Chapter Twenty-One
It took most of the afternoon, but Elias managed to wrangle things into some semblance of order.
In all honesty, it was familiar to him. Almost military in its requirements. And as such, it restored him to something bordering a state of calm, despite the fact that his wedding day had been utterly ruined.
Engage or retreat. Those were the options he thought he would always have. And instead, in a moment of utter and pressing necessity, he hadn’t chosen either.
He had just stood there.
It was unforgivable.
Elias had found them at the constabulary, screaming at a baffled deputy while his stepfather’s bloody nose crusted and flaked in his beard, and had stepped between the tirade and the young man with an air of exhausted resignation.
“Stop,” he had said, unable to think of anything else. “Stop at once.”
Shockingly, they had not.
It had taken a threat to get to that point.
“If you wish to stay in an inn tonight instead of making the journey back to your home at once, you will cease this immediately,” he had snapped. “Or you will pay for it yourselves.”
That had, at least, punctured the volume.
It had taken a bit more time and cajoling to get them out of the constable’s offices and down the road into accommodations, though they complained the entire time.
Elias had not spoken much throughout it.
It occurred to him as they walked that he had not spoken much in their presence at all, ever.
Perhaps that explained his fluency in what Hattie called the silent language. Perhaps it was not a talent at all, but only a scar.
That would just figure, wouldn’t it?
“How much?” he said to them, once the door was closed and they were seated in the finest room the inn had to offer. “How much for you to run along and never come back?”
“Well, that’s a fine way to speak to your parents!” his stepfather had boomed, shedding more flecks of blood as he bristled. “She who bore you and gave you that name! It’s only for us that you’re wearing such a fine office this morning, Baron Selwyn.”
“Indeed it’s true,” his mother had said with a sniff. “If you had only been a girl, it would have been your stepfather who had inherited instead. Isn’t that right, Wallace? Isn’t that true?”
“Just so, my dear, just so,” said his stepfather, squeezing his mother’s shoulder. “We should have held the barony, regardless. We would have raised you correctly. We would have prevented this spectacle the dowager orchestrated.”
Elias only stared. For a long moment, he simply stared.
“Is that what this is about?” he finally asked, after he’d managed to digest this latest outburst. “You resent that you had a son?”
“Of course not,” his stepfather said, flinging himself out of the chair and marching toward the basin in what appeared to be a very tardy impulse to tidy himself. “A man needs heirs. And you’re a good boy. I just wish you’d been mine own and come along later is all.”
“Yes, precisely. It is only that we were premature,” his mother added with a grimace. “And evidently poor guidance.”
“In that we can agree,” Elias said flatly. “How much?”
“A place in that house to start,” his mother said immediately.
“No.”
She blinked at him, giving a short, shrill little laugh. “No, indeed? How dare you?”
“No,” said Elias again, clenching his jaw. “You will go back to Rottingdean and stay there.”
“Oh, we haven’t lived in Rottingdean in five years,” his stepfather grumbled. “Shows how much you care.”
“Yes, I suppose it does,” Elias said, leaning back against the door because he could no longer stand on his own accord. “How much?”
“Just restore what we were given before, I suppose,” his mother said with a sniff and a sigh.
“Though that is terribly cruel, given your good fortune. Even Willa Starling cared for an elderly aunt for the whole of her cursed life, and only an aunt by marriage at that. Some common barmaid of a girl now living in luxury on Selwyn coin in her dotage. If you do not honor us, you should at least honor your beloved patroness.”
“I do,” he said through his teeth. “And in so doing, I refuse to continue to humor the two of you more than absolutely necessary. You extorted her for all of my life and I am only just now learning of it.”
“‘Extorted,’” tutted his stepfather. “Such language.”
“Oh, do you wish to speak about language?” Elias said, raising his brows, a flash of heat fanning in his chest. “Perhaps we should start with how you spoke to and about my wife?”
“‘Wife,’” his mother echoed in a venomous whisper. “The scullery maid?”
“The baroness,” Elias corrected, turning his mother’s face red. “Something you will never be.”
“She was always such an odd little bird,” said his stepfather, using a comb to get his beard clean with a click of his tongue. “Your children might be odd too, you know. Touched and vacant, commenting on the oddest non-sequitur things in polite company. Terribly embarrassing.”
“Hattie is not embarrassing. She is brilliant,” Elias snapped. “She has been feted by the crowned heads of Europe. Who fetes you?”
“Oh, please,” said his mother with a roll of her eyes. “Is that what she told you?”
“In just the last week, she has received wedding gifts from the Tsar and Tsarina of Russia, two Italian dukes, and a Swedish princess,” Elias told them, raising his brows. “Not to mention the personal note I intercepted from our own prince regent.”
Both his parents froze for a moment at that, his stepfather’s dark-blue eyes narrowing.
Elias had those eyes. Selwyn eyes.
“Nonsense,” his stepfather said, gruffly. “You are making things up. You always were a liar, boy.”
Elias smiled then. It was an odd thing, an unexpected feeling as it spread over his face. “You think so?” he said. “Perhaps you ought to attend the funeral tomorrow if you don’t believe me, and meet His Royal Highness yourself. It would do you good, I think.”
“Meeting the prince?” his mother said, clearly intrigued. “Of course it would.”
“No,” said Elias. “Seeing a well-attended funeral for a woman who gave instead of took. It might make you both reflect on your own mortality.”
His stepfather bowed up, his chest puffing out as he opened his mouth to rebut, but Elias only held up a hand.
“Come or don’t,” he said. “But if you interfere at all, it will be the last we speak of any allowance. The same applies to any attempt to punish Mr. Harcourt. I require him if I am to release any funds at all to you, after all.”
“Oh,” said his mother, crossing her arms. “Anything else, my lord?”
Elias turned his smile onto her, sharp and without amusement. “Yes,” he said. “You will apologize to the baroness, or any consideration of an allowance is moot. And to Miss Thresher, Father. Do you understand?”
“I … I …” Wallace Selwyn began to bumble.
“Do not answer me now,” said Elias. “I haven’t any more time to dawdle today. Think it over. If you can.”
And, before they could ruin this little blip of satisfaction he’d managed to find in the wreckage of his wedding day, he turned on his heel and saw himself out.
He strode home, a manic thrill bordering hysteria fluttering in his chest, and turned his face to the humid rays of wet sunlight in the air. He walked quickly, breathing in the smell of surf and taking comfort in the trill of tourist voices from down on the docks.
Life is continuing on, he thought. Even with a storm in the height of the Brighton rush. Even with a melee on his wedding aisle.
Now, all he had to do was read that blasted letter and he could be done with this for today. He could put it away until tomorrow.
He could be a groom again for at least the last few hours of the day, surely?
Elias walked right through the front door and into the house without encountering a single soul. He supposed they were all gathered in the ballroom for the festivities still. He could hear music faintly echoing throughout the house.
A small, private smile found its way over his lips as he turned in the opposite direction and made his way toward his bedroom. He’d find the letter there, give it a quick read, and then go have a slice of his wedding cake if there was any left.
Honestly, Elias didn’t even much care for cake, truth be told, but it was the principle of the thing.
He sighed and pushed his door open, only to freeze on the threshold, sagging at the visual reminder that he was not thinking clearly.
There was nothing left in here. Only a tidy bed stripped down to its sheets and furniture dusted and polished, empty of all the things previously held within.
Of course.
His things had been moved to the master suite today.
Which meant the letter too.
He crossed the room carefully, almost as though he were picking his way over the ghosts of his memories, scattered across the empty floor, and sank onto the side of the bed, giving one more sigh for good measure.
He shook his head and chuckled a little at the absurdity of it.
“There you are,” called Hattie’s voice, soft and relieved from his doorway.
He looked up, surprised to find her there, still in her wedding dress. The blue cording under her breasts glowed like the center of a flame in the low afternoon light. “Hattie.”
She smiled. “Elias.”
“Come sit with me?” he asked, tilting his head toward the tightly tucked white sheets around his childhood mattress. “I was just saying goodbye.”
She pressed the door shut behind her as she came forward, taking the spot next to him. “It isn’t goodbye,” she said. “You are only down the hall and up a flight of stairs.”
“True enough,” he said with a chuckle, leaning against the bedpost to consider her, beautiful and his, sitting on this bed. “The boy who moved into this room would never believe this is how I would leave it.”
She raised her brassy brows. “Oh? And how is that?”
“With you willingly sitting upon it with me,” he said, grinning. “Looking like that. Wearing my token and my name.”
“Fascinating,” she said, tilting her head to the side. “How do you think he would react, if you could find and tell him what to expect?”