Chapter Five #2
That had been the entire point, hadn’t it?
Away from this, from them, he was his own man.
He was perfectly impressive on his own merit.
He had gotten good marks in school. He had chosen to enter the service to shine his reputation further, even though a peer in the military rarely gets to actually do very much beyond ceremonial presentation and quill scratching.
He had tried to become someone worth being. And all the while, some part of him had always known that no matter what he achieved elsewhere, he would still belong to this odd little constellation. And he would still be its dimmest star.
He gripped his teeth together and turned his head to observe the others, his eye catching Harriet’s from where she sat between Libba and Monica in the corner booth, her own ale held still to her lips as she listened to something one of the other women was saying.
“Here you go!” Ruby announced, shoving a pint glass in his hand. “Gulp it down, handsome. Maybe you’ll have a bit more fun once you’re a glass or three deep.”
“Ruby,” Errol chided, but without any real heat, accepting a second glass from her with a smile. “You know Rhys just robbed Malcolm?”
“Oh, yes,” said Ruby. “Shall we place wagers on how long it takes him to notice?”
“If he notices at all,” Errol replied with a chuckle.
“Come sit,” Ruby said, placing a hand on either man’s shoulders and steering them toward that same corner booth where Hattie was seated.
Elias grimaced and decided to take her advice, tipping the ale into his mouth as he walked and swallowing before he could taste it with any significant detail.
“So are you going to?” Monica Thresher was saying breathlessly to Libba Lennox. “Like old times.”
“It’s still early,” Libba answered with a wave of her hand. “More strangers need to file in first. I wish I’d brought Lem with me. This bit would sell even faster with him in tow.”
“Oh, it would, wouldn’t it?” Hattie answered, giving a little hiccup into her cup with a curve of her lips. “He looks just like a royal bodyguard from far-flung lands should.”
“Who’s Lem, then?” Ruby asked, falling into her seat again as Elias and Errol sorted out their own chairs. “And why didn’t you bring him with you, you selfish girl?”
“You wouldn’t appeal to his tastes,” Libba said soothingly to Ruby, who immediately scoffed.
“Nonsense,” she said. “I whet all appetites.”
“This is a game we used to play,” Errol said, leaning closer to Elias, gesturing at the women. “Libba chooses a tourist and convinces him that she is foreign royalty, in Brighton at Prince George’s invitation. It’s gotten as far as marriage proposals a few times.”
“Why would a foreign princess be in a middle-line pub?” Elias replied, baffled.
Errol just shrugged, chuckling. “I don’t know if anyone’s ever asked, but I suppose the unlikeliness of it only makes her pulling off the ruse all the more impressive.”
“Here we are!” Rhys announced, returning with two pitchers. “Ice cold and fizzy. Who needs a top-up?”
“Oh, me!” Hattie said, holding up her empty glass, her cheeks already looking quite pink by Elias’s estimation. “Os gwelwch yn dda.”
“Ah, Hattie,” Rhys said, grinning at her and pouring for her first. “Stop trying to ensorcel me in front of your new betrothed, cariad, or I’ll run off with you.”
“He wouldn’t mind,” she told him in a very loud whisper, then took another sip of her brew.
It made Rhys toss a look over her brassy curls at Elias and frown.
Elias wasn’t even convinced that particular man was capable of a genuine frown and took considerable umbrage at having the first one he’d ever seen directed at him.
He looked around for an ally but found only Libba borrowing an earring from Ruby and looping it through a scarf that she’d taken from Monica, then dangling it over her forehead as a sort of royal wrap in an effect he had to admit looked both foreign and convincing.
“Good?” she said to the other two women, who cooed in encouragement.
“Oh, no, you don’t!” Rhys called with a chuckle from his pitcher duties. “Not before I’ve had a chance to do a trick.”
“But he’s already …” Elias began, only to immediately be shushed by Ruby and Errol.
“You, sir!” Rhys boomed at one of Malcolm’s hangers-on while Libba quickly stowed her makeshift disguise. “How would you like to see some magic?”
Rhys produced a rope and a flashing pair of scissors, launching into a diatribe about how he had the power to mend the fibers after they’d been shorn, drawing the attention of some of the other guests, who drifted nearer as he climbed onto a chair to waggle his rope at the group.
Elias blinked, sipping his ale, and tried not to reflect on how odd it was to wander around with scissors in one’s trousers.
“Oh, I know this one,” Malcolm’s friend said, his eyes brightening. “You can buy it in a kit from that shop on the boardwalk. There’s a string inside the rope.”
Rhys hesitated, narrowing his eyes at him. “What shop?” he snapped.
“Miss Persephone’s Oddities and Curiosities,” the man replied, slurring in his enthusiasm. “She sells magic tricks there! This one is in the window. Did you buy it from her?”
“Oh!” said Monica, clapping a cupped hand over her mouth while Ruby simply turned her own lips inward as though she were biting them shut.
“Miss Persephone,” Rhys repeated, every syllable over enunciated and dripping with venom. “Opened a … a shop. And she sells … She … Where is this shop, pray, my good man?”
Errol cleared his throat, ducking his head as he sipped his own ale, but it was too late, Rhys had already spun around and thrown a pointed finger in his direction. “Did you know about this, Errol?”
“Me?” said Errol, blinking with an attempt at guilelessness. “I barely go into town.”
Rhys gave a little snarl, hopping off the chair with his knees so high, he appeared to hover in space for a moment before landing on the ground, as quiet and steady as a cat. “Where is it?” he demanded, prowling toward the exit. “Down toward the grand pavilion? Ohh, I should have known!”
He didn’t wait for an answer, stalking out and slamming the door behind him with a little jingle of the pub’s bell as he went, muttering Welsh expletives under his breath.
“That means a jam jar that has someone’s flatulence sealed inside,” Hattie provided helpfully, hiccupping again and then giving a soft giggle. “Mownt pot jam. That wouldn’t work, would it?”
“Let’s never find out,” Libba said, patting her on the head. “Now find me a mark.”
“What was the other thing you said to Rhys?” Monica asked, tilting her head. “That made him call you cariad.”
“Os gwelwch yn dda,” Hattie answered, enunciating carefully. “Literally it translates to ‘if you see it, good,’ but it just means ‘please.’ And he has always called me ‘cariad.’”
“He has,” Monica acknowledged. “That one means ‘my heart,’ right? He calls all the girls that, except me.”
“What does he call you?” Libba asked curiously.
Monica giggled and sipped her ale. “‘Chwaer.’ It means ‘sister.’ Perhaps he was worried I’d take cariad to heart.”
Libba pursed her lips. “Or perhaps you’re just his favorite.”
“Call him ‘brawd,’” Hattie suggested. “It means ‘brother.’ Even though Rhys is rather narrow.”
“Oh, I remember you!” the same man who’d ruined the rope trick exclaimed, his eyes locking on Hattie. “The girl with all the languages! Can you still do that trick? Five ways to say a thing off the top of your head?”
Hattie blinked at him, a little bleary. “Do I know you?”
“Can you still do it?” he asked again instead of answering. “How about … hm … your mum’s a yellow dog with the mumps?”
Hattie stared at him, blinking a few times and then sighed and nodded, pushing herself to her feet.
She swiped up the remainder of her glass, which was only about a quarter full now, and held it as she stepped onto the booth to stand above the others, thrusting it out above them all as they turned their attention to her.
“Ta mère est une chienne jaune avec les oreillons,” she announced, stomping her foot once to a wave of light applause. “Deine Mutter ist eine gelbe Hündin mit Mumps! Din mor er en gul hund med f?resyge!”
Elias stared at her, stomping and announcing maternal insults in various languages, his heart climbing up to lodge in his throat.
Every new translation drew a louder cheer from the assembled crowd as she grinned, sipped her ale, and swished her skirts around.
“Tha do mhàthair ’na cù buidhe le a’ phlàigh nan cnàmhan!
” she cried, raising the glass with its little wisp of foam still swirling at the bottom, stomping again at the cheer.
“And fifth … hm.” She pondered, teetering a little on her pedestal, then brightening and holding her glass up in a toast and crying, “Tvoya mat’.
Zhyóltaya sobáka, bol’náya svínkoy!! Vashe zdaróv’ye! ”
The room roared at the final translation and several of the onlookers joined her in knocking back the remainders of what was in their glasses as she collapsed into Libba’s and Monica’s waiting arms, giggling to herself in a slump of poofed-out yellow skirts and bronzed, bouncing curls falling over her brow.
Elias stared down at his own drink, spitting out the odd, lazy bubble opposite Hattie’s effervescent performance, and frowned.
“Cheers,” Errol Cagney said, tapping his glass against Elias’s with a knowing smirk. “Or vashe zdaróv’ye, I suppose.”