Chapter Twenty-Three
After the third incident where Hattie was certain her stockings were about to be discovered in Elias’s pocket, she made the decision that he should retire early, under the guise of preparing the marital chamber for their wedding night.
It was the only thing that would calm her nerves and it did seem to also please and placate the guests who were still assembled, well after dark, as well as signal to them that it was time for the party to conclude.
She suspected fairly strongly that her secret was less of a secret than a personally held bugaboo at this stage, with most of her fellow wards tossing her knowing looks at various points throughout the evening.
When she’d danced with Rhys, he’d scuffed the top of her foot with his boot and then grinned as he apologized for damaging her stocking, which he knew very well she was not wearing.
In any event, it was with relief that she stood near the doors of the Rest and shook the hands of departing well-wishers, many of whom delivered gifts to her as they departed.
“It is a puzzle for two,” Persephone Boswell explained, tilting the conjoined wooden cubes one way and then another as she pressed them into Hattie’s hands. “It can only be solved in tandem with a partner.”
“And she couldn’t sell it otherwise,” Rhys commented tartly.
She winked at Hattie, her Traveller’s lilt becoming more pronounced as she agreed. “And I couldn’t sell it otherwise.”
There were several handmade gifts from Libba’s actors, including a variety of prose and theatrical compositions about the wedding itself, hastily scrawled in the corner of the ballroom in what appeared to have become a makeshift poetry station devoted to either the incident with Elias’s parents or the general beauty of the ceremony.
The oddest gift, by far, was from Libba’s large, muscled bodyguard, the man Hattie had met that day in the jail. He approached her as the troupe was filing out of the house and handed her a waxy, yellow lemon, exactly the size of her hand.
“Lemuel,” he said, his voice deep and soothing as she marveled at the fruit in her grasp. “You asked me if that was my name. What does it mean?”
“‘Child of God,’ I believe,” she said, blinking up at him.
He nodded. “Well, I am not the child of parents. ‘Lem’ is not short for ‘Lemuel.’ It is short for ‘Lemon Boy.’”
She blinked, which got a smile out of him.
A truly lovely smile, truth be told, one that transformed his stoic visage into something quite dashing.
“I sold lemons on the wharf in London as a lad,” he explained. “‘Lemon Boy’ became ‘Lem.’ I was a foundling, like you.”
“Oh,” she said. “They called me French because my first word was coucou. It means ‘greetings,’ but in a very childish way.”
He nodded. “I like Lemuel more. I think I will have it. So you take the lemon as a trade.”
She opened her mouth, uncertain how to reply, but he just reached out and patted her shoulder like she were a fond, little child in his path and said, “Congratulations, Baroness,” before he vanished down the hall, toward the guest chambers.
Hattie carried the lemon and the puzzle box with her as she trailed up the stairs, a little dazed still from the exchange. She walked through the doors of the master suite and past the little salon leading to the bedchamber, inhaling the scent of lavender soap on the air as she went.
They had not yet decided whether or not to reoutfit the library back into a secondary chamber. Too much else had been happening; too much else had been taking priority. Hattie, in this moment, hoped they never mentioned it again. One chamber was perfectly well for this marriage.
She found Elias already bathed, toweling off his wet hair and wrapped in a velvet dressing gown, with water still steaming in a copper tub next to the recently doused hearth on the far wall.
“It’s still warm,” he said unnecessarily, rubbing the towel back and forth over his glossy, black hair as rivulets of scented water trickled down the lines of his throat. “Have you brought me a snack?”
“What?” she said, glancing down at the lemon in her hand. “Oh. No. It is not for eating.”
“No?” he questioned, dropping onto the corner of the bed with a curious raise of his brows. “What is it for, then?”
She frowned. “I haven’t decided yet. I will tell you when I do.”
He watched her for a second, an odd, little smile playing about his lips. “I look forward to when you do,” he said after a moment. “What’s the other thing?”
She held it out to him, crossing the room a few steps so that he could take it from her hand. “A puzzle,” she said. “Built to be solved by two people in tandem.”
He examined it with interest, turning it this way and that. “Hattie,” he said seriously, fiddling with a loose rectangle wedged into the darker block. “We are going to solve this puzzle. Not tonight, but we will.”
“If you say so,” she said, a little surprised at his enthusiasm. “I can’t promise I will be any help.”
He flashed her a boyish grin, a curl of wet hair falling over his brow as he looked up at her over the top of the puzzle. “I just need your hands, love.”
She looked down at them, spreading her fingers apart and turning them over to examine her palms. “Then you will have them.” She nodded.
He chuckled, setting the toy aside and beckoning her closer. “Let me help you out of that dress before the water gets cold,” he offered. “I promise I will actually let you bathe before I try anything untoward.”
“Watching me bathe isn’t untoward?” she asked, crossing the final few steps over to him, anyway, and turning as he stood to help her with the fastenings at the back of her gown.
“Allow me to rephrase,” he said, lips brushing her hair as he breathed her in. “I promise I will let you bathe before I am lecherous with my hands, rather than my eyes.”
“Hm,” she said as the dress loosened and fell down around her shoulders, revealing the chemise and stays underneath. “If you must.”
“I must,” he told her, though he did not take any particular care to avoid caressing her as he unlaced her stays and peeled them off her body.
She tossed him a half-hooded look over her shoulder, crossing to the tub as she pulled a few pins from her hair to secure the loose bits overhead and tested the temperature with her toe. “We should not stay up very late,” she said without turning. “We do have the showcase tomorrow, after all.”
“Yes, I recall,” he said from his place on the bed. “I chose the day before, didn’t I?”
She smiled, withdrawing her foot and gathering her chemise up around her thighs. “You did,” she said as she pulled it off overhead, listening for his intake of breath at the fully revealed visual of her naked backside.
She stepped into the water quickly, then, oddly shy about the whole thing, and sank down to sitting before he could get a good look at her, losing a few curls to the watery pull of the bath in the process and feeling them sag and cling to her neck.
She sighed, her eyes sliding shut, and let the temperature embrace her for a moment.
“Did you find your gift?” she asked, without opening them again. “It was on your pillow.”
“Oh, you’ve chosen which side is mine already?” he teased. “A bottle. With an infinity symbol upon it.”
Her eyes opened, a quick popping sensation that brought he world flooding back into her visual focus. “An eight,” she corrected, glancing over at him.
He was tilting the bottle curiously, flicking the charm with his thumbnail.
“Perhaps both,” he said with a shrug, though that made her eyes narrow. “Is it cologne?”
She nodded. “Ruby made it, at my instruction. It is you, bottled.”
“Is it, indeed?” he said, clearly intrigued. He pulled the stopper away and waved it under his nose while she watched, her breath held. “It is … smoky and … hm.”
“Storm,” she said. “And salt.”
His teeth flashed, his eyes glancing up to meet hers. “That is how you see me? She couldn’t bottle ‘snake’?”
“I already told you,” Hattie said impatiently. “I do not picture a literal snake. It is the—”
“Yes, yes,” he said with a chuckle, tipping the bottle over onto his fingertip and dabbing some of the liquid at his throat and over his heart, his finger parting his dressing gown and revealing the intriguing shape of his chest and the dark coils of hair beneath the velvet. “The shape of my name. I recall.”
“Then why do you pretend you do not?” she returned, trying to keep her eyes on his face and not his bare chest—his very, very distracting bare chest.
His smile widening, he tipped the bottle again, this time for his pulse behind his wrists. “Because it annoys you so,” he replied. “Aren’t you going to lather yourself for my pleasure?”
“No,” she said, glaring. “I’m going to do it for my cleanliness.”
“C’est blanc bonnet et bonnet blanc,” he said with a shrug, which only irked her more.
“Sometimes something is one thing,” she insisted. “Not many. It is an eight.”
“Fine,” he said with a sigh, re-stoppering the bottle and setting it on the bedside table. “It is an eight. Mea culpa.”
“Oh!” she said, splashing her hand against the water in a pique, which he clearly enjoyed very much.
She snatched up the washcloth and a petal of lavender soap and began to work the lather into the cloth, torn between begrudging amusement and the urge to throttle him. “Did you read the letter?” she snapped, glancing up at him as she began to soap her arms. “At long last?”
His smile slipped and he sighed. “No! Must I?”
She smirked. “You must. You may read it to me while I bathe, if you like.”
“I don’t like,” he declared. “Where is it?”
She nodded toward the same bedside table where he’d just placed the cologne. “There. Once you do it, Elias, it will be done.”
He grimaced at her. “Yes, I understand how verb tense works.”
It was her turn to grin, wide and brilliant. “That is wonderful to hear.”
He pursed his lips, his eyes narrowing at her. “Well played,” he conceded, and then he turned to dig out the envelope with a resigned sigh.