Chapter Eighteen
Harriet French awoke on the eve of her wedding day in a raw panic.
Panic, as it happened, tasted like burnt toast and roasted tomato, smashed together in a rotten paste against her tongue. It was a nasty thing to awaken to, flooding her nose and mouth as she tore from sleep with an anguished gasp of anxiety.
Something, though she was not entirely certain what at first, was very wrong.
Images floated in her mind from the remnants of her nightmare, of wedding bells and the church aisle. What was it? What had she done that had disturbed her sleep so?
“The rings!” she croaked, flinging herself out of bed headfirst, hands to the rug and crawling out of her blankets like a demented acrobat. “I’ve forgotten to get the rings!”
It was, Hattie knew, an understatement.
She’d never even ordered the damned rings.
Rings she had been planning ever since that afternoon in Elias’s bedchamber, when he’d shown her the one Willa had left him.
She had wanted engraved rings with something nicer than mea culpa to exchange after the wedding, a symbol that this was not going to be a marriage of fault and regret.
And she’d forgotten them! Entirely!
She could see them in her mind’s eye. She had envisioned them so clearly and in detail that she had thought they were bloody real!
There they were, glinting just beyond the seal of her eyelids on an imaginary velvet cushion, nestled together in a perfect figure eight, glinting like liquid moonlight against the dark-blue fabric.
Imaginary.
It was imaginary.
She had stumbled down the stairs with one slipper on, her hair askew, running through possibilities in her mind.
Errol didn’t wear rings.
Rhys wore too many, and they were all cheap.
Malcolm’s were all far too expensive.
What was she going to do?!
“Saints in a stagecoach!” A maid gasped as she beheld her future baroness, hobbling past like a grotesque from a penny dreadful.
Hattie exploded into the dining room, where Libba and Monica were seated in polite discourse over toast that looked unburnt and juice from an orange, not a tomato.
“I’ve forgotten the rings,” she cried, immediately slumping onto the floor with her head in her hands.
“Good morning to you too,” said Libba, her fork still halfway to her mouth, as Monica let out a shrill cry of alarm and leapt up from her chair to usher Hattie into one of her own. “Beautiful dressing gown.”
“What on Earth?” Malcolm voice demanded a few moments later, upon which event Hattie found herself pulled to her feet and ushered again to a new location.
Libba’s room.
“No one will find you in here,” Libba assured here while Monica continued to pat her head. “Did we leave a slipper behind?”
“Nooo,” Hattie moaned, shaking her head. “It’s in my bedroom!”
“Oh, all right,” said Libba, flashing a widening of her eyes at Monica. “I’ll just go fetch Ruby.”
“What are the rings actually for?” Monica asked gently, holding Hattie’s face to her bosom like a brood mother. “Just love tokens? Those do not have to be ready on the day of the wedding.”
“But,” Hattie wailed, tears pooling in her eyes, “but mea culpa.”
“Yes, well, you’re only human,” Monica replied, clearly not understanding.
Hattie shook her head, hiccupping with the force of her despair.
“Oh, God,” Ruby said as soon as she appeared. “I thought this would happen sooner.”
The others exchanged glances that seemed to agree.
It did not improve Hattie’s comport.
After much petting and murmuring, Hattie did manage to get herself into some semblance of calm. She found that at some point, tea had been pressed into her hands, and, judging from the bitter film in her mouth, she had consumed some and done so without the cushion of sugar or cream.
“What about costume rings?” Libba suggested, hugging the poster at the foot of her bed like it might have ideas as well. “That would do the job for the day.”
Hattie shook her head. “It won’t.”
“Oh, it would. Come now,” said Ruby, tutting. “Did Elias even know you had put it upon yourself to undertake this task? Is he even aware you had planned for such a thing?”
It was the only thing that punctured Hattie’s grief.
“Oh,” she said, blinking through her tears. “Oh, I suppose not.”
“Correct,” said Ruby, sounding more relieved than smug. “Hattie, have you even spoken to the man about these rings?”
“I … No,” said Hattie, blinking furiously.
She had been sure. So sure, when she’d woken.
The dream she’d had …
Ruby sighed, patting her on the shoulder. “That’s what I thought. I say, where did you get that robe? Who keeps putting Hattie in jewel tones when we have always known those are mine to wear?”
“What if we find a way to ask him what he thinks about the idea, as a gesture after your wedding, without giving the game away?” Libba suggested. “I’ll tell Mal to do it when the boys kidnap him tonight. Would that ease your mind, love?”
“‘Kid…’” Hattie hiccupped. “‘Nap’?”
“They’re taking him for drinks at the Coin and Cauldron,” Monica explained, still soothing along Hattie’s scalp with her fingers. “Against his will, most likely.”
“Should we join them there?” Ruby pondered, tilting her head to the side. “Or shall we create our own festivities?”
“‘Festiv…’” Hattie began, only to be immediately shushed by three cooing voices.
“It will be all right,” Monica assured her, and though Hattie wanted to argue, she also still had the hiccups.
“I have champagne for tonight,” Ruby volunteered. “I thought perhaps it might be time to finally show us the mysterious master suite. We may indulge our vices and our curiosities all at once, hm?”
“‘Curio…’” Hattie began, only to be shushed and smothered again, this time with another splash of tea and a warm pastry on her lap.
“I have always wanted to see those rooms,” Libba said wistfully, in the tiny wedge of silence that followed. “I think Willa would bless the endeavor, us gathering there to giggle over Elias’s thigh muscles in his riding breeches. It is decided.”
“Is that all right, Hattie?” Monica asked, stroking her hand over Hattie’s tangled hair. “Champagne in the master suite while we prepare your bridal things?”
“Bridal?” Hattie said. “Yes.” And she hiccupped one more time, for luck.
*
Elias was not entirely certain how he’d come to be at the Coin and Cauldron. Only that he had other things he very much needed to be doing instead.
And yet here he was, seated at a rustic wooden table with a tiny, squat glass of nondescript, murky liquid in front of him, and a firm voice in an Irish brogue telling him in no uncertain terms to swallow, not sip.
“It’s not a pleasant drink,” Errol elaborated. “But an effective one.”
“What is it, exactly?” Malcolm asked, examining his own little glass.
“Swill,” said Rhys, taking a third gulp from his row of them. “Aren’t you listening? To the groom!”
“Yes, but what’s in i—Rhys!” Malcolm sputtered as Rhys tipped Malcom’s glass forcefully into his mouth. “Christ! It burns!”
“It burns!” Errol agreed, lifting his glass as though it were a toast.
“It burns,” repeated Elias, lifting his own and tipping it back into his mouth, come what may.
It did burn.
“That’s exactly the face you made when you were told to marry Hattie,” Rhys observed. “You don’t seem quite as opposed to it these days.”
“You don’t, at that,” Malcolm agreed, looking a bit green about the gills as he slapped a flat hand over the top of his glass. “No more for me. I’ll have something civilized, thank you very much.”
“Killsport,” Errol said with a grin, raising two fingers to signal for the barman. “Wine, I presume?”
“Anything but that,” Malcolm said, mostly with his bottom row of teeth.
The diversion in topic at least prevented Elias from having to acknowledge their observations about his match or impending matrimony, though he did suspect that was the reason for this outing.
“I’ll have his, then,” Rhys said, swiping the empty glass from under Mal’s hand and shaking it at Errol for a top up. “I don’t mind the burn.”
“I will also take the wine,” Elias said, once the barman had reached them, though the warmth spreading in his chest did whisper that the swill wasn’t such a terrible experience, once it got past the tongue and throat.
Still, he thought it best he did not appear at the altar in the morning with his head half off.
“So, Lord Selwyn, are you prepared for the gauntlet that is married life?” Malcolm asked, raising his eyebrows. “Did you prepare shackles and repast, as is customary?”
“‘Shackles and repast’?” Elias repeated. “We have a wedding breakfast ready, but I didn’t seek out manacles.”
“Shame,” said Rhys, shrugging.
“I did get her a ring,” Elias said, after considering it. “Is that shackle-like enough? I even have one for myself, provided by the late baroness. All it needed was a polish and a bit of hammering and it’s ready to wear.”
“Willa gave you a ring?” Rhys asked, his curls bouncing up from a fervent concentration on building a pyramid out of empty tiny glasses. “My letter didn’t have any presents in it. Did your lot?”
“What did your letter have in it?” Mal asked, cutting his eyes to the other man. “A feather and a clue?”
“Wouldn’t you love to know?” Rhys sassed back, wrinkling his nose.
“It would be kind,” Errol mused, “providing Rhys with his first clue.”
“Oh, ho ho,” Rhys parroted back in a bored monotone. “Hand me those glasses.”
And then, to Elias’s astonishment, both men did so, watching with clear interest as Rhys completed his transparent ziggurat with a little whoop of victory.
“Right,” said Mal, looking summarily impressed.
“Do you have them?” Errol put in, leaning onto his elbow to nudge one of the glasses a touch to the left, bringing the corners more into line. “The rings, I mean?”
Elias frowned, nodding and reaching into his jacket pocket and withdrawing a little velvet pouch.
He had been returning from the jeweler’s when they’d accosted him, halfway back to the house, after all.
“Oh, shiny things,” Rhys said, plucking the pouch from Elias’s fingers before either of the others could and fishing the woman’s ring out of it before tossing the bag to Mal with disinterest. He held the elegant little band up to the light, peering up at the cracked amber, broken into two halfmoon pieces over a circle-cut garnet. “Pretty!”
“It is pretty,” Errol agreed, leaning closer. “It is very suitable to Hattie.”
“Yes,” said Elias, still frowning. “I thought so as well.”
“Mea culpa,” said Malcolm.
“Yes, we know,” Rhys mumbled, still entranced by the jewels.
“No, you glittering insect,” Mal said, slapping Rhys on the knee and jutting out the man’s ring. “It’s the inscription. Look.”
“In a love token?” Errol said, already pouring more swill into four new little glasses, evidently disinterested in both Malcolm and Elias having said they wanted no more. “That seems an odd thing for it to say.”
“This was Willa’s?” Rhys asked, holding the two rings together like an eclipsed sun against the candle in the middle of the table. “The late Lord Selwyn’s ring, perhaps?”
Elias shook his head. “No. He did wear a ring, but it was silver, apparently. I don’t know whose it is. Certainly a man’s, though, at that size and style.”
“She didn’t explain?” Errol said, sounding truly affronted as he pushed the glasses out in three different directions with seemingly effortless aim, not spilling a single drop in the process. “That doesn’t sound like Willa.”
Elias hesitated, his jaw feeling oddly warm as he cleared his throat and reached for his glass, his lips pressed together. In all honesty, in the madness that had been the last several weeks of his life, he had genuinely forgotten about that letter. Forgotten it entirely.
“Oh, good God,” Malcolm said, a grin spreading over his face. “You haven’t read the letter, have you? You’ve just been carrying around this cursed ring with no context for the last month.”
Rhys gaped at him. “And you’re going to wear it as a love token? What if she left it to you so you’d throw it in the sea? What if it’s got her soul inside it? You going to wear that to bed tomorrow night?”
“Rhys,” said Errol mildly as he drank his swill. “Stop.”
“Well, I’m not wrong!” Rhys exclaimed, turning his eyes frantically on Errol. “Just because you’re the most boring man alive it doesn’t make the rest of the universe any less haunted.”
“So it turns out his limit is eleven shots,” Malcolm observed, taking his own drink back and then dropping his chin into the curl of his hand, propped up on the table by the elbow. “Who knew?”
“I’ll have twelve more and still dance you under the table, banker boy,” Rhys shot back. “Don’t forget it was me who protected you from that banshee when we were boys.”
Mal paled immediately, straightening in his chair. “Shut up, Rhys.”
“Do banshees come this far south?” Elias asked, desperate for a breath of levity.
“We weren’t here,” Rhys replied solemnly. “We were in Edinburgh.”
“Enough!” said Mal, somehow fading from ashen to plum in the space of a few seconds. “There was no banshee.”
“There wasn’t,” agreed Errol. “It was a boggart.”
“Where’s my wine?!” Mal exclaimed, launching himself up from the table and stalking off, leaving both of the other men chortling to themselves while Elias watched in helpless discomfort.
Rhys slid the velvet bag from its discarded place on the table to his little glass palace and carefully put the rings back inside. “Here,” he said to Elias. “Take these back before my baser impulses get the better of me.”
“And I find them in the wedding cake tomorrow?” Elias guessed, feeling oddly pleased with the grin it got from the other man.
“No,” said Rhys. “The food returns are only for Mal. I’d have to come up with something new for you. If you recall, I used to steal your desserts, and those all got eaten. They were true thefts.”
“No true thefts tonight, if you please,” Errol requested.
“Only abductions?” Elias retorted, raising his brows.
It got a slow grin out of Errol too. “Only abductions,” he agreed. “Welcome to the family, at long last.”
“Thank you for having me,” Elias answered, clicking his glass against the other man’s, “despite my tardy arrival.”