reclining on Libba’s still-made bed, her pointy, black boots swaying back and forth. She was dwarfed by the length of the mattress, like a petite imp in red crinoline, awaiting her newest victim.
“Get your shoes off my coverlet,” Libba snapped, and then she sighed, crossing the room to collapse on her vanity stool.
“You’re earlier than I thought you would be,” Ruby said, tossing aside the Minerva Press nonsense she’d been reading. “I was ready to stay for at least another two hours. I made you a tincture.”
“‘A tincture’?” Libba asked, bleary and impatient.
“A tea,” said Ruby, raising her dark, arched brows. “To prevent any little surprises?”
Libba immediately flushed, a cool crack thrumming through her ribs. “Oh.”
“I am not the Marvelous Human Abacus,” Ruby said with a smirk. “But I can do the math.”
“I do have my own … surprise prevention methods, you know,” Libba said, watching Ruby produce the little, stoppered vial of dried herbs from her skirt and set it on the bedside table. “But thank you.”
“Mm,” said Ruby, non-committedly, her eyes traveling over Libba’s wrinkled clothes and frizzy hair. “How was it? Are you in love?”
Libba glared at her and then sighed. “Yes. Probably.”
“That’s good, then,” said Ruby. “So you aren’t going back to London? In the spring? You will stay?”
Libba nodded, her shoulders slumping a little. “I was always going to stay.”
“Yes,” said Ruby, her catty smirk flickering. “Me too, I think. Willa knew what she was about, requiring us to stay for a full year. She knew once we remembered what it is like here, together, we’d never want to leave again.”
Libba nodded, pulling the ribbon free and craning her neck side to side, glancing at herself in the mirror and finding her skin stubbornly luminous. “I should bathe,” she said absently, tugging the ties free from the front of her dress, much less skillfully than Jasper had. “I should change.”
Ruby nodded, pushing herself off the mattress and pacing to the wardrobe, tossing it open with a thoughtful thrum in her throat. “What do you want to wear today? I suggest red.”
“You always suggest red,” Libba snapped, still fumbling with the ties. “Is that why they named you ‘Ruby’ at the foundling home?”
Ruby chuckled. “I wish. I was one of a series of infant girls in a list of gems. Pearl and Opal were older. Beryl came after me. I am glad I wasn’t Beryl.”
Beryl and Errol, Libba thought to herself but did not say. “Me too.”
Ruby withdrew a dark-red shift and a soft, purple overdress. Libba was grateful, despite herself.
“Does Malcolm know yet?” Ruby asked, laying out her choices on the bed.
Libba blanched. “No.”
Ruby raised her brows, turning to her as she stood, and peeled off her wrinkled clothing, pushing it down her hips. “Are you going to tell him? Is Jasper going to do it?”
“He had better bloody not,” Libba said, frowning. “That’s for me to do.”
“He probably thinks the same,” said Ruby, then she paused, both of them startling a little when the skirt landed on the floor with a thunk.
“Oh,” said Libba, kneeling and tossing it over to dig the fossil stone out of the skirt. “I forgot about this.”
“What is it?” Ruby asked, evidently just as interested in rubble as she was in soul-fracturing family drama. “Oh! A fossil. I didn’t know you enjoyed such things.”
“It isn’t mine,” Libba said, tossing it to her for closer inspection. “It’s Rhys’s. Or … I guess Seph’s. He wants me to give it to Persephone Boswell.”
“Why?” asked Ruby, turning it curiously in her hands. “Is it going to explode later?”
“I don’t think so,” said Libba, just as baffled. “He doesn’t want her to know it’s from him.”
“Are you going to tell her, anyway?”
Libba shrugged, letting out a little breath. “I don’t know. I’m confused.”
“So is Rhys, apparently,” said Ruby, blinking. “Or maybe not. He is an impulsive little imp.”
Seph had Rhys in her rival bucket, Libba knew. This fossil would complicate buckets. She wasn’t certain she wanted to do that to another woman so soon after having it done to her. And besides, Rhys should cause his own messes. He had enough experience, didn’t he?
“Did you know he is apparently clench in a fight?” Libba asked, reaching out to take the fossil back. “I think he’s been letting us best him all this time. I wouldn’t have believed it a week ago, but I do now.”
“Well, don’t tell him you know,” said Ruby, blinking several times. “He’ll stop letting us do it.”
“Oh, damn,” said Libba, pausing with her fingers on the new chemise with a jolt and a frown. “You are going to tell Malcolm if I don’t.”
“What!” Ruby said, gasping theatrically. “I would never.”
“No, not on purpose,” Libba said, moaning and slumping forward, face buried in her mattress. “You will give it away, though, if I don’t do it soon.”
“Well!” huffed Ruby, crossing her arms. “I should take my tincture back for that, but I won’t. Because I am not a beast.”
The implication that Libba was, in fact, a beast, stood starkly in the air.
“I didn’t mean for Willa to find out about that boy when we were young,” Ruby rushed out, exploding a few seconds later. “She peeled it out of me like she was seeding a grape!”
It made Libba laugh, an exhausted, shaking laugh, her face still buried in her pillow. “I know,” she said, sighing and dragging herself back to a reasonable position, braced on her hands and facing the clean clothes. “I know you don’t mean to do it. Not everyone is an actress.”
“Not every house is as bloody observant as this one, either,” Ruby snapped back. “If she were still around, it wouldn’t have been me you found in your room this morning and I think you know that.”
Libba sighed, nodding. “Yes,” she agreed. “I know that.”
“I’ll call for your bath,” Ruby said, still glaring. “And a kettle. What do you want to eat?”
“Just toast,” said Libba, sighing. “No … Cheese?”
“I’ll decide,” Ruby said, flapping her hand. “You just focus on … reassembling yourself. D’you know something?”
“Hm?” said Libba, glancing over her shoulder at her foster sister.
Ruby was watching her, that little smile still hovering at the corners of her cheeks.
“What?” said Libba again, frowning.
“It is only,” said Ruby with a tiny sigh, “I think I am a little jealous. I’ve never been so thoroughly displaced by a night with a man before.”
“Well, you will be,” Libba threatened, straightening. “Someday soon, I think.”
Ruby laughed, turning and already pulling the door open. “How could you possibly know that?”
Libba didn’t answer.
She had money riding on it, after all.