She stood, her red gown crinkling around her, still the type of beautiful that gloated over the fact in every move she made. “I can’t believe it,” she said again, her shining, rouged lips parting in a grin. “You really are gorgeous. Welcome home.”
“Well, what about the rest of us?” the little Welsh shit who used to steal Elias’s desserts and his socks said from the window, grinning widely. Rhys Caradoc, Elias reminded himself. Greasy Rhys. He’d been the last addition to the wards, perhaps even the final straw on Elias’s tolerance for staying here. “Aren’t we all gorgeous too?”
Ruby turned and looked at him, flicking her eyes from his scuffed shoes to his open collar. “No,” she said, slumping back into the chaise in a flutter of skirts.
Elias frowned.
Willa hadn’t taken in any other wards after he’d left this place. Had that been related to his leaving? Surely not.
Mr. Harcourt cleared his throat, still standing formal and stiff near the entry. “I suppose I ought to ask,” he said politely, “if you all wish to settle and rest before we begin the reading or if you wish to have it done with immediately.”
“Done with,” several voices chanted right away, with only one deviating.
“Oh, I wouldn’t mind a nap,” said Harriet French, bronze curls glowing in the afternoon sun from where she stood near Rhys Caradoc at the window. She blinked, her eyes glinting like amber in the light. “I suppose I’m the outlier.”
“Usually,” said Ruby, making Rhys snicker and soft, little Monica Thresher frown.
“Oh, Ruby.” Monica tutted under her breath.
Hattie nodded, her eyes moving slowly to settle over Elias as her narrow shoulders straightened. “Then I suppose I will stay,” she said, as though speaking directly to him. “I shouldn’t like to be the cause of everyone’s irritation.”
He inclined his head toward her, using the opportunity to admire the ways she’d changed in the years since he’d seen her last.
And the ways she hadn’t.
Judging from that last little comment, she remembered him as well as he remembered her.
It seemed, for that brief moment, that neither of them had changed much at all.
She was still brassy inside and out, a perfect little pedant with impeccable posture and strange affectations, and he still felt like an idiot in her presence.
He wasn’t two inches shorter than her anymore, of course. Nor was he quite as soft as he had once been. The miracles oftransitional adulthood alone couldn’t be the only things that had changed, though, could they?
She had, perhaps, gained some control over the incessant questions and chatter, though Elias supposed that remained to be seen.
She had finally mastered that posh, perfect accent she’d wanted so badly. Every syllable was refined.
She was taller now. Shapelier.
Though of course that shape of hers had already started to blossom that day at the pier. He could see her now, sputtering and aghast and confused, lurching out of the water with her muslin dress translucent and clinging to her. He could feel the shock of it. The heat and confusion and instant regret.
He cleared his throat, shifting and looking for somewhere to sit.
Heat or confusion or instant regret would not suit him right now, at a damned funerary rite. He turned his back to Hattie and hastened toward the chair in the rear corner of the room, shadowed and cool, apart from the wards.
Elias had never been one of them, anyhow.
Mr. Harcourt was already thumbing through his folio, pulling a pair of well-worn silver spectacles from his pocket and perching them midway down his nose.
“I’ve a letter for each of you,” he began, “though I would ask that you wait until I’ve read the preliminary statements to open and read them.”
“You can keep mine,” Rhys said immediately, grimacing at the envelopes and crossing himself. “I can’t read.”
“Shut up, Rhys,” Malcolm suggested.
The Irish boy, Errol, settled into the chair next to Elias, shaking his head with what seemed a fond exasperation at the exchange between the other two. He glanced over at Elias and gave him a little nod of greeting, friendly and brief.
Elias nodded back, grateful that of all of them, this was the one who had taken that chair.
