Chapter Eight
It took Mr. Harcourt an unseemly long time to pour a few cups of coffee. Hattie began to wonder if perhaps he’d gotten waylaid.
She lay there, hiding under her compress, even though her head had stopped throbbing some time ago, because it was sufficient shelter from the gaze of Elias Selwyn.
The Russian prince who’d gifted her this dressing gown had told her he’d chosen it for her because she reminded him of a tigress, but Hattie couldn’t have felt less fearsome in that moment if she’d tried.
If anything, the marigold and obsidian stripes likely made her look more like a crushed bumblebee than a prowling predator.
“Is there no cook already?” Elias asked suddenly, startling her. “Where did all that food in the dining room come from if there isn’t one?”
“What?” she said, grappling for the compress and pulling it down over one eye to peep at him. “What are you asking?”
“You said we needed to hire a cook,” he reminded her, watching her with a faintly bemused air and something that might have been a smile. Was he laughing at her dishevelment? “If we don’t have one, who prepared breakfast?”
“Oh,” she said, releasing a little sigh of relief at the fact that she knew the answer to his question. “Mr. Harcourt hired someone temporarily from town, but I believe that person made it clear that she is not available on a permanent basis.”
“I see,” he replied, leaning onto his elbow and rubbing his fingers over his mouth, like he was attempting not to laugh at her. “Harriet, are you still drunk?”
She considered it, frowning. “Yes, I might be. A little. You see, I have been drinking a distilled alcohol made of fermented potatoes for the last year or so back in Russia and I thought, well, I assumed, that a spot of ale would be nothing at all in comparison. But I think perhaps I misjudged the quantity, or perhaps I misjudged the amount one is able to imbibe of a drink that does not burn on the way down.”
“Alas,” he replied, his lips twitching. “A tragic mistake.”
“Go ahead and laugh, Elias,” she said sourly. “I know that you want to.”
And so he did, though at least it was understated.
She glared, anyway.
“I am sorry,” he said, holding his hands up in apology. “I have simply never seen you compromised in such a way before. You are usually so … so …”
“Dignified?” she suggested.
“Rigid,” he decided, tittering again. “I don’t mind it.”
“Elias,” she said again, sinking back onto the chaise and dropping the compress onto her scalp rather than her eyes. “I have always liked your name. Do you know why?”
“Because it has three syllables?” he guessed, those bright-blue eyes watching her attempt to find a comfortable position. “And three pleases you so very much?”
“Oh, it does, doesn’t it?” she exclaimed, blinking. “But no. No, it is because of its shape. It is serpentine, isn’t it? Smooth and equally bent on all sides.”
“I don’t know what that means, Harriet,” he said, still sounding rather amused. “It isn’t because I am minty and candied due to my syllables? ‘Chimes,’ you said?”
“You? No, never,” she said, wrinkling her brow. “You are nothing like three. No, it is the shape of the thing. Syllables are important too, of course, and the more you have, I suppose the more detailed the feeling of a word. Do you know which country has the most marvelous multi-syllabic names?”
“Russia?” he guessed, resigning himself to lean on his hand.
“Oh, Russia is a very good guess,” she said, smiling to herself. “Did you know I’ve just come from Russia? I met a Prince Kontarovsky while I was there. He gave me this dressing gown. Kontarovsky. Isn’t that lovely? It sounds like a bouncing ball.”
“Does it?”
“It is the Greeks, however,” she continued.
“The Greeks have the most delicious names. Fiorentinos, like sap dripping in a spiral down a tree. Papadopoulos, like a child blowing bubbles from under a bath full of warm water. Konstantinidis, like a handful of marbles falling down a tall, wooden staircase. So much color and texture and flavor. I love it.”
“I can see that you do,” he answered, though his expression had changed. He almost looked displeased now. “A prince gave you negligee?”
“Oh, it doesn’t mean the same thing that it does here,” she said, waving her hand.
“I find that difficult to believe,” he replied, straightening in the chair and running his eyes over the fabric of her robe. “I think the connotation of a gift like that is the same universally.”
“What?” she said, blinking rapidly. “I meant the title. Prince is not … It is like a count or an earl, you see. An actual son of the tsar, or king, if you will, would actually be a grand duke in Russia. It is wonderfully confusing.”
He was staring at her, a deep line between his dark brows.
She cleared her throat and ran her hands self-consciously over the fabric of the robe, which only seemed to draw his eyes back down to it again.
“I have been to Greece, you know,” she said, a little too shrill and rapid for her own tastes, but she got the words out all the same.
“When Willa sent me on my Continental tour, that was the stop where I lost my chaperone to a swarthy Corinthian with green eyes. She’s still there.
They have five children. I ought to have found another one after that, but I could never be fussed.
None would have been as good and I was old enough by then, anyhow. ”
“Harriet,” he said, flatly.
“I should write to her,” Hattie continued. “Oh, Mr. Harcourt! You return.”
The barrister was hovering in the doorway with a tray of coffee and its garnishes, mugs, and what appeared to be freshly cut fruit. “Shall I give you some privacy?” he asked, looking from Hattie to Elias and back again. “I wouldn’t mind.”
“Absolutely not!” she exclaimed. “A stimulant is supposed to be just the thing for a headache, you know! Thank you for fetching it.”
“Your dressing gown isn’t stimulating enough?” Elias asked under his breath, winning a narrow-eyed look from her.
Either Mr. Harcourt did not hear the comment, or he was choosing not to hear it. Hattie supposed it did not matter which.
“I was going to inquire,” the barrister said, setting the tray down and seeing to his own cup, “if either of you are interested in looking into a special license. I only ask because if we go down the traditional route with banns being read, your wedding will by necessity fall on the same week as the funeral, which seems a little foreboding to me.”
“Whyever does it?” Elias replied with a tight smile, sipping his coffee straight from the pot, without even a fleck of sugar. “Sounds appropriately auspicious to me.”
“Would the banns be read here?” Hattie asked, tilting her head curiously. “I don’t know if the parish considers us Brighton residents anymore. I have been abroad for some time, and Elias resides in … erm?”
He turned slowly to stare at her as she fumbled her way through the city’s name. “Hunslow,” he provided. “Isn’t it wonderful how well we know each other?”
“Well, there will be plenty of time for that!” Mr. Harcourt said briskly.
“Though the matter of Hunslow does remind me that we need to address your commission, Lord Selwyn. I think the most sensible course of action is an initial request of stasis while we sort out whether you wish to sell or defer or seek some other remedy in light of the demands of your inheritance.”
“I’m selling it,” Elias said impatiently. “Why put off the inevitable? Initiate the process yourself if you like, Harcourt.”
“I certainly can assist with that,” Mr. Harcourt replied, as though it had been a friendly request. “As for the banns, due to the inherited property, it is legal if they are read locally, yes. Is that your desired direction? I suppose it would take just as long to write to the archbishop and await a response, anyhow.”
Hattie managed to nod, still a little uncertain any of this was truly happening.
“Excellent,” Mr. Harcourt replied, flashing her an encouraging smile.
“Now, there is the matter of your quarters here in the Rest. Due to the fact that Willa had the baron’s room converted to a library sometime after his death, there is but one functional bedroom in the master suite at present.
As such, only one of you can move into the master suite until such a time as the nuptials are concluded, but we ought to open the rooms up and make any necessary changes in preparation for that as quickly as possible.
As I said, there is a bedroom, but it is likely not in a state of good repair.
I have the keys here in the baroness’s particulars. ”
“‘The master suite’?” they both echoed, at varied paces and octaves of horror, giving Mr. Harcourt pause as he reached for his folio.
“Well, yes,” he replied, blinking through his spectacles. “That is where the lord and lady of the estate typically live, is it not?”
Hattie glanced at Elias and found him staring back at her with a look of wide-eyed disbelief, her lips pressed hard together.
“We have never even seen the inside of those rooms,” she explained, feeling around for her compress as little tremor of warning rang through her temples again. “It was not allowed.”
“Well, it is allowed now,” Mr. Harcourt said, patiently but with a clear note of confusion. “You can redecorate however you see fit.”
Elias released a huffing sound that was not quite laughter, dry and incredulous. “Are you certain she is dead?”
“The law is,” said the barrister, in a tone that said there would be no more discussion. “Here is the key. The two of you may decide how to proceed at your leisure.”
He dropped the key, heavy and silver, on the tray with a clatter, where it made the bowl of berries shake and the coffee cups ripple, and went back to his folio without a care for the weight of what he’d just done.
Hattie and Elias stared at the key for a time, and then at each other.
She gave him what she hoped was a look that was pleading, though she could not account for why she did not open her mouth and plea with her words, the way a sensible woman ought.
Still, apparently it worked.
He flattened his mouth at her, his head ticking resignedly to the side, but did reach forward and clasp the cursed thing in his hand, taking it into his possession.
He had taken it. He had understood her.
Perhaps more remarkably, he had understood her and chosen mercy.
And now, despite being a little bit baffled, Hattie could breathe again.
“Onto the matter of a butler,” Mr. Harcourt said, and then he continued on with their morning, as though that key had never appeared at all.