Chapter Twenty-Six
Elias was in a far more buoyant mood than he could have anticipated on the morning of a funerary rite.
Oddly, he did not feel it inappropriate in the least. In fact, he imagined Willa would have approved most heartily, though perhaps not with a fully detailed accounting as to why.
He had laced his bride into her king’s regalia with aptitude, if not full devotion to timeliness, stealing kisses along her neck and spine where he could, despite her half-hearted protests and swatting.
He had even braided her hair, having become quite accustomed to the pattern required in his military days, though she saw to the pinning of it around her lovely head in the shape of a crown.
His own costume was more of a colorful variation on his usual clothing than anything outlandish, and once strapped fully into it and regarding himself in a mirror, he did not think he would retire it following the festivities.
While the orange cravat and goldenrod waistcoat were a bit louder than he would have chosen for himself, Monica had not been wrong about his suitability to a powder-blue fabric as the primary color of the piece itself.
Though, of course, his eyes might have only been shining so very well from the activities of the morning, rather than the complements of textile.
He gathered the poetry book he had chosen last night, Willa’s letter, and a handful of the keepsake cards he’d unearthed to his chest as they made haste toward the door, though he could not resist stalling the former Miss French one final time, pushing his weight against the jamb and demanding one final kiss before they must emerge out into the world at large.
She gave it, but she also bit him in the process.
He liked that more than he was willing to reflect upon just now, with so much ahead for the day.
Luckily, Rhys was running late as well, and they were able to share a carriage to the pavilion, crammed into the seats with a variety of his props, including a fencing sword, half a dozen pilfered beakers, and several fabric-wrapped cubes.
It was the cubes on which Hattie was fixated as they went, her eyes narrowing as she beheld one that was a soft marigold color, punctuated with black stripes.
“Rhys,” she said, very slowly, “is that my dressing gown?”
Rhys glanced at the box, and then at Elias, who immediately shook his head and widened his eyes for emphasis.
“No,” said Rhys, unconvincingly and with a queasy smile. “Not anymore, anyway.”
She drew in a hissing breath, her body thrumming out like a primed longbow. “If you think—”
“Oh, we’re here!” Elias announced, reaching across her and scrambling for the carriage door hinge before the wheels had even stopped turning. “We made good time, didn’t we?”
“We did, indeed. We did, indeed,” Rhys chirped, kicking the door open and rolling out bodily while the carriage was still crunching to a halt. “I’ll send someone for the props!”
Hattie was staring after him, chest heaving, eyes in glittering tiny slits. And it took only a moment for realization to hit her as her head began to pivot from her chaotic fellow ward to her guilty-as-sin husband, watching her warily from the cushion next to her.
“We have to alight!” Elias said. “I have to open the proceedings!”
“Elias!” she breathed, but he was already stepping over her and stumbling backward out onto the pebbled terrain.
He held his arms up to her, holding his face frozen in what he hoped was an acceptably innocent expression, until she sighed, shook her head, and accepted the aid.
“This is not over,” she said to him. “That was an imperial gift!”
“It still is,” Elias said weakly, only to get shoved and have her stalk away, hips swinging and blue-and-gold, orange-and-white skirts swinging like a particularly irate macaw as she marched off to the pavilion.
Rhys reappeared a breath later, though Elias could not account for where the devil he would have been hiding in this flat, open terrain.
“Good show,” he said. “You hold the blade.”
And he did because there was little else to do in the moment, and he needed to go back into the carriage, anyway, to retrieve his literature.
“There you bloody are!” Liberty cried, shoving several titled and well-monied people out of her way as she stalked toward the carriage. “Rhys, your corner is empty. Go fill it!”
“Aye, sir,” he said sarcastically, spinning around Elias with the three cubes and sword stacked in a precarious tower in his arms as he trotted away, top hat gleaming in the sun.
“At least it isn’t raining,” she muttered, tossing a suspicious glance at Elias as though he might summon some rain, just to spite her. “We are starting soon. Go see Errol. Your pig is distressed.”
“Oh, but I need to—” he began, but she had already vanished, her toga-like white gown fluttering out around her like a pair of wings as she flew to her next quarry.
“Right.” Elias looked around for Errol and his menagerie.
He made it as far as the temporary fencing before Malcolm intercepted him, stepping into his path so suddenly that Elias nearly smacked right into the other man, even dressed as he was in scarlet and eye-watering royal blue.
“Selwyn!” Mal exclaimed, gripping his shoulders to stop him short. “Did you read it?”
“Yes, I read it!” Elias shouted back, stumbling back into his footing. “Christ!”
“And?!” Mal demanded, eyes wild.
“And it says what Harcourt said it would,” he replied. “Shall I have a copy drafted for you?”
Malcolm’s eyes narrowed, just a hair. “If you would,” he replied, snidely. “Very kind.”
“Ruby, do not touch that pig!” Monica voice cried from across the pavilion. “You will ruin your dress!”
“Oh, but it needs me,” Ruby cried back, already half-bent over Peach’s eager form.
“I’ve got her,” Elias said, pushing past Malcolm and stepping over the fence. “I’m here.”
“Bah,” said Ruby, frowning and drawing herself back up, metallic gown glinting silver and emerald green in the sun. “Brigand.”
It took all of five minutes for Peach to be happily snorting again in Elias’s arms and for Libba to appear once again in a cloud of fury and order, waving her hands as she summoned the remainder of the wards around them, half in and half out of the pigpen.
“Rhys was late,” she began.
“I beg your pardon!” he replied, his top hat half off as he attempted to flip the brim properly.
“We’ll swap the order of presentation,” Libba continued over him. “First Elias with the elegy and then …”
“Oh, I needed to tell you—” Elias began, only to be silenced as well with a stiff hand held immediately in the air as she barreled past him.
“Then the pigs, as Rhys isn’t ready,” she said, nodding at Errol, who nodded calmly back.
“Then we will break for the interactive displays, pigs, translations, cup game, and scents while canapes are served and my troupe assembles our stage for the Pygmalion excerpt. We’ll reopen on the play section and then move directly into Hattie’s demonstration and Mal’s panel. ”
“Are you canceling me entirely?” Rhys demanded.
“Then,” Libba continued, her voice going up an octave, “another break for punch and onward to Rhys and then Monica.”
“I can’t perform opposite Monica,” Rhys whined, frowning. “That’s not fair.”
“I’ll be gentle, lamb,” Monica said softly. “We ought to have planned something together.”
“‘Ought to’ doesn’t help us now,” Libba snapped. “We’ll finish with Ruby’s sparkles, as planned.”
“‘As planned,’” Ruby echoed, still looking longingly at the pig. “Of course.”
“Are the portraits ready?” Hattie asked softly, reaching toward Libba but not actually touching her. “By the podium?”
Libba paused, glancing over her shoulder, and gave a crisp nod. “Yes. And the prince’s retinue will likely arrive shortly. Several people took it upon themselves to be early, in fact, including the honorable Mr. and Mrs. Selwyn. Elias?”
“Handled,” Elias said, bending down to perch Peach back on the ground. “They won’t cause trouble.”
“Hm,” said Libba, frowning. “Anything else?”
“Did anyone else think they saw—” Malcolm began, only to be immediately shushed by both Errol and Rhys.
The women looked on curiously as he pressed his lips together, clearly cowed out of saying what he had intended.
“Whom?” Libba demanded, curtly.
Mal shook his head. “Nothing. It was stupid.”
Hattie met Elias’s eyes over their shoulders and shrugged.
And without a single further word, the entire contingent of wards split apart like a dropped rock, each piece going in its determined direction, whilst Elias stood in the center, confused that he had missed the cue.
“What are you thinking?” Rhys hissed to Malcolm as they passed him. “Fool.”
“Oh, I’m the fool?” Mal snapped back.
“Elias, come along!” Libba called from halfway down the path to the podium. “You are required!”
He sighed and nodded, trotting after her, still gripping the book and papers to his side. He had spoken in public many times, especially during his time in the cavalry, but this felt significantly odder than any address he’d ever delivered before.
Still, he listened as Libba told him where the important folk were sitting and waited for Lem to unveil the two portraits of Willa that Hattie had sent ahead for this event, each perched on an easel next to the stage.
Willa as a child with her parents. Willa as a bride with her husband.
They had never found the third portrait, of Willa as a mother with her wards.
He glanced up once his papers were arranged as needed and nodded at Libba, taking a bracing breath.
She quieted the crowd somehow.
Elias was not certain how.
She did not wave her arms or shout or flap a flag around.
Everyone just silenced themselves because Liberty Lennox had decided they ought to, and they all turned to him, expectantly.
He almost laughed at how eerie and alarming it was.
“Good afternoon,” he said, raising his hand. “I do not know many of you assembled here today, but I am Elias Selwyn, Baron Selwyn, and I am here to open the festivities to honor the life of my Aunt Willa, the longtime dowager baroness, and the mind behind the prodigies of Brighton Beach.”
He cleared his throat, casting a nervous glance at Libba before he shattered their carefully rehearsed script.
“We had prepared an elegy for today’s opening,” he said with a wry smile and a shrug.
“But last night, I read the final letter my aunt wrote to me, and she asked me in no uncertain terms to please not be so damned maudlin.”
There was a ripple of laughter, a drawing closer of parasols and top hats as the crowd began to thicken.
He could feel Libba’s glare but did not dare meet it.
He laughed, shaking his head. “I spent all night in her library,” he said.
“My aunt loved to correspond with people in far-flung lands.
She had a fascination for everything alien and queer and unknown to her.
Every book on her bookshelf was littered through with correspondence from friends she had made and figures she had written in the varied corners of the globe.
Many included, at her request, artistic interpretations of their homes and notes about the things they loved.
“I have brought some today, which I will display later, for open viewing, as a testament to her passion for living.
“But I have also decided to honor her final wish and shrug off the impulse to give a maudlin farewell, no matter how sad I might personally feel about her absence. Here amongst the keepsake cards with art of places like Marakesh and Melbourne and the Mississippi River, I found a poem about just such a queer creature as those for which Willa always had a fondness, and to me, it seemed the right thing to read to welcome this final farewell to her legacy.”
He could see Hattie out of the corner of his eye, a swish of white and blue as she drew nearer, her hair glinting like molten bronze on her head.
“When we were children, Willa took us to see a collection of exotic creatures,” Elias said, chuckling a little in memory.
“And then she told us the most unusual creatures in the menagerie that day were us children, not the lemurs and tigers and kangaroos. Still. She had spent a great deal of time admiring the kangaroos.”
“We all did,” Ruby called, winning another little laugh from the assemblage.
Elias took a breath and opened the book in front of him, flashing a grin at the crowd.
“This is not a completed poem. It is a draft, shared with my aunt in friendship and happiness, sent to her after she had already vanished and left unopened in her quarters until I discovered it there. I do hope that someday, this work is published. I hope that someday it is completed and shared with the world at large, for it spoke to me in a way that reminded me strongly of my aunt. And I think it will speak to you too. Kangaroo,” he recited. “By Barron Field.”
And he lost himself a little, as he read.
She had made the squirrel fragile;
She had made the bounding hart;
But a third so strong and agile
Was beyond ev’n Nature’s art;
So she join’d the former two
In thee, Kangaroo!
To describe thee, it is hard:
Converse of the camélopard,
Which beginneth camel-wise,
But endeth of the panther size,
Thy fore half, it would appear,
Had belong’d to some “small deer,”
Such as liveth in a tree;
By thy hinder, thou should’st be
A large animal of chace,
Bounding o’er the forest’s space;—
Join’d by some divine mistake,
None but Nature’s hand can make—
Nature, in her wisdom’s play,
On Creation’s holiday.
He only looked up again to check that he was still here, to look into the faces of the audience, pressing ever nearer, baffled as they might have been.
Thou can’st not be amended: no;
Be as thou art; thou best art so.
When sooty swans are once more rare,
And duck-moles the Museum’s care,
Be still the glory of this land,
Happiest Work of finest Hand!
There was applause. If not for the applause, Elias might not have realized that he had come to the end. He looked up, dazed and teary eyed, and so unexpectedly full of joy that he thought he might burst.
And then he saw her too, for just a moment, against the surf and sky.
He saw her as clearly as he saw anyone else that day.
And then she was gone.