Chapter Fourteen
It seemed to Hattie that things did not accelerate with proper urgency at Starling’s Rest until they had crested the halfway mark between the reading of Willa’s final wishes and their culmination. Though, of course, she had been frantic about it all since the very first.
In a sudden tide of activity, there was abruptly an absence of bodies within the Rest itself, with Rhys at his pavilion and Libba at her theater.
Monica had taken her seamstresses and fabrics to her workshop while Ruby had opted to set up a small laboratory in Errol’s greenhouse for the time being, insisting that she could not be bothered to go into town whilst preparing for something so imminent.
Even Mr. Harcourt had begun to appear again with startling regularity, often in conference with Malcolm about the termination of his contract at the bank in London and the commencement of his quarter share at Stockton & Holloway, which Hattie supposed must now become Stockton, Holloway, & Lennox, if things were equitable.
Apparently, Mr. Stockton was agreeable to this, but Mr. Holloway and son had reservations about putting a Black man on the awning.
Hattie was not concerned. Mr. Harcourt would set them straight.
She did wonder if Malcolm intended to take Jasper Townsend from his clerk’s post at the East India Company and elevate him at this new post. She had not asked because she was uncertain if such a question would be uncouth.
She liked Jasper and would hate to offend him so shortly after resuming his acquaintance.
Then, of course, there was Elias.
He had also been much away as their wedding and the funeral drew closer.
“Do you want to hear the banns read?” he had asked her last night. “We only have one more Sunday to go.”
She had declined, anxiety spiking in her chest at the thought that such a thing was being announced, week after week, just a few blocks down toward the sea.
She thought about it now, every time the church bells rang.
The master suite was almost ready. She was to move into it first. She had chosen drapery and linens, a new rug, and, naturally, a completely different standing wardrobe, which had never, insofar as she could be apprised, been host to any winged nesting.
The bats did not end in that first discovered cache, as it happened, and Errol had gone with his father to investigate the walls and route them back out into their natural habitat: which was to say, not the house.
Never the house.
After which, Errol, Mr. Cagney, Hattie, Elias, and all four of the maids had been forced to undergo a fully violating examination by Brighton’s best surgeon in search of any tiny bite or puncture marks on their person, lest the bats have transferred to them the ultimate death sentence of rabidity.
“If you find it,” Hattie had pointed out, “there is nothing to be done but experience woe. And then perish.”
“Not so,” Rhys had said from his observational perch in the corner. “The surgeon can muzzle you so you don’t come after us before the perishing.”
“I still shall,” Hattie had replied with a sniff. “And I am faster than you.”
“On foot, perhaps,” Rhys had said ominously.
Luckily, no one had been marked for a horrible death, and all were cleared to resume their normal activities.
How bats had found their way into the upper floors with all the windows sealed remained a mystery, and Hattie was not certain she cared to ever solve it.
She had no space in her mind opposite all the other things currently in residence, which did not exclusively refer to one Elias Selwyn, thank you very much.
It also extended to matters like what to do with that portrait of Willa’s childhood family. And the discovery that in addition to half a dozen new costumes and who knew what else, that Monica Thresher had taken it upon herself to make Hattie a wedding dress.
“Ruby gave me the idea,” she had said excitedly as she’d pulled the first assembly of the thing over Hattie’s head for tailoring.
“Flame colors, she said, and she was right! You are a flame. So I thought orange and gold for the dress itself and the piping will be blue and red. It will look spectacular!”
“Are you making a matching suit for Elias?” Hattie had asked, still dizzy from the costume fitting for the showcase, her gown fit for a king.
At which point, Monica had laughed for some time. “Of course not,” she said. “No one looks at the groom.”
“That is a thought, though,” Ruby Little had put in, holding the Jadwiga costume up to herself in the mirror. “I’ve not made a scent for Elias yet. What do you think, Hattie? What smells spark in that strange, little mind of yours when you think of him?”
“None with vanilla,” Hattie had remarked primly and then ignored the knowing glance that Monica and Ruby shared in response.
As for Elias himself, she had not truly spoken to him since that day in the master suite.
The odd comment here and there, like the barb about going to hear the banns, had been exchanged.
There had been plenty of silent language to untangle from meal to meal.
But there had been no private discourse, and as a matter of consequence, no further kissing or intimacy whatsoever.
She did not care. Not one whit.
And she did not think it mattered how well she liked the new red dressing gown, either. It was only that it was odd, how well it fit her. The other one, the one that had gone missing, had always been just a little too large above the waist, and a bit too tight about the hips.
This one fit like she had allowed Monica to pin it to her during creation.
It was not worth pondering that she liked the garment itself. Nor was the thrill that Elias had been moved to do something so spectacularly childish for her, specifically. No, not worth pondering at all.
Still, she had grabbed Ruby by the arm and told her in no uncertain terms, “Saltwater accidentally swallowed, bonfire smoke, and the smell of clouds heavy with rain they are about to unleash. Silver and gray and the rumble of far-off thunder, rolling ever nearer.”
And Ruby, for once, had not mocked or needled her about it, but only nodded, wide-eyed. “Anything else?”
“Eight,” Hattie had said, and then she’d sighed in frustration and fled to her next task.
If it had occurred to her to be so petulant in her ruminations on Elias’s withholding of private discourse, she might have made hyperbolic notes on what could compel him to finally come to her, as he ought.
And if, had she been so compelled, she had allowed her mind to flit toward hypothetical grandiosity, she might have thought that perhaps it would take a royal decree to simply make him behave sensibly. For once.
As it happened, one came.
And so did Elias.
“Harriet!” he called, stalking through the halls in his Hessian riding boots like an angry schoolmaster. “Did you write to the prince?!”
Hattie, in that moment, had been sitting with the Polish seamstress, practicing a volley of rhymes. “Me?” she said, truly confused. “No. At least not the English one.”
“Harriet,” he said again, slower and less patient as he brandished forth a letter. “I do not have the patience to address your retinue of princes just now. This was addressed to you, from our Prince Regent.”
She stood, crossing the room, and took it from him, ensuring that their fingers brushed as she did so. “Oh,” she said, flipping the thing over in her hands with a little sigh of annoyance. “He always sends this. Or he used to, anyhow, when we did the showcase as children. He attends.”
“Oh, ‘he attends,’” Elias said mockingly in what she thought was a very poor mimic of her voice. “What the devil am I supposed to do to prepare for it?”
“Shall I go?” the seamstress said, already halfway gone, using Hattie’s nod as the final seal on her retreat.
“Look what you’ve done,” Hattie said, frowning after the young woman. “I’ve only got a week left to practice, Elias!”
He was staring at her with an incredulous, simmering heat in his eyes, like he wanted to grip her by the shoulders and shake her. “Practice,” he repeated. “Yes, perhaps that is something we ought to discuss? Are there rehearsals for this event? A schedule? Anything resembling structure?”
“Of course,” said Hattie, frowning. “Libba does that, usually. She was ever the director.”
“She hasn’t said a word to me about it!” he said, throwing his hands up. “What is my role here?!”
Hattie narrowed her eyes. “She told you to find a poem. I was there, Elias. We discussed it.”
“Oh, find a poem!” he exclaimed, sarcasm tipping each consonant. “Is that all?”
“Well, no …”
He made a noise like a kicked cat, throwing his hands up and stomping around her to collapse on the chaise. His head dropped into his hands, all the while shaking as he muttered unintelligibly to himself and stared blankly ahead at a particular fiber of the carpet between his toes.
Hattie watched this, a little befuddled about why he was in such a state. “You are being very theatrical,” she observed. “Are you often so?”
He blinked, like the carpet fiber were speaking to him, his fingers pressing into the flesh above his eyebrows.
“We will find you a poem,” she decided. “Please do not resign to catatonia on the account of something so small. And I shall speak to Libba about rehearsals if it will soothe you.”
“‘Soothe’ me,” he repeated, almost dreamily, chuckling to himself like he’d gone mad.
“You know,” he said, glancing up, “I have oft wondered if any of you are actually sad that she is dead. I know she requested this bizarre celebration of a requiem, but … none of you are acting as though it were strange at all.”
Hattie blinked, a little thump of pain landing between her breasts, and frowned at him. “Are you sad?”