Chapter Twenty-Seven
Hattie had wished to greet Elias the instant he had stepped from the platform and shower him with praise and gratitude.
She was, however, intercepted by the royal valet, who had been sent to retrieve Elias for an audience.
It occurred to Hattie that she might point out, at an advantageous moment in the future, that she was no longer the only one with princes as intimates. It was a thought that made her smile as she watched him be led to the dais where the prince was seated.
“That was just lovely,” came Monica’s voice, punctuated with a sniffle. “Perfect, I’d say. Though I imagine Libba will be steaming.”
“She will cool,” said Hattie, turning to the other woman with a smile.
Behind them, Errol was preparing his pigs and their props for a grand display.
“No grange,” Hattie observed, nodding toward him. “He is distressed about that.”
“Well,” said Monica, “I never understood the appeal of giant vegetables, anyhow.”
“Yes, they are better small and crisp,” Hattie agreed. “But the flowers were always nice.”
“There is always next year,” said Monica, her pale brows raising.
Hattie blinked at her, warmth in her chest. “Yes,” she said. “There is always next year.”
For a time, they stood side by side and watched the beginning of the pig act, though by now, they had seen it many times. The little porcine performers balanced on balls and acted on command. One was a high jumper among them that could leap directly into Errol’s arms, which delighted the crowd.
“Have the Selwyns found you yet?” Monica asked her, after a while. “Your new parents-in-law?”
Hattie turned, surprised. “No. Are they here?”
Monica nodded. “The stepfather approached me to apologize if I took his observation at the wedding as an insult,” she said, with a twist of her lips. “Not quite an apology, though I think he saw it as one. He then went onto tell me how fond he is of jiggly women.”
“Oh, Christ,” said Hattie, horrified. “Do not tell Elias.”
Monica snorted, shaking her head. “I shan’t. He then went on to say that he only would have decried a match between us because of Elias’s childhood shape and the worry that we would produce a brood of soft boys combined together, unsuitable for Selwyn heirs.”
Hattie tilted her head to the side, staring at Monica for a long while. She blinked and cleared her throat, shaking the visual from her head. “Perhaps tell Mr. Harcourt instead,” she decided. “I should like to see what he thinks about this scenario, jiggle and sons alike.”
Monica giggled, clearly startled by this suggestion, and bustled away, hiding her pink cheeks under her fingers while Hattie grinned after her departing form.
Unfortunately, the loss of crowd companion did, in fact, open her up to being approached by the Selwyns, who sidled into the spot Monica had vacated with alarming immediacy.
“Miss French!” the man boomed, already red-faced from the summer heat and sporting two shiny, purple bruises under each eye. His nose was puffy and had a line of talc sitting over the scab that ran horizontal across the bridge.
“She is Lady Selwyn now, Wallace,” his wife said, fanning herself in agitation. “Good afternoon, dear. We’ve come to say good afternoon.”
Hattie did not sigh. “Good afternoon,” she replied.
“What an unusual gown, my dear,” her mother-in-law said, taking a step back and stepping to the blue side first, and then to the white-and-orange side. “It is two gowns in one, I daresay!”
“It is a replica,” Hattie said, looking down at the skirt and shaking it out. “Of a medieval king’s gown. Jadwiga of Poland.”
“A king’s gown, you say?” Mr. Selwyn repeated, blustering out a chuckle. “Bit light in the feet, was he?”
“She,” said Hattie, blinking. “She was a king.”
Mr. Selwyn stared at her a moment, his forehead muscles twitching in obvious confusion. “Oh,” he finally decided, glancing at his wife with eyebrows that suggested they would discuss it later. “If you say so, Baroness.”
Hattie forced a smile. “I must go and prepare. Thank you for greeting me.”
“Wait, no!” Catriona Selwyn said, her hand shooting out to grab Hattie by the wrist. “We must … clear the air. After that unfortunate business at the wedding, you understand.”
“Indeed?” Hattie said, staring down at her wrist with such pointed interest that the other woman immediately dropped her hold.
“Indeed,” said Mrs. Selwyn, wincing. “We … have only one son, you understand. It was a blow to find out through gossip that he was to wed. We had no say in it, no inclusion. We were wounded. And we behaved badly. Without thinking.”
Mr. Selwyn made a noise in his throat but did not otherwise comment.
“I wish we hadn’t,” Mrs. Selwyn said, looking exhausted by the effort it took to say those words, her face drawn and her eyes sagging at the corners. “In fact, I thought perhaps when we got back home, I might write to you, my dear.”
“‘Write to me’?” Hattie repeated, baffled.
“She likes the idea of her correspondence being tucked between letters from tsars and dukes,” Mr. Selwyn said with an indulgent little chuckle that made Hattie want to break his nose again.
Mrs. Selwyn immediately reddened. “Well, all right, Wallace, that’s quite enough. I only thought that a woman ought to get to know she whom her only son chose to marry.”
“Oh, I think you will find me quite simple,” Hattie said with a bright smile at their slack-jawed reactions to her words. “To get to know, of course. Please excuse me. I look forward to writing you!”
She walked away still grinning, her cheeks hurting from her delight at her own wordplay.
“So they are his siblings?” one fine lady was whispering to another. “He married one of them.”
“No, no, they were the dowager baroness’s wards,” the other said back, clicking her tongue. “Honestly, this is what happens when you never summer in Brighton.”
“But they’re all … Well, they’re quite vocational for a baroness’s brood, are they not?” the other woman huffed.
“Starling’s Rest is the domain of the demimonde, my dear,” her friend replied with a shrug. “Enjoy it while the sun burns hot.”
Demimonde, Hattie thought.
Half world.
Like the kangaroo in the poem.
She giggled to herself and made her way to Rhys’s corner, flicking the back of his ear before he could hear her coming and reveling in his outraged spin of surprise.
“Whatever is left of my dressing gown,” she said before he could speak, “you will deliver to Monica. And she will make something permanent and ostentatious that will live in a visible corner of the Rest and haunt you and my badly behaved husband until you too are being feted into the afterlife under this pavilion. Do you understand me, Rhys?”
He blinked, his eyes burning emerald green in the sun. “You know,” he said with a few blinks of his heavily lashed and kohled eyes, “for once, I actually do.”
“I will have that box, too,” she decided. “As penance.”
“Not my box!” he cried, hands flying protectively out to shield said box and his half dozen stolen beakers from her greedy gaze.
Hattie only laughed and turned back to see if her husband had completed his royal duties. She wandered back to the podium to inspect the keepsake cards he had laid out, each from a different and strange corner of the world.
There were seven of them, she realized with amusement.
He ought to have brought eight.
Eight was far more correct.
She wanted to stay and read them all, to turn them over in her hands, but she was not the only curious onlooker, and given that the art cards would return to their bedroom with them tonight, she knew she needed to make way for the others, while they still had the chance.
Libba’s troupe had moved to begin setting up the props for their play snippet in the center of the pavilion while canapes appeared on trays from the household staff, dotted throughout the crowd.
That meant interactive displays were next.
It was all so familiar that it was hard to really accept that it had been a decade since the last time they’d done this.
“I got you a biscuit,” Elias’s voice said, appearing at her elbow with a hazelnut confection in his hand and a smile on his face. “Last one.”
She turned, reaching up to brush some of the wayward strands of his dark hair back into place. “Those are my favorites,” she told him.
“Yes, I remember,” he replied smugly. “What do they taste like to you?”
“Hm,” she said, taking the offering and biting into it. She chewed slowly, her eyes sliding to the side as she considered it. “They taste like contentment.”
He twinkled at her, swiping a bit of the hazelnut paste with his finger and dropping it onto his tongue. “What?” he said at her little gasp of outrage. “I want to taste contentment.”
She narrowed her eyes but did not argue, her heart fluttering pleasantly in her chest at this cheek. “What did the prince say?”
“Oh, the usual things,” Elias said with a shrug. “Condolences and congratulations and so on. It was a lot of words and not a lot of meaning.”
“How is that possible?” Hattie demanded, frowning. “I can never get a single syllable out without meaning something, you know.”
“I know,” he replied—so fondly, she blushed.
She cleared her throat, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. “Your parents came to speak to me.”
“Oh?” he said, raising his eyebrows. “An apology?”
“Their closest approximation, I think,” she said. “I don’t know where they got to.”
She turned, her shoulder leaning against his chest as they surveyed the crowd in tandem and settled, at the same time, on the impression of Wallace Selwyn, just now crouched on the ground on his hands and knees, chortling like a child, as Errol’s jumping pig made a running leap toward his back and cleared him in a single bound.
Mrs. Selwyn was standing nearby, covering her face in what appeared to be shame.
“Well,” said Elias, sounding a little stunned. “All right.”
“Oh,” said Hattie, glancing at the scents table and Ruby situating herself with a silver blindfold in her hands. “I am supposed to go stop any guests from waving anything particularly vile under Ruby’s nose. There’s always one or two who try.”
“Should I ask?” Elias said, wrinkling his own nose.
“No,” said Hattie, grimacing. “It is astounding what people will put in their pockets in the hopes of shocking others. Oh, I suppose Lemuel is going to do it.”
“Lemuel?” Elias repeated as Lem’s large frame stalked across the pavilion in his sultan costume, coming to stand before the table with crossed arms and a respectful nod to Ruby. “I thought ‘Lem’ was short for ‘Lem.’”
“Not anymore,” said Hattie. “Do you think Errol can grow a lemon tree in our bedroom?”
“What?!”
She broke into a broad smile, lacing her hands through his and squeezing. “Find us a good seat for the theatrical excerpt,” she instructed. “I have to play the five tongues game.”
“Wait,” he said, gripping her hand before she could spin away and tugging her back to him. “I want to play.”
She fell against his chest with a surprised squeak, her fingers brushing hazelnut crumbs onto his waistcoat, and gazed up at him, uncertain if she was being teased. “You do?”
“I do,” he said, grinning down at her. “Will you humor me?”
She blinked, unwilling to steady herself just yet from her collapsed state against him. “Well, I suppose,” she said. “But nothing overly rude.”
“Oh, it’s very rude,” he assured her, his eyes sparkling.
“Then do it quietly!” she returned, tightening her lips. “I shall whisper if I must.”
“I don’t want you to whisper,” he replied, already beginning to laugh. “I want you to announce.”
She sighed, using his body to propel herself back onto her feet. “Very well, then. Do your worst.”
He watched her, flushed and fond and still chuckling. “Tell me you love me,” he requested. “Five ways.”
For a moment, she just gazed at him, her chest aching. Sweetness and salt danced over her tongue and a scent hung in the air like caramel and vanilla.
“Je t’aime,” she said softly. “Ya tebya lyublyu.”
“Hm,” he said, crossing his arms as though assessing her pronunciation.
“Tha gaol agam ort,” she told him. “I love you.”
“You do?” he replied, taunting and smug.
“Sic,” she said. “Mea culpa.”
“Good,” he answered. “I love you too.”