Chapter Two
It had taken a lot longer to get out of London than Harriet had anticipated. Almost an entire month.
A month! And the trouble had not been entirely because of Libba’s legal muck, either.
While Julian Harcourt, Esquire had handled the matter rapidly and cleanly, with details Harriet was happy to never know entirely, there had been the matter of Libba’s acting troupe and their contract with a Seven Dials playhouse that would not end for another half dozen performances.
Libba’s brother, Malcolm, had also thrown a wrench into the works.
He worked as a junior banker at a respected institution near Bow Street and evidently also required quite a bit of preparation before he could simply step away from his life, though he’d reacted with immediate enthusiasm at the idea of returning to Brighton.
“I’ll have to write ahead to the lads!” he’d exclaimed after lifting Hattie fully off her feet in an embrace of greeting. “They’ll toast me properly the instant we set boots to pebbles. You’ll come, of course.”
“Oh, of course,” Libba had replied with a roll of her eyes, even though the invitation had been directed at Hattie, actually.
Next, Hattie had written a letter directly to Starling’s Rest, where one of them still resided. Errol Cagney would prepare for their imminent stay and further, she entrusted him with tracking down one of the other wards, Ruby Little.
Errol and Ruby had long been inseparable, both as whispering, giggling friends when they had been children, and as shrewd and passionate business partners in adulthood.
Ruby traveled to sell and market their wares, but he would know how to find her and how best to convince her to leave whatever she was about and return to the Rest.
While they had hoped Monica Thresher would be in London for the High Season, as many well-known modistes were prone to be, she had not been seen in St. James’s or on Regent Street in some time.
It had taken quite a lot of gossip and questioning, but eventually, the other modistes had been able to provide her whereabouts.
Berlin, apparently. On commission.
“She always goes back to Brighton to visit her mum by autumn if you just want to wait,” they had told Harriet and Libba. “She’s a very good daughter.”
“I wish we could wait,” Hattie had said sincerely. “But we require her now. Do you have the address?”
“Well, no,” the narrow-faced modiste had said. “But I imagine if you write Royal Opera House on the envelope, it’ll find her.”
“‘Royal Opera House’!” Libba had gasped, at which point the conversation had devolved past the point of productivity, with Libba far more interested in the theatrical pedigree of the commission than her foster sister’s ultimate whereabouts.
That left Rhys Caradoc, who was always going to be the most impossible of the seven to track down.
“Have either of you heard from him?” Hattie asked the Lennoxes over dinner, her distress growing at the glance they exchanged. “Anything at all?”
“Well, he’s always somewhere,” Libba said cryptically. “Up to something.”
“Maybe he went back to Wales,” Malcolm speculated, seemingly on nothing but pure whimsy, popping a roasted fingerling potato in his mouth. “Or maybe he’s dead.”
“Mal,” Libba said, frowning. “He’s not dead. There would’ve been trumpets.”
Malcolm chortled at that. “And fireworks.”
“All right,” said Hattie, waving her hand. “We do need to find him. Nothing can happen until we do.”
Libba groaned, dropping her head into her hands and shaking it. “Fine. I will go inquire with the Illusionists’ Guild out of Covent Garden. They’re likely to have heard something. I hate them, though, and they hate me, so you owe me a dessert.”
“Why?” Malcolm asked, on his third potato. “It’s all a little similar, isn’t it? Acting, dancing, and magic?”
At which point, his plate magically ended up in his lap.
By the time Mr. Harcourt had provided confirmation that Rhys had indeed been located and contacted, Hattie was simply ready to begin her journey south and get the next stage moving. There was a will to be read, a house to be opened, a new chapter of their lives to begin.
And there was also …
“Did you write to the baron?” Mr. Harcourt asked, frowning at her. “Why do I get the feeling you did not?”
“Oh, him,” she said, frowning at the scent of smoke in her nose. “Would you do that, Mr. Harcourt? Would you mind it horribly? I’ve no idea where to find him and it seems like you do.”
He had nodded, frowning at her like a disappointed papa, and clipped away from her, his silver hair glinting in the sunlight.
Hattie had watched him go.
They both knew very well that he’d told her that Elias Selwyn was stationed in Hunslow. She simply did not wish to address it.
Somehow, it was both a relief and more damning than a rebuke that he’d chosen silence in response to her avoidance.
Julian Harcourt had sported white hair all of her life, she thought. He must have gone gray as a student. Thinking about it, he must have only been early in his forties by now, still quite young for that shock of snowy hair.
What an odd thing. Perhaps he had been born with it.
She counted her fingers again, her thumbnail grazing against the pads of them, and turned her focus toward Brighton.
Why, after traveling to Russia and back, it was nothing at all from London to the coast. Nothing but the bat of an eye.
Libba, Malcolm, and Mr. Harcourt all traveled alongside her, all reacting with quite a bit more enthusiasm and relief when their destination drew near than Hattie thought appropriate, given how manageable the travel had been.
But she didn’t say so.
“It almost feels like a pilgrimage, doesn’t it?” she said to Mal. “Except we are not on foot.”
“I’d make a terrible pilgrim,” he told her with a nudge to the ribs, “and we both know it.”
She smiled, imagining him in rags, leaning on a walking stick, caves and forests around him, and yet still somehow smelling of excellent cologne and shaved to a clean, shiny cut of his square jaw. “Terrible,” she agreed. “Yes.”
Starling’s Rest sat beyond the fashionable terraces and well beyond the Royal Pavilion, deeper into the part of Brighton that was not necessarily for the footfalls of the late summer rush.
It sat on a little hill, high enough that one could sometimes hear the sound of the Channel, when everything else was very quiet.
The main building was surrounded by a variety of outbuildings and amenities that had been installed and expanded throughout the whole of Hattie’s life.
The walls were gray, but in the bright summer sun, they looked black.
She thought they looked black.
The doors were thrown open the instant their carriage had halted, but it was not Errol Cagney who came bursting out of the house to greet them. At least not first. Errol lagged slightly behind their one-man reception party.
It was Rhys Caradoc, grinning broadly and loping down the entry steps, his dark-brown curls tousled in the breeze, with Errol’s paler, slower figure behind him only emphasizing the sprite-like energy of his greeting.
“Hattie!” he cried. “Libba! Mal! Come give us a cwtch!”
“A what?” Mal muttered.
“Cwtch,” Hattie replied softly. “Snuggle. Cuddle. Embrace.”
“Absolutely not!” Mal boomed back, holding his finger up at Rhys’s wide-thrown arms. “You will not!”
It was too late. Rhys threw his arms around Malcolm first, winning a resigned groan from the other man.
For all his protesting, he did not seem to truly mind it. At least not to Hattie’s estimation.
Libba was next, and then Hattie herself, and they returned the cwtch in the spirit with which it was given.
“The girls are inside,” Rhys told them. “Monica just landed yesterday. It took you three ages to get here! Ages! So she’s dead, then? Gone off to the great beyond? Do you think she’s unseated Lucifer yet?”
“Rhys,” Hattie hissed, catching the eye of a quietly amused Errol, a gentle smile playing on his lips as she passed by him. “Errol,” she added. “Good to see you.”
“Hattie,” Errol replied in his gentle Irish brogue, turning and guiding her into the house. “You’re looking well. My da has asked after you.”
“I’ll visit him soon,” she promised, patting his arm.
Errol, like Hattie herself, had started life as part of the staff at Starling’s Rest. While Hattie had been employed directly as a scullery maid, Errol had been the groom’s son and had lived, even after becoming one of the baroness’s wards, in the groom’s cottage outside the stables.
His father had always been very proud.
“My goodness, is that Mr. Harcourt?!” Rhys’s voice echoed from behind her. “Why have you been the same age for twenty years? Tell me your secrets!”
Hattie sighed, increasing her speed as she walked farther into the house.
She could hear feminine chittering from farther in and the click of porcelain teacups alongside the tinkle of liquid being poured therein.
She was dusty, exhausted, and more than a little bit rumpled from the nonstop work and travel of the past three months, but she could not imagine waiting to see the others any more than she could fathom having lived a life without them in it.
“Oh, it’s Hattie! Hattie!” Monica cried, coming to her feet with her sweet, round face in her hands. “Oh, you look so elegant!”
“She looks like she was tossed into the sea and dried out on the mast,” Ruby Little tittered from her reclined place on the chaise, her teacup still held aloft. “But a sight for sore eyes, all the same. Welcome, Hattie.”
“Ruby,” said Hattie, opening her arms for Monica’s quick and warm embrace. “Monica. You both made excellent time.”
Ruby flashed a little smile. “It is among my talents, you know,” she said. “Physics.”
Monica blinked, stepping away from Hattie with a look of puzzlement narrowing her eyes and rounding her cheeks. “‘Physics’? I thought you favored chemistry.”
“I think you will find that one often begets the other, Monica, my love,” Ruby purred.
“She is jesting,” said Malcolm, striding in from behind with his sister in tow. “Greetings, all!”
“My, my,” said Ruby in a little cooing voice, looking him up and down. “You managed to stay neat all the way here.”
“Don’t flirt with me unless you mean it,” he chided, throwing her a wink that immediately made her grimace. “You never do.”
“I never do,” she agreed.
“Good,” said Libba with obvious distaste. “Disgusting.”
“Who’s disgusting?” Rhys asked, bouncing in around a sighing Errol and plopping onto the chaise so quickly that Ruby had to pull her legs up with an undignified squeak. “Still me?”
“Always you!” Ruby snapped back. “Good afternoon, Mr. Harcourt.”
“Oh, Mr. Harcourt,” Monica said, suddenly even pinker than she had been before as she patted at her hair. “I did not know you would be joining us today.”
Hattie watched her curiously.
Evidently, some things never did change.
“So shall we get started, then?” Ruby asked, raising her brows. “Here we all are. Here you are, Mr. Harcourt. I haven’t stolen any jewelry yet. Let’s get on with it.”
The barrister glanced at Hattie, tightening his lips, then turned back to the others. “We are still waiting for one more.”
“‘One more’?” Ruby repeated, furrowing up her brow. She turned and counted the heads, mouthing to herself, “Five, six, seven …” Then she said, louder, “No, sir, we are all here.”
“Eight,” Mr. Harcourt said, much to Hattie’s distress. “There are eight of you.”
And at that moment, another carriage pulled up on the drive, the pebbles and gravel crunching and popping from outside the window, drawing everyone’s attention around to observe it.
“Eight,” repeated Hattie, blinking away the stormy blue that had settled over her mind. “That will be Lord Selwyn.”
“Lord bloody Selwyn?” Ruby repeated, aghast. “The dead husband?”
“No, Ruby.” Monica tutted, her fingers at her lips. “Elias is Baron Selwyn now.”
“Oh, Elias,” Rhys said, his big, green eyes widening. “I’d forgotten all about him. Is he coming, then? Involved in all this?”
“Evidently,” Libba snapped. “Aren’t you listening?”
“Never,” Rhys replied with a gloating smile.
“Is that him, then?” Monica wondered, breathy and clearly nervous. “Lord Selwyn?”
“Yes,” Hattie confirmed, floating in slow, absent footsteps toward the window as the coach driver hopped down and made his way to the door.
The crest on the outside of the coach was unmistakable.
The embellished letter S for House Selwyn was painted on the door in stark gold and green. “Elias is here.”