Chapter Sixteen
Rhys walked toward the shore instead of heading directly back to Starling’s Rest. He let the cool autumn air comb through his hair and down the back of his neck, toying with a tiny fleck of fool’s gold, rolling it between the pads of his fingers as he went.
Had that just happened?
Yes. Judging from the blood very slowly returning outward to the extremities of his body, it undoubtedly had. It actually had.
And the world hadn’t exploded in outrage, either.
He wasn’t sure if he wanted to grin so wide his face split open or scream into the sea. Both, perhaps, because she had all but told him today that he could have been doing that for the last decade and she would have liked it.
He’d always known he wasn’t the most academically gifted of the Starling brood, but for the love of Christ, tonight he thought he might actually be stupid.
He really had forgotten all those ridiculous things he’d said to her, the lies. Even now, he could only remember them a little sideways, skewed and blurry on the fringes of the clearer moments that he had retained in perpetuity.
Everyone, he reasoned, was stupid at sixteen.
He was.
Seph was.
Bloody Sarah was.
But he thought he was a little stupider than everyone else, all the same.
He had intended to walk down to the wharf, to perhaps skip some shingles over the foamy, cold waves of the Channel, but he found himself instead weaving through the townhouses tucked near the overlook, toward Libba’s new home.
She lived on the third floor of a terraced townhouse with that new husband of hers, a man who had also known them all since they’d been children. Who had also, probably, been a bit stupid about the girl he was meant to be with.
But Rhys didn’t want to talk to Jasper Townsend. Or go home and quiz the polish off Elias Selwyn, either, who had likely also committed this specific stupidity.
He just wanted his sister.
Not Monica, who would be sweet and kind, no matter what he brought to her. And not Hattie, whose ethereal queerness would be honest and thoughtful but unbearably gentle and likely studded with a thousand non-sequitur asides.
“Rhys?” Libba asked, coming up the opposite street with a bag of laundry on her hip and the sparkle of what he suspected was stage makeup testing flashing in the low light on her cheekbones. “Did you get lost again?”
“Yes,” he said. “Help.”
She laughed. “Come take this bag. Have you eaten?”
He nodded, trotting up to close the distance between them and taking the bright-blue sack full of folded clothes, which smelled of fresh cotton and lavender soap. “How is the Widow Thresher this evening?” he asked, peeking inside and flashing a smile when Libba slapped his hands.
“You’ve stolen quite enough of my wardrobe this year, you little shit,” she told him. “And she’s well. She’s still cross with Jasper for making her restore corded suede from sea water and cat vomit, however.”
“Delicious,” Rhys commented, waiting for her to open the door to her house and lead him up the stairs. “At least he took it to the mother, rather than the daughter.”
“Indeed,” Libba agreed. “I don’t think he knows Monica is capable of being fearsome when someone desecrates her creations. You didn’t answer me. Did you eat?”
“I shook my head up and down,” he snapped, dropping the bag on the floor the instant they’d crossed into the flat. “That means yes, you know. Hattie can teach you.”
“Don’t make me do violence before sundown,” she suggested airily. “If you’re not here to beg for scraps, I don’t know what to do with you.”
“I didn’t say I’d turn down scraps,” he pointed out, crossing the room to flop onto her settee and gaze up at the glass-covered collage of playbills and ticket stubs her husband had collected over the years.
He had seen this last time he’d been here, of course, but only at a glance.
Most of the keepsakes were from Libba’s plays and performances, but there were newspaper clippings and flyers too, little souvenirs of all of them wedged into the crevices between the mountain of monument to her own work.
He leaned forward, peering, until he found his own name a couple of times, on slips of pavilion flyers and in a carnival lineup from back in London.
She had evidently poured wine while he’d been looking and appeared at his side, holding out a glass of red and taking the seat next to him with a little sigh and a long, stretching lean back into the cushions.
“Where’s Jasper?” Rhys asked, peering into the wine and giving it a sniff. “This smells expensive.”
“Wholesale,” she said, raising her brows. “It will be, to someone, but not for us. And he’s outfitting his new office in the evenings right now, directing carpenters and painters and so on with Malcolm. It’s very dull.”
“Sounds dull.” Rhys took a sip. “Lovely.”
“You think so?” she asked curiously. “You usually prefer white. I just don’t keep any in the colder months.”
“I prefer cake,” he agreed, “but I will eat a stale biscuit too.”
“Fair enough.” She sipped her own glass and sighed.
“It has been a long day. I am sourcing props and fabric for A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Gossamer fairy wings and scrap wood trees for the forest and this time, I have to have a casting call, as some of my troupe are going to return to London now that we’re done with Romeo and Juliet. ”
“Not Lem?” Rhys asked immediately of the tall, sturdy muscle who was always at Libba’s side and had played Tybalt opposite Rhys’s Mercutio in the last production.
She gave half a smile. “Of course not Lem,” she assured him. “He’ll live to stab you another day.”
“We’ll see about that.” Rhys sniffed. “Am I getting killed in this next one?”
“Alas, no,” she said. “You’ll be Puck. Because you already are.”
Rhys only blinked.
He had always found ways to avoid reading Shakespeare, back when Willa had attempted to impose it upon them.
He didn’t know who the Devil Puck was, but if he was half as fun as Mercutio, it would be a good time.
“You’ll want to make more of your fairy fire,” she told him. “People will be slobbering for it after how well it did last time. You should sell the recipe to Seph. I bet she’d make a killing.”
His hand jerked, spattering a bit of wine on his collar, which immediately made him grimace.
Libba’s eyebrows raised just a fraction, her gaze sharpening as she followed the slow spread of red liquid on the white fabric of his shirt. “Something amiss?”
Rhys sighed, digging a hand into his hair and squeezing. “Many things,” he said. “Did you know … erm … that I … with Seph … Did you know that I …”
Libba gave him an unimpressed flattening of her lips. “Yes.”
“I didn’t finish my question!” he shot, dropping his hand with a frown.
“We all know,” she said, shrugging. “What of it?”
He stared at her, doing his best to glower and failing miserably, and then sighed, slumping backward and splashing himself again before taking an undignified swig of the wine. “Apparently, the feeling is mutual.”
“Of course it is,” Libba replied, with a roll of her eyes. “Did you not know that?”
He narrowed his eyes at her, taking a few more petulant, slurping sips. “And you didn’t bloody think to tell me?!” he hissed.
“Why would I do that?” she answered with a little laugh. “You know how much I enjoy a good drama. But it appears a new act has kicked off without my knowledge. Is this about the envelope you were ranting about last week?”
“Yes,” he said, then he frowned and shook his head. “Actually, no. That helped but is irrelevant.”
“And?” Libba pressed, leaning forward. “Did you finally make it with her? Full clicket?”
He gasped, touching his throat like a scandalized church matron. “Liberty Beauregard Lennox!” he breathed.
“Rhys, if you are going to give me a middle name,” she told him, curling her lip, “it must never again be Beauregard.”
“Liberty Evangeline Lennox!” he amended, seeing an approving nod snap at her chin. “Lennox Townsend, even! How could you ask that?!”
“Well, did you?” she prodded, reaching out to poke at his bicep. “Was it good?”
“Of course it was good,” he snapped, flicking her hand away. “Why did I come here?”
She grinned then, her teeth even and white and sparkling in the candlelight. “Oh, I must go immediately to Seph and terrorize her about this.”
“Lib,” he said, kicking his foot out to tap her ankles. “Terrorize me. I’m the one who came here for it.”
She paused, her expression softening just a touch, around the edges. “Yes, you did, didn’t you? That can’t have been the first time you two have kissed. Surely, back in the performing days …”
“Never,” he groaned, dropping his face into his hand and shaking it. “Not once. Worse than that, actually, but I can’t bear telling that story just now.”
“All right.” Her hand came out, warm and firm on his shoulder and squeezed. “So, what now?”
“Is this like Ruby and Errol?” he asked, muffled against the heel of his own hand. “Everyone placing bets and rolling their eyes?”
“No,” said Libba, drawing out the word as she considered the question. “It’s just me, mostly, I think. No one else has really spent much time with Seph one to one. But I’ve never asked. We all agree the two of you are odd, but as to anyone else’s suspicions, you’d have to ask them.”
“What’s the point?” he groused. “They know. Hattie knows.”
“Hattie understands, whether she knows or not,” Libba corrected. “Don’t you think?”
He lifted one narrowed eye from between his fingers to glare at her. “Because Elias was a little beast to her when we were twelve?”
“More or less,” Libba said with a shrug.
He heaved a sigh and dropped his hand, but only to expose his mouth long enough to swig down the rest of the glass of expensive wine.
He smacked his lips, setting the glass down, and shook himself.
“Right,” he said. “Well, we’re going to Lewes for a few weeks.
She’s going to need someone to mind the shop. Don’t sell the new birds.”
“I beg your absolute pardon?” Libba managed, gripping the arm of her seat as though it might steady her through this turn in the conversation. “I’m no shopgirl.”
“No, you’re an actress without a production,” he agreed. “You can mind a till. Malcolm’s the Marvelous Human Abacus, but I’ve seen you run a box office. It’ll be fine.”
“But I have things to—”
“No, you don’t,” he said, raising his brows. “Not things you can’t do from the shop. Hell, it might actually be easier to source your props and costumes and so on from there. Shall I pick you up at daybreak or just drop the key off on my way out?”
She was still gaping, her glass dangling in her fingertips. “You forgot the third option,” she said thinly, “where you piss all the way off back to Newport.”
“Daybreak, then,” he decided, pushing himself to stand. “If you say a word of any of this to the others, I’ll tell everyone about that freak show gent you dallied with in London.”
“What!” she screeched, following him to his feet. “You will do no such thing.”
“It’s up to you,” he said, wiggling his eyebrows. “Jasper must be so disappointingly void of tattoos in comparison.”
“Rhys!” she warned, following him to the door. “I will set you on fire.”
“Good night, chwear,” he said, turning and smacking a kiss on her cheek. “See you in the morning.”
After that, he felt much better about it all and walked home decidedly grinning rather than screaming.