Chapter Eleven
Elias had been intending to address something when he’d come home that night, but there was just something about entering a room filled to the brim with Willa’s full menagerie that scrambled his tidy thoughts to scraps of rubbish.
Even if tonight’s dinner had been verging on enjoyable, it had still addled him.
It wasn’t until hours later, as he was securing the buttons on his pajamas and stifling a yawn, that he recalled what it was that he had wanted to discuss.
And damned if it wasn’t important!
He grunted in frustration, glancing at his wet hair and general disarray in the tilted mirror that sat against his bedroom wall. He grimaced at the shadow of stubble on his jaw and the fact that he’d started the buttons at the wrong place and the top half of his pajama set was now askew.
It didn’t matter.
She might still be awake.
He pushed his toes into his slippers as he grabbed the dressing gown off the bed poster, already moving to exit the room, annoyance battling impatience in his chest as he tried to pull the fabric over his arms without it billowing out around him like a diva’s cape during her aria.
He got it into place as he rounded the corner out of the boys’ wing and made a turn toward the girls’, fumbling for the sash and making a hasty, overly tight knot at his waist as he pivoted on his cushioned toes.
Less than a dozen steps from Hattie French’s door, she emerged, looking a bit panicked herself, with a lantern in her hand that cast a dancing series of shadows onto her orange-and-black dressing gown. “Elias!” she exclaimed, blinking rapidly.
He halted, his feet crashing about in the absurd, fluffy embrace of his slippers, and immediately made a face at the robe she was wearing.
He would have to have that burned, he thought. Or donated to orphans, perhaps.
He’d get her a different one.
“I was about to come and speak to you,” she said, lifting the lantern up by her face as though he’d need to watch her mouth make the words to understand them. “Are you all right?”
He made a face and nodded back toward her room, taking a few steps forward to usher her back into it rather than continue conversing out here in the hall, where any of the other little miracles of talent might emerge at any given moment.
He glanced over his shoulder to ensure that the hall was empty as she made her reluctant path back into her chamber and followed her in, pulling the door shut behind him.
“I thought of a poet,” she said immediately, still holding that lantern up by her face like a ghoul. “But then I was not sure if it would offend you or not.”
“What?” he snapped, crossing the room and reaching up to take that stupid lantern from her. He got as far as wrapping his fingers around the metal hoop at the top before he realized she wasn’t going to just release it. “Harriet!”
She tilted her head up to meet his eye, blinking curiously. “There is an Australian poet,” she said. “He was a friend of Willa’s, a barrister aspiring to become one of Australia’s first lauded poets, but …”
He paused, suddenly aware of their proximity, his shoulders coming down softly as he urged the lantern down from her preferred, aloft position in the air. “‘But’?”
She looked pinker than usual, her lips pressed together. “I changed my mind. It is a silly idea.”
“Harriet,” he said again, his voice going thin in exasperation.
She released the lantern into his grip, her fingers passing over his, and sighed. “His name is Barron Field.”
He almost dropped the lantern. He blinked at her, an involuntary bluster of a laugh rising in his throat. “You are making that up.”
She shook her head, definitely pinker than usual. “I am not,” she said. “I am a terrible liar, you know.”
“I didn’t know,” he answered, a second huff of laughter making its way up. “But it doesn’t surprise me. Barron Field?”
“Well, you see, his mother’s maiden name was Barron,” she said quickly, that shrill rambling quality already starting in her voice.
“At ease,” he said quickly, taking a step back and looking about for somewhere to put the lantern. “I needed to talk to you.”
“You did?” she said. “With words?”
He paused, halfway to placing the lit lantern on her chest of drawers, and deliberately releasing the tension that had immediately shot into his shoulders and jaw at that bizarre question.
“Yes, Harriet,” he said slowly, clanking the thing into place and watching the flame jump. “With words. I do have some, you know.”
“Oh,” she said, making him sigh.
He ran both hands over his damp hair, knowing he was only mussing it further, and turned to look at her. “Are they all just going to stay here?” he said, before he could second-guess himself. “For the entire year?”
She blinked. “Who?”
“Your fellow prodigies,” he snapped, gesturing at her door. “And all their minions. Already, Monica has three seamstresses helping her with the costumes and she hasn’t even gone to see her new storefront yet. And I understand Libba is shipping in a full acting troupe from London?”
“Oh, yes,” said Hattie, deflating, like she was somehow relieved that he was making sense. “But only Lem will stay in the house.”
“Who the devil is Lem?” he demanded, trying to keep his voice down in the midst of exploding.
“A muscle,” she said. “Don’t worry. He doesn’t talk very much.”
“What?!”
“We’ll need another chair at the dining room table,” she realized, tilting her head to the side, “if we have both Lem and the occasional visit from Mr. Harcourt.”
“So they do all intend to live here?” he pressed, a sight more panicked than he’d intended to be. “The whole year?”
She shook her head and wrinkled up that lovely brow. “I do not know. They are all staying in Brighton, but I suppose some might wish to seek external accommodations, even though I think that would be a silly and unnecessary expense. We could ask them.”
“Ask? If people intend to take over our house?” he repeated, incredulous.
“Well, it is their house too,” she said.
“No,” he corrected. “Right now, it is yours, and when we marry, it is ours, but it is not theirs any more than my old dormitory bed at Eton is mine.”
She gave a soft, thoughtful little blink, her mouth melting into a wistful smile. “Oh, that is funny,” she said, reaching up to toy with the braid of bronze hair that was sitting on her shoulder. “I had a bed at the foundling home once. It must be another child’s now.”
He stared at her, a little needle of guilt tapping at his ribs. “You’re saying they have nowhere else to go,” he realized.
“What?” she said, frowning. “No, I was … but there are all these beds, Elias. Why should we keep them empty? And two more when we move into the master suite.”
“For the sake of peace?” he suggested, already knowing he’d lost. “No, no. I know you are right. Hell, Harcourt can have my room.”
She tittered then, just a little thing, such a rare sound that it shot through him, right past that needling guilt and directly into the base of his gut, his eyes snapping up to watch her.
She covered her mouth, shaking her head and giggling again. “Do you think he would redecorate? I have always imagined he keeps a file cabinet next to his bed.”
Elias couldn’t stop himself from smiling at the image, shaking his head in half surrender to the absurdity of this encounter. “So when he rolls over in the morning, he can immediately reach inside?”
“Oh, all throughout the night,” she replied, hiccupping with amusement. “He keeps a pad of paper and a fresh ink pot on top so he can wake in spurts and jot down docket amendments in the wee hours.”
He laughed then, unintentionally and perhaps a little too loud for a man who did not want anyone knowing he was in here.
He looked around, resolving to just allow the rest of the conversation to unfold however it might, and realized with a frown, “There are no chairs in here. Just that little vanity stool.”
“Oh,” she said, looking around as though she were just realizing it for the first time too. “You can sit with me on the bed. It is very comfortable.”
As though to demonstrate, she fell backward onto the rumpled sheets, her dressing gown spooling out around her in a silken heap, and patted the space to her side.
His resolve flickered. Perhaps he ought to flee, after all.
“Do you want something to drink?” she asked, her eyes going wide as though she were a new bride receiving her first polite guest. “I have some port here somewhere. Oh! And the little crystal glasses. I can see if you do the same things.”
“What?” he croaked as she pushed herself off the bed and went past him in a gust of that unusual, spiced perfume she wore, in search of said port and tiny glasses.
“Please sit,” she said without turning around, already falling to her knees to dig in the little beverage cabinet next to her vanity table. “Oh, here they are! Bit dusty. I’ll rinse them.”
He was frozen in place, watching her kneeling on the rug in her negligee, bits of her curling brassy hair escaping her braid as she rummaged around inside that cabinet. “Perhaps I ought to go. You were sleeping.”
She paused, glancing over her shoulder. “I wasn’t,” she reminded him. “I was coming to tell you about Barron Field. Ah! The port. Sit down!”
She pushed herself back to her feet in a single elegant motion, taking up the glasses between her fingers and the bottle of port in her other hand as she marched toward him in the direction of her washbasin.
He thought perhaps sitting was the safest option, just now, and did so. Rapidly.
He watched her, splashing the glasses and drying them against her silken sleeve, then uncorking the port and humming a tuneless meandering series of notes as she poured.
She really couldn’t sing. And for some reason that was melting every muscle in his body.
Shit.
“Did you write to your parents?” she asked, turning back to him with all the effect of a bucket of ice water.
“What? No! Why would I do that?” he demanded, his spine coming up.