Chapter Four
Seph’s heart was racing. And not in a pleasant way.
She had expected an eventual confrontation, of course. She must have even expected it today, given that she’d bothered getting dressed and pinning up her hair.
But somehow, she had never anticipated Rhys Caradoc following her up into her private quarters. That had never crossed into the realm of possibility. Not even in theory. Not even in dreams.
And yet there he was behind her, footfalls light as a cat’s.
“I knew you lived in the shop,” he commented as she opened the private door to the staircase that led to her apartments above. “I just always pictured you under it, not above it.”
She narrowed her eyes but did not turn around. “Why are you picturing me at home, Rhys Caradoc?”
He gave a soft chuckle behind her. She could almost feel him shaking his head. “I like to know where you are,” he told her. “So that I might steer clear.”
She grimaced and pushed the door open, standing to the side to usher him in. “That would have been easy,” she pointed out. “If you had just stayed away from Brighton.”
“Ah, well,” he said, shrugging as he passed by her, leaving a wave of air scented with coconuts and sea salt and vanilla. “You can’t have Brighton, Seph. It’s home.”
“Yes,” she agreed, walking in behind him and pulling the door shut. “It is.”
She heard him titter again, his breath warm around the amusement as she stalked past him, refusing to wonder at what he thought of her home. She marched straight to the kettle and set about getting it to boil, her teeth aching against the back of her jaw as she did so.
To him, she knew she looked unharried and calm. Her hands were steady, her breathing was quiet. He didn’t know her insides were in tumult. And he never would.
She lit the range and set the kettle above it, blinking at the heat that rose into her eyes.
He appeared at her side, leaning a little too close to the range for comfort until she batted him away, making him giggle again like an errant schoolboy. “I like to feel the steam,” he said.
“I’m sure you do,” she replied, turning to retrieve a pair of mugs.
He watched her. She could feel his shiny, green eyes on her back. She could picture the mop of unruly, brown curls on his brow. She could sense the way his lean body was propped carelessly against her furniture.
She almost sighed.
This happened every time she had to see him in person.
It had never been fair, how beautiful he was. It had never been just.
“Do you want green tea or black?”
“What the Devil is ‘green tea’?” he asked, straightening. “Doesn’t matter. I’ll have that. Oho, and what have we here?”
“Oh, you might not …” she began, wheeling around as he drifted toward the open pink tin Libba had left on her dining table, his fingers wiggling as he reached toward it. She stopped herself, clamping her lips shut, as he picked up a cube of dried pineapple that was heavily dusted with red powder.
And simply watched as he popped it into his mouth.
She counted in her mind.
One, two, three, four …
“Iesu Mawredd!” he shouted, dropping his jaw down and gasping for breath. “What in the blazes …? Seph!”
She smiled blandly at him, leaning back to watch him panic. “Tea will be done in a moment,” she murmured. “Cream and sugar?”
He wheeled around, eyes falling on her little jar of cream, and leapt for it before she could swipe it out of the way, tipping a large portion into his mouth.
She crossed her arms, making a face at him as he sighed in relief, swishing cream over his tongue and collapsing in slow stages into one of her chairs. “What the Devil is wrong with you, woman?” he demanded after he’d completed his performance. “Why would you man-trap your own living quarters?”
“I did no such thing,” she snapped. “You are buying me more cream.”
He was frowning, his usually smooth brow wrinkled, thick, dark eyebrows drawn together as he considered the tin. “You knew I’d be coming,” he said with an air of entirely incorrect realization. “And you left this to poison me.”
“Oh, grace to God,” she muttered, turning away from him and retrieving her jar of green tea leaves. “Don’t flatter yourself.”
He narrowed those green eyes at her and shot his hand out for his tea, flexing his fingers impatiently.
Once they’d sat down, had a few sips, and Seph had made a point of slowly and deliberately eating a chili-coated piece of dried watermelon, she felt a little more at ease. A little more herself.
This was just a table, after all. Her table, but just a table.
And so what that they hadn’t shared one since they’d been children? Since he’d … or since she’d …
Well, that didn’t matter.
“My mail?” she prompted before taking another sip of her brew. “Hand it over?”
He fished the green envelope back out of the inside pocket of his jacket and slapped it on the table between them, his hand pinning it down. “Now,” he said. “First thing to know is that this wasn’t the only thing in the larger, original envelope. There was also a card for me.”
“Addressed to you?” she asked, her fingers inching out to try to wedge the green envelope free of his grasp.
“It was for me,” he said again, frowning. “I should’ve brought it.”
“Rhys, give me the parcel,” she said, failing to budge the thing from under his hand. “I want to know what it is.”
He sighed, a little too long and too hard to sound sincere, and then took his hand away. “Fine.”
She slid it to herself, blinking down at the address in ribboned, ivory-white ink on the front.
“It doesn’t actually have the address,” she pointed out, frowning. “No mention of the street. And no postmark.”
“Of course no postmark,” he answered, crossing his arms over his chest. “I told you, it was inside another envelope. That one had the postmark.”
“From where?” she asked, blinking up at him. “Where did it come from?”
He stared back at her, frowning so deeply that it made little V-shaped ruts on either side of his chin. “What?”
She blinked, flattening her lips. “Did you keep the envelope, at least? Can’t you check?”
“If no one cleaned my room,” he said, wincing. “Is that how postmarks work?”
She sighed rather than answering and turned the thing over, sliding her thumb under a smudged, mangled seal and cracking it in two.
Inside was a thick, folded card, designed with odd symbols on the outside and a horizontal fold. She opened it and blinked down at the inscription inside. She read it once. And then again.
“Well?” Rhys exploded, lifting the chair against his own arse and shimmying it closer to hers. “What is it?!”
“I don’t know,” she said honestly, tilting the thing toward him. “A poem?”
He squinted down at it, leaning forward so that his curls fell over his cheeks. “A riddle,” he corrected. “Look at that.”
The ink was the same strange, white pigment, twirling and looping around the words in the center of the square.
Is it a hlaew or a l?w? Time has not told.
Perhaps even lexowia, which is llechwedd of olde.
PRIOR a haon déag, unarddeg, or both?
A truce be required, although you are loathe.
Crumbled and ruined but still standing yet
Not in castle or gatehouse, but a carn be well met.
They were quiet for a long moment, both of them reading it over and over.
“Some of that,” Rhys said after a time, “is Welsh. Much of it isn’t.”
“Some of it is Irish,” she told him, pointing. “A haon déag. Carn.”
“Right, right,” he said, wrinkling his brow and lifting her finger to move it to the two words on the first line. “But what about those two? Not Welsh.”
“Not Irish, either,” she said, touching the outline of them with her fingernail. “English, I think.”
He scoffed. “Certainly not.”
“Old English,” she clarified. “Before the Vikings. Before the Normans.”
“Carn isn’t Irish,” he told her with a sniff, releasing his warm grip on the top of her hand and leaning back. “It’s Welsh.”
“It’s Irish,” she told him with a shake of her head. “‘Cairn.’ Yes?”
“‘Hoof,’” he answered. “But yes, also ‘cairn.’”
“Welsh, Irish, and Old English,” she mused, taking her fingers from the words to her lips as her eyes covered over them once more. “Who would write a riddle like that?”
“Someone who is having a laugh at both of us!” he exclaimed. “Just like I told you!”
She bit down on the tips of her fingers, flicking her gaze up to meet his. “It does seem that way, doesn’t it?”
He made a noise rather than answer her, an impatient sound that said, Of course it bloody does.
She sighed and shook her head, dropping her hands into her lap. “The envelope said it was an invitation,” she pointed out, flipping the green paper over to demonstrate. “So the riddle is … what? The location? A cairn? Prior to eleven? That’s not very helpful.”
“‘Eleven’?” he said, surprised. “You learned to count in Welsh?”
“No,” she said, wrinkling her nose. “What?”
“Eleven,” he said again, pointing. “Unarddeg. What are you talking about?”
“The Irish bit is also ‘eleven,’” she said, her eyes widening. “So it says … yes. ‘Prior to eleven, eleven, or both’?”
“Ten, ten?” he guessed, a tugging at the corners of her lips as he looked up at her through those thick, dark lashes. “That could be the date. A week from now.”
“Yes!” she gasped. “And why is prior written like that? In all capital letters? A hint, certainly? And what is llechwedd?”
“‘Slope,’” he said, looking befuddled by it. “Or ‘hill,’ if you’re outside?”
“A hill and a cairn are much the same,” she speculated.
“Aye, but there’s mention of castles and gatehouses,” he pointed out. “Is there a castle near here on a hill?”
“All of them are on hills,” she said, frowning. “We’ve nothing but hills in Sussex.”
“True enough,” he said.
They fell quiet again, the clock ticking as they considered the thing. Seph sipped her tea while Rhys twisted a coil of his hair around his finger, mouthing unspoken words to himself.
“Those letters,” he said, “the old ones in English. They sound like they look?”
“I think so,” she said, shrugging. “Why wouldn’t they?”
He chuckled. “Ever heard of Cyrillic?”
She shook her head. “What’s that? A cypher?”
“Might as well be,” he told her with a smile. “But that’s not important just now. If that symbol there that looks like an ‘a’ and an ‘e’ mashed together sounds like an ‘a’ and an ‘e’ mashed together, then it says … loo?”
“‘Loo’?” she repeated. “And?”
“Well, there is a castle called Lewes, isn’t there? Near here?” he asked, his voice half hopeful, like he wasn’t actually certain. “Isn’t there?”
“A whole town called that,” she said, nodding. “I buy my puzzle boxes there.”
“But is there a castle?” he asked excitedly, taking her teacup from her and putting it on the table, ignoring her sound of protest. He grabbed her hands, which were now free, and persisted. “And a hill?”
Her expression diffused for a moment, going soft and unformed as the town of Lewes swam up in her mind’s eye. “Yes,” she said absently. “And a ruin. A ruin that used … Oh, Rhys.”
“Yes?” he pressed, squeezing her fingers.
She smiled then, her expression cracking open across her lips and teeth. She nodded down to the page, to the capitalized PRIOR in the poem.
“A priory,” she said, and then she watched him smile too. “Lewes Priory.”
He bit his lip on his grin, nodding slowly. “Lewes Priory,” he repeated with glee. “October tenth. We’ve solved it.”