Chapter Nineteen
The knock on the top of the carriage did not immediately register to Seph. Sounds from the real world were secondary to everything else, after over an hour in Rhys Caradoc’s lap, her arms looped around his neck, their mouths slick and swollen with the leisurely mesmer of endless kissing.
True to his word, he hadn’t said anything else to her in that new, ragged, filthy voice he’d unveiled, and more was the pity, but perhaps it was for the best, as their clothes had remained on for the rest of the ride, if rumpled by the stroking and bunching of hands.
She had never felt quite so aware of her body whilst also feeling like she were hovering somewhere beyond it, drenched and drowsy in sensation.
Every muscle within her that had started the day locked in tension and uncertainty had released into a doughy surrender, her shoulders easy, her neck loose, her spine supple and arching when his fingertips slid along its delicate ladder to her head and heart.
It took two more attempts at the knocking before she heard it, and only then because it had finally startled Rhys out of his ministrations as well.
He pulled away, his lashes low on his eyes, and gave her a slow, curling smile even as he sighed and reached back to return the knock against the top of the chamber. “That means we have twenty minutes,” he told her regretfully, “until Lewes.”
She groaned in protest, dropping her forehead against his and reveling in the warm breath of his chuckle. “Can’t you make him do another loop of the countryside?”
“Probably could,” he said, twining her hair around his fingers, “but then the same thing would just happen again. We might as well get this part over with and send any and all of my siblings as far away from our doings as possible for a while.”
“Oh,” she said, lashes fluttering as she considered his words. “That is true. But there are still twenty whole minutes …”
“Mm, yes,” he said, leaning into the pull of her leaning body, “but we need those to unwrinkle and rearrange. Me, especially. Unless you want to tumble out onto Merlin’s drive looking freshly ravished.”
She gave a dramatic, heavy sigh. “I suppose not.”
“I suppose not as well,” he returned, amusement evident in his tone. “I’m just glad I wore dark trousers.”
She opened her mouth to inquire as to why, but he shook his head, still smiling at her, eyes still half-closed.
“If I talk about it, it’ll make it worse,” he assured her.
“But I’ll explain later, the next time we are alone.
Suffice to say, you’re not the only one who gets a little damp when excited. ”
She raised her brows, blinking at this tantalizing bit of information, but did not press further. Instead, she pulled her abused pelisse and Rhys’s discarded fingerless gloves from the floor as she flopped off his lap and onto the cushion beside him, her legs dangling over his lap.
She shook the pelisse out a few times, but there was not much wrinkling, just a bit of grime. That was the benefit of a nice, heavy wool. And Rhys’s gloves were black, so they were in decent shape as well.
He assisted in helping her arrange her hair back into order and she straightened his collar and refolded his lapels.
They avoid eye contact during the exercise, lest it be derailed entirely.
And by the time the carriage had finally ground to a halt, Seph was not certain she had ever felt quite so giddy in her entire life.
She spared one more look at him, flushed and cheeky and gorgeous, and gave herself a full body squeeze, wrapping her arms around her ribs, just to remind herself that this had happened. That this was real. And that it wasn’t yet over.
Rhys didn’t wait for Errol to come around and open the door.
Indeed, Seph thought that might have been uncomfortable, no matter how it played out.
They heard the other man’s boots hit the pebbled drive just as they too emerged out into the overcast afternoon light, blinking at the loss of pleasant shadow that had held them all the way here.
Errol looked discontent, sandy hair sticking up every which way under a pair of truly ridiculous earmuffs.
“You can take those off,” Rhys said to him.
“What?!” Errol shouted back.
Seph did not involve herself. Instead, she ran her eyes over the grounds, somewhat removed from the city proper and sitting upon an elevated hill just beyond Lewes Priory.
Indeed, the house itself, a squat grange house covered in orange and yellow autumn vines, appeared to have been built from the stones of the ruined monastery below. Barbaric, perhaps, but beautiful, somehow, too.
“Ah, look at that,” Rhys said, nudging her with his elbow and nodding down past the horizon at the river winding its way through Lewes. “It does look a bit like an injury, doesn’t it?”
She opened her mouth to agree but was interrupted by two neat lines of people, circling the house on what appeared to be some sort of grounds tour.
It was led by a man in servants’ livery and made up of the eccentric motley whom they had seen at midnight in the ruins down below, with Madame Ivanova’s purple coat glowing like a bruise between the somber black cassock of Father Wheeler and the Russian-style day suit that Master Yuri wore: white, with red buttons and piping.
At the rear was Lavinia Winterstone, who immediately turned and saw them, her face brightening from what appeared to have been resigned boredom to sudden delight.
She waved off her compatriots and lifted her skirts, trotting over the lawn and into the drive to greet them, brown curls bouncing and grinning widely all the way.
“Ah,” said Errol, pulling the earmuffs down into his hands. “The girl in the road.”
Nini came up a little short, her eyes widening as she looked from Seph to Rhys and back again. She pressed her lips together as though she’d just caught a secret and was preventing it from escaping.
Seph immediately felt her cheeks heating.
“Mrs. Winterstone,” Rhys boomed, loping forward with an outstretched hand to shake her much smaller one. “You’ve been victorious. Here we are, at your behest.”
“Here you are,” she agreed, shaking his hand and looking up at him with a squinting consideration, a knowing smile playing around her mouth.
“You just missed luncheon. If you come with me, I can have plates made up for you before everything is put away. You too, young man,” she said to Errol, who startled at being addressed.
They trudged obediently after her, the loamy scent of the trees and lichen around them whipping up in tiny cyclones of dried leaves and brittle twigs that snapped underfoot.
Nini seemed comfortable here, as though she had visited many times before, and ushered them into a rear entry near a crumbling gazebo, pink-cheeked and evidently chuffed that they had arrived.
“You’ve missed our two new joiners,” she told them as she pulled the door shut behind her, motioning at a kitchen maid to prepare a few plates of repast. “We’ve just received a Breton mesmerist and occult enthusiast, and an elderly lady with a child who reads fortunes.
Or a child with an elderly lady who reads fortunes.
That was unclear to me. Here we are. Have a seat. ”
Seph fell into a rickety, wooden chair and found a plate proffered in front of her, piled with sourdough, pulled chicken, a slab of cheese, and what appeared to be very tiny pickles. Her stomach immediately rumbled in approval.
“I’m afraid Merlin didn’t account for the latecomers at all,” Nini continued, climbing up on the chair next to Seph and dropping her elbows on the table to support her face in her hands.
“So now we’ve a bit of an issue with accommodations.
I’ve promised to help today, as he is rather poorly and can’t manage it himself. ”
“What sort of issue is bothering him?” Errol asked through a mouthful of bread, as though it were any of his concern at all. He glanced down at Rhys helping himself to the portion of chicken on his plate and nudged it closer to the thief so that he could have an easier time of it.
“My, but you are strapping,” Nini replied, batting her lashes at him. “I bet you could’ve pulled that carriage here with those shoulders alone.”
Errol then turned a shade of pink that was apparently compatible with silence.
“That’s why I take his meat,” Rhys volunteered merrily. “I’m still a growing lad.”
“Rhys,” Seph hissed, coloring at the way his grin only widened.
“It is lucky the two of you arrived whilst the rest of them are distracted,” Nini continued without acknowledging the aside.
“I’ve known Merlin a long time, as you may have guessed, and am invested in making certain we do well in this little bon voyage for him.
You two were the only double act we invited, or at least the only one where both parties are adults.
I’ve still got questions about the fortune-tellers. ”
“Oh, indeed?” Rhys said in a tone that made it clear he simply felt he had gone too long without talking. Seph cut him a glance and he grinned at her with a pickle between his front teeth, then bit it in half.
“Indeed, indeed,” Nini echoed, her American accent hitting each syllable like the strike of a timpani.
“So, we had intended to put you in the old master suite, two conjoining chambers with a little sitting room in between that you could use for private rehearsal space. That suite is still reserved for the two of you. The only problem is that … Well, we had to take one of the beds for the mesmerist.”
The three others at the table stared at her in silence.
She giggled, pressing her fingers over her lips. “I know,” she said. “We found a trundle for the granny and babe but weren’t prepared at all for the entire additional man. So, I’m afraid you have a few options, and none of them are optimal.”
“Well?” said Rhys. “What are they?”
“Patience, you little ferret,” she said fondly. “I’m afraid none of the men are willing to share, as they would have to share the bed itself, rather than simply the room, and men are fussy about such things.”
“We are,” Rhys agreed, winking at Errol, who slumped lower in his chair.
“Of the women,” Nini continued, “Madame Ivanova would be willing to share with you, Miss Boswell. She has a large bed in her chambers but has already very much unpacked and made the place her own.”
Seph frowned. “I don’t require much space,” she said. “That sounds like a reasonable compromise.”
“Oh, good,” Nini answered, dropping her voice an octave with a tone that immediately made Seph suspicious. “Let me just show you the chamber. We’ll be back in a tick.”
Seph glanced at Rhys and Errol and shrugged, twisting a piece of sourdough off her plate to pop in her mouth as she followed Nini through the servants’ corridor and up into the halls that made up the house proper.
“It’s just that room,” said Nini, pointing to an open door a few feet ahead of them. “The one that smells like sweet, Byzantine incense.”
Seph tossed the other woman a sigh and a roll of her eyes at this detail, gleaned without a doubt from tired stereotypes and children’s stories.
The expression got a giggle out of Nini.
She walked forward and peered inside, intending to make a cursory sweep of the chamber and assure everyone that she’d settled into far smaller and less luxurious spaces in her life.
However, Nini hadn’t been exaggerating about the room having succumbed to Madame Ivanova’s particular aesthetic.
It was lined door to window to wall with beaded curtains, silk drapes, and an ungodly amount of peacock feathers in vases on multiple surfaces. It was the feathers that immediately gave Seph a recoiling wave of gooseflesh.
“No,” she said, stepping rapidly back. “Absolutely bloody not.”
“Yes, I thought as much,” Nini said with another little bout of giggles and a lean back against the wall, crossing her arms over her chest. “You’re one of the Walking People, aren’t you? A Traveller?”
Seph grimaced. “I was,” she said. “And still am enough of one to know better than that.”
“Mm,” said Nini, nodding. “We have many Pavees and Romani in the circus. They all hate the feathers too. Something about eyes, isn’t it?”
Seph nodded. “Evil eyes.”
“You could ask her to remove them,” Nini suggested, in a tone that made it clear that she knew Seph would not.
“And hide them under the bed or in the closet?” Seph returned, shivering. “No, thank you. No. I shan’t be setting foot in that room. Grace to God.”
“Well, let’s go back to the gents, then,” Nini said with a theatrical sigh. “And explore the remaining option.”
Seph narrowed her eyes at Nini. “Why can’t I share with you?” she asked pointedly.
Nini blinked a few times, looking down at herself and patting her hands down her four-foot frame like she were remembering her own person. “Oh, not an option,” she said regretfully. “I’m afraid I take up far too much space.”
As soon as they re-entered the kitchen, Seph locked eyes on Rhys and felt her heart jump again, giving a little flutter against the base of her throat.
“You’re sleeping on the floor in the empty room,” she told him before her stomach could kick up into her vocal cords and say something entirely different.
“What, again?!” he exclaimed, pouting. “I already took the floor back at the inn.”
“You did what?” Errol muttered. He immediately shook his head and held up his hand. “I don’t want to know.”
“Ah, well, I wasn’t going to suggest anything so rough,” Nini said, clapping her hands together in delight.
“But I could certainly see to having enough blankets and pillows brought up that you could make something like a bed in place of one. Perhaps the two of you can alternate the proper one, night by night.”
Seph turned very slowly to look down into the other woman’s beaming face.
Maybe she was a mind-reader, because she very clearly knew she was making mischief.
“Whatever you think is best,” Rhys said, shrugging as he pulled Seph’s half-eaten plate in front of him and began to pilfer from it.
“Rhys!” Seph snapped, lunging forward and managing to grab only the cheese as Rhys’s hand retracted, somehow with all four tiny pickles wedged between each fingertip.
She could only glare at him and chew on her cheddar while he grinned back, making a show of taking nibbles of his stolen booty.
“The floor,” she said again, pointedly.
“Oh, certainly, certainly,” he lied, wiggling his brows at her. “The floor.”
Errol frowned.
Nini smiled broadly.
And Seph sighed, uncertain that either was strictly appropriate.