Chapter Eighteen
Rhys’s siblings were not cooperating with his machinations this morning.
First, Libba, in all her willful glory, had taken off from her flat before Rhys could swing the carriage past to retrieve her. This had put a significant dent in his plan to gauge how much one could hear of what went on inside the carriage from up in the driver’s box.
He’d ridden halfway across Brighton in the windy hell of the driver’s box for nothing.
It had been a perfect plan because Libba was incapable of sitting silently. She was almost as bad as Rhys himself, in fact. But then she hadn’t been there. She’d walked.
Bloody Libba.
Now Errol was giving him guff as well.
“Just wear them!” Rhys insisted, waving the earmuffs back and forth. “Your da already dragged me to and from Lewes not a full day ago and caught a sniffle for his trouble. I won’t forgive myself if you catch the same!”
“Rhys, I don’t think sniffles get you through your ears,” Errol said, looking faintly amused as he stroked the leather reins. “But if it calms you, I will pretend to wear them until you’re out of eyeshot.”
“No!” Rhys cried. “I will know if you take them off!”
“Get in the carriage, Rhys,” Errol said, shaking his head with a chuckle and a rummage of his sandy hair. “Sunlight’s burning.”
Rhys stood there, frowning at him, his eyes darting between Errol and the door that would lead to confined space with Seph in that clingy, brown dress.
“What?!” Errol exclaimed, barely hiding a laugh at the scene in front of him.
Rhys glanced over his shoulder, stepped slightly off to the side, and clicked the door shut. Overhearing could go both ways.
He climbed up onto the driver’s seat next to his brother and gave him a long, careful look. “How much,” he said as soft as he could manage, tilting his head forward in conspiratorial congress, “can you hear of what goes on back there … up here?”
Errol blinked. He swallowed. His cheeks colored. “Why do you ask?”
Rhys narrowed his eyes and then began to smile, sharp and mean. “Because I am planning to—”
“Never mind,” Errol decided quickly, snatching up the ear muffs and popping them onto his head. “Get away from me.”
“Cheers,” Rhys said, still smiling, and he leaned forward to check the fit of the muffs until he was batted away with a series of sharp slaps and then literally booted back onto the ground, where he landed with a self-satisfied giggle.
He dusted himself off and reminded Errol once more before retreating, “alert us when we’re twenty minutes out. And if you see a tiny woman blocking the road …”
“Yes, yes,” Errol shouted over his muffled hearing. “Go around her.”
Rhys gave him a nod and spun to wrench the carriage door open, leaping inside with a buoyant sensation of satisfaction and reassurance, finding Seph already curled in her corner, the blue puzzle box tilted diamond-wise in her hands as she fiddled with a protruding beam.
She glanced up and gave him a little smile, quick and somewhat shy. “All sorted?”
“’Course,” he answered, ignoring his own side of the chamber and plopping down directly next to her. “Did you figure out the next stage of the box?”
“I think so,” she said, shifting to show him where her finger was holding the little rectangle of new wood at an angle so it would not get sucked back inside the box. “I’m not certain if this comes all the way out or if it’s a mechanism trigger.”
“Well, did you give it a good tug?” he asked, wiggling his eyebrows and delighting at how she flushed.
“A gentle one,” she said. “Here, take it; I will only mess it up.”
He laughed, carefully transferring the puzzle into his own grasp and making plenty of show of brushing his fingers against hers in the process. As soon as he had it, he tossed it behind him onto the velvet cushion, winning a gasp of outrage.
“Sorry,” he said, smiling widely. “Slipped.”
“Yes,” she drawled skeptically. “Clumsiness is your defining feature, isn’t it, fast hands?”
That made him laugh, which then made her laugh, grudgingly and softly, her shoulders shaking as she turned her face toward the window, watching as they lurched into motion toward the road out of Brighton.
Truth be told, he had attempted several times in the night and this morning to plan exactly what was going to happen today, sequestered as they were going to be in this tiny, secluded, feasibly versatile little space, but he had gotten … erm, distracted. Each time.
He had addressed his distractions, of course, both out of necessity and because he thought it might give him a clearer head once he arrived here today.
He hadn’t accounted for her wearing that dress, though. It was one he hadn’t seen before, in a corded knit that clung to every intriguing curve of her body. She looked paler in it, glowing, almost, like a dollop of clotted cream encased in a honeycomb.
Errol had better be focusing on the bracing sounds of nature out there, by God, because Rhys was already struggling to keep his decidedly not-clumsy hands down at his sides.
“So,” he managed, falling to the side against the tufted backing of the seat as he beheld her, his fingers itching to discover the exact texture of her skirts. “Did you … erm … sleep well?”
Her head snapped around, a sputter escaping her lips. “Did you?!”
He cleared his throat and grinned, giving a shrug. “On and off.”
She narrowed those eyes of hers, the brown circles around her pupils glinting, almost golden opposite the sheen of her dress, and then she heaved a little sigh. “We ought to talk, I suppose. About … what … happened?”
“Oh?” he said, leaning closer, his grin still in place. “Which part?”
She hesitated, drawing her bottom lip between the shiny, round pearls of her teeth as her gaze fell to his mouth. “I …” she said thinly, then frowned. “You know already.”
“You mean when I robbed you of your fool’s gold?” he suggested, fingers creeping along the headboard toward her shoulder. “You did ask me to.”
She blinked, her eyes going immediately to the walking fingers in his mutilated gloves, bare against the pilled fabric covering the remainder of his hands. “Aren’t you warm?” she asked, shifting her weight and reaching up to loosen her pelisse. “It is warm in here.”
“I’m always warm,” he reminded her. “I run hot.”
She paused and stared at him—and then swallowed whatever retort had risen in her throat before it could escape.
“Perhaps you aren’t fussed about the thieving,” he mused, watching every flick of her fingers over the buttons of her pelisse as she freed herself from it, “but instead wish to discuss how I overpowered you. You are disturbed, perchance, by my hidden strength?”
“A little,” she confessed, giving a delicate, little grunt as she peeled the pelisse from her shoulders, revealing a matching goldenrod trim along the bust and sleeves of the dress underneath.
She was wearing a ribbon in the same color about her throat, with a tiny, glinting fleck of tiger’s eye cradled in the dip between her collarbones. “But no.”
He swallowed with some effort, eyes trailing down the new expanse of exposed skin, still looking luminescent against the dark and heavy autumn fabric of her dress. Her breasts swelled over the neckline, plump and tempting, and his hands flexed with the memory of how they’d felt in his palms.
“No?” he managed, dry and a little desperate. “What, then?”
“Rhys,” she groaned, flopping the removed garment between them like a barricade. “Stop it.”
He pressed his lips together, giving his head enough of a shake that he felt his curls tickle his ears. “Don’t say my name like that if you want me to stop,” he argued. “You smell sweet today. Dates, I think? Something else.”
“Cinnamon,” she confessed, wrapping her arms around herself, a motion he’d seen her perform a thousand times when flustered, though this time, it made the snug neckline of her gown bulge and dip enticingly over her cleavage. “I don’t often wear scent. I just thought … I don’t know.”
“You don’t?” he said, unable to resist stroking very lightly against her shoulder, testing the dyed yellow lace and soft cords of maple brown.
She watched his fingers, watched the tentative caress of the fabric, which was innocent enough, all things considered. Chaste, even, by Rhys’s estimation.
“If you want to talk…” he said softly. Carefully. “We can talk. I will even go over to the other bench if you tell me to.”
“You will?” she asked, breathy and uncertain, blinking those beautiful eyes as they tracked the gentle movement of his fingertips. “You would?”
He nodded. “Yes.”
“Oh.” She reached a hand out, hesitating just short of reaching across the discarded pelisse to him, her eyes traveling over the length of his outstretched arm and down the line of his torso. “I do want to talk,” she said in barely a whisper.
“All right,” he replied, all but holding his breath as those delicate fingers of hers came closer, resting just over the curve of his knee. “I can talk.”
She nodded, touching softly, almost hesitantly, allowing the backs of her buffed fingernails to stroke along the line of his kneecap. “Go ahead, then,” she breathed, watching her own hand with a kind of wary fascination. “Say something.”
“I …” He paused, giving a little chuckle. “Just say anything that comes to mind?”
“Mhm,” she said, stroking her fingernails a little further, along the line inside his thigh and smiling softly as she heard his breath catch. “Anything.”
He hissed, his legs coming apart, hips giving an involuntary rock forward as her hand slipped higher up the line of his thigh.
“I keep thinking,” he told her, gritting his teeth, “that I’m not sure how I was able to walk out of there last night.
How did I manage to walk away instead of peeling that dress off you and fucking you against the wall? ”
“Hm,” she said, eyes fixed on the boldness of her own hand, a delicate humming noise fluttering in her throat.
She wasn’t touching his cock, but she could certainly see it, straining as it was now against the fabric of his trousers.