Chapter Seven #2
“We have to hire a staff,” Elias said with a shrug, stepping back. “Malcolm’s in the dining room. Did you leave early last night?”
“’Course not,” said Jasper, hopping into the house. “Why?”
“No reason,” said Elias, instinctively retreating inward.
No, he thought. You’re a man now.
“It’s only that all the others look like they were dragged home behind a horse,” he added immediately, squaring his shoulders.
Jasper turned to him with a blindingly bright grin. “Really? Even Mal?”
“Especially Mal,” Elias assured him.
Jasper chortled. “Well, out of practice, aren’t they? Still, must go gloat. Cheerio, Baron.”
“Morning,” Elias managed to answer, a little dazed by it all as he watched the other man lope down the hall past Ruby and Errol toward his quarry.
Libba emerged from the parlor just as he passed it, nearly colliding with him, and gave him an earful about his carelessness the rest of the way to the dining room.
“My apologies, Princess Xandine!” he answered bombastically as their voices faded down the hall. “Don’t have me beheaded!”
“It would take too long to carve off that kettle of yours,” Libba snapped back. “My headsman needs his strength.”
Elias shut the door slowly and craned his neck side to side.
This place was still a madhouse.
He scratched at his hair, glancing into a hallway mirror as he passed it, just to remind himself that he was not still a pudgy, uncertain child, and sighed, shaking his head at his own foolishness.
What was it about people from the past that dragged one straight back to the place they’d been in the last time they’d been amongst them?
It hardly seemed fair.
At least they’d taken verbal note of his transformation, for what that was worth.
Or Ruby had, anyway.
He grimaced, making his way into the parlor.
Harriet French was reclining on a chaise in a striped dressing gown of vibrant marigold and black, holding a cool compress made up of a folded, damp towel to her head.
He watched Mr. Harcourt through one eye as he spoke.
Her long mane of spiraling, brassy hair was loose down her shoulders and catching along her arms and elbows, her thin sleeping shift visible in slivers through the cracks of the robe.
Oddly, Harcourt seemed utterly unaffected by this display, more interested in the notes he was taking than the sprawl of feminine beauty slathered out in front of him.
Elias tensed, resisting the urge to snatch a coverlet from the nearest surface and drape it over her, head and all. “Good morning,” he said, far more tersely than he intended.
“Oh,” she said, wincing as though the syllable had hurt her. “Elias.”
“Harriet,” he returned, still clipped as thin as a freshly shorn sheep.
“Lord Selwyn,” the barrister said, glancing up over the top of his rarely used spectacles. “We are discussing the arrangement of a staff. Perhaps this is of interest to you?”
“It is,” he agreed, looking around and settling on a chair that would form an uneven triangle, bringing him nearer to the safe starchiness of Mr. Harcourt than Hattie’s languid flesh. “I just had to answer the front door.”
“How terrible for you,” she murmured, flopping onto her back and dropping the cool compress over both of her eyes, sadly before she could clock the way he glared at her insolence.
“‘The door’?” Mr. Harcourt repeated with a frown. “Have we visitors already? I have not prepared.”
“It was just Jasper Townsend,” said Elias with a lift of his shoulder. “Not anyone of note.”
“Townsend,” the barrister said, tapping the edge of his quill to his chin. “Shipyard boy?”
Elias nodded. “Here to see Malcolm.”
“Well, that’s fine, then,” Harcourt decided. “I would’ve come to find you, but as the house belongs to Miss French, I assumed the staff details would go through her primary decision-making for the time being, given that we are looking at several weeks before nuptials can be executed.”
“Three,” Harriet muttered from behind her mask of pain. “Chimes and candy.”
Elias glared at her again.
“One, two, three,” she continued, oblivious. “It’s green, you know.”
“Do I have to marry her?” he snapped at the barrister, who ignored him, chuckling to himself.
“Not a dark green,” Hattie continued, slurring a little. “Very soft, like mint rolled into marzipan.”
“Yes, all right,” Elias said impatiently. “Did you decide on which positions to fill?”
She nodded, making the wet towelette tumble down over her nose and onto her mouth before making a leap over her chin and onto her bosom.
Elias certainly did not watch its progress with keen, unwavering interest.
She had been in Russia this last year. He’d read about it in The Chronicle.
“British Beauty Translates for Tsar.”
It hadn’t named her, but he’d known, anyhow. He’d known it had been her. That Russian toast last night had only cemented his suspicion.
Had she said things like this to the tsar?
“Necessary woman,” she said, holding up fingers as she spoke. “Cook. Maid-of-all-work. Three!”
“Butler?” he prompted, eyes on her other hand as she fumbled for the bottle. “Footmen? I need a valet.”
“I s’pose,” she said, immediately falling into a yawn.
Elias, hating himself, immediately yawned too.
“Oh, goodness,” said Mr. Harcourt, yawning as well. “Well, that won’t do. I’ll just go fetch us some coffee from the dining room, shall I? And then we should discuss wedding particulars.”
He stood before either could answer him, dropping his notes on the chair where he’d been sitting, and left so quickly that Elias had to wonder if he’d somehow chased the man out.
He looked back to Hattie, wondering if she felt the same, but she’d already splayed the damp compress back over her face and was smiling softly to herself, her fingers laced over her chest.
“Three,” she muttered happily, under her breath.