He shivered, despite the glorious, shimmering sunlight, his very person flickering between the man and the boy. The tall and the short.
He ran both hands over his dark-brown hair and gave himself a shake.
“They’re waiting,” he said out loud, though the driver was gone to unbridle the horses and he was alone here, boots digging into the tiny, pebbled drive. “Aren’t they?”
If Willa’s ghost was there to hear him, she did not answer.
That was very like her.
The doors opened and a figure emerged, casting a long, slanting shadow opposite the sun. It was, mercifully, not one of Willa’s little prodigies, but the staid and familiar Julian Harcourt, Esquire. The barrister. The friendly man who had always had a warm hand for Elias’s shoulder.
He exhaled, lifting his chin and giving his best smile of greeting. “Mr. Harcourt!”
“Lord Selwyn,” the older man called back, breaking into a smile. “I have not seen you in some time! You are looking very well. Very well, indeed. And I must congratulate you on your recent promotion. A baron and a captain both. You do your house proud.”
“Not that house,” Elias joked, nodding toward Starling’s Rest. “But maybe another one, somewhere.”
Mr. Harcourt gave him a wry, little twist of the lips and turned, gesturing at the door. “You are the last to arrive. Won’t you come in?”
“Oh,” said Elias, trying not to frown as he followed the other man to the doors. “All of them are here? Already?”
“Indeed. I’ve only just arrived myself, along with the Lennoxes and Miss French. The others were here waiting.”
Elias blanched, flashes of children bouncing in his mind. Of Malcolm, dark-skinned and charming, leading games of make believe on the lawn while his sister had become heroes and villains, damsels and brigands, breath after breath.
And Hattie.
He winced, hearing a splash of water and a crack of thunder in a far-tucked corner of his memory.
He flexed his hands. The hands that had pushed her into the ocean, so bloody annoyed by her endless prattling and following and chattering and questions. The attempts to mimic his accent, the way she’d repeat everything he’d said.
It was no wonder he’d shoved her.
They had still been children back then.
Did she still hold a grudge over it? Did she remember it at all?
Somehow, he imagined she did.
But if it haunted her… If that day on the pier—and off it, for that matter—revisited Hattie French, Elias knew for certain that it looked very different to the memory as it played for him.
Very different, indeed.
He sucked in a breath and turned the corner into the parlor, a room so silent, he would not have expected to find anyone in it at all.
When he walked in and found all their eyes on him, all seven pairs, he understood.
Hehad caused the silence.
Again.
He’d spent almost three years in this house. Amongst them. And then, finally, he’d been allowed to leave. He’d left and had only come back twice: once for Christmas that first year, and once more to collect his papers before he’d made the change from Eton to Oxford.
He’d made that second journey when he’d known the household had been on holiday elsewhere. He’d avoided them then. He’d avoided them since he had been still growing into his body and learning who he was, away from all of this.
“Good God,” said Ruby Little, still dark haired and bright eyed, fluttering up from her lounge on the chaise with a hand to her chest. “Elias Selwyn, look at you! My goodness, who knew what was hiding under all that youthful pudge. Come sit by me.”
“Ruby,” Errol chided, softly and frowning.
