“Smarter than you,” she said, so softly, she might not have said it at all.
Oddly, that seemed to please him, something like triumph flashing in his eyes as he paced backward from where she stood in the center of his room. “There she is,” he said, just as softly, shaking his head, like he enjoyed the clash, despite himself. “Do come tell me, when you recall.”
“Elias,” she said, straightening her shoulders, blinking away the confusing onslaught of sensations and memories that were prodding and boxing her from every angle. “Are we getting married?”
He laughed then. He laughed sincerely, scratching at the back of his neck and breaking into a grin wide enough that she could see all of those even, white teeth.
“Oh, yes,” he said, once the first burst of amusement had passed, though he was still smiling, still chuckling, his shouldersstill shaking. “Yes, we are. Congratulations to us, my bride-to-be.”
“Mea culpa,” she said, and turned on her heel to flee.
Chapter Five
Elias hadn’t expectedanother knock on the door. Not tonight, anyway. Perhaps not ever again.
He had flopped onto his back, staring up at the dusty canopy of his childhood bed, trying to blink away the memory of Harriet French standing so close to him, flexing away the feel of the tip of her little nose against the palm of his hand, forcing himself to stay still.
He had come to live in this house on the same day she had. His bags had been from Rottingdean and hers from the foundling home down by the wharf, but their destination had been the same. And for the briefest, oddest moment, he had thought they had been the same.
She had been annoying from the start, of course, the way intelligent children often are. She had followed him, attempting to mimic his posture, the way he held silverware, the gait of his walk. She would repeat the oddest things back to him as soon as he’d said them, trying to capture his accent in her own throat.
And she hadn’t been discouraged by his rudeness.
“I am Harriet,” she had said to him that first night, after she’d awoken from her fainting spell. “But my people call me ‘Hattie.’”
“Then I shall call you ‘Harriet,’” he had responded without thinking, and it had only made her giggle.
He had been so embarrassed by that that he’d never been able to bring himself to call her ‘Hattie’ at all, afterward. Even when absolutely everyone else did.
Her strangeness had been oddly endearing for a time. He could admit that to himself. It had been grating but still somehow musical, because for the first time in his life, he hadn’t been the only child in a room.
But then Willa had decided to expand her collection of children. In had come Malcolm with his numbers and Libba with her far-superior skills of mimickery, so startlingly accurate that it had stopped Harriet from attempting such things at all.
Then had come the boy from the stables who could teach a goat the difference between an apple and a pear. And the girl from the laundress’s hut who could turn an old kitchen rag into a ballgown in miniature, who had been so, so shy but still bright and quick to smile, which had made her shyness better than Elias’s.
And had made him aware of that.
They’d found Ruby peddling perfumes at the behest of the orphanage outside the grand pavilion and collecting extra coins if she could guess the ingredients of any scent a wearer already had on. Of course, she too had been immediately adopted.
By then, Elias already had wanted to vanish. To disappear. To find somewhere else to be, because it was unbearable being so damned ordinary around all these bright, young stars.
He wanted to say Rhys had been the final straw, but he hadn’t been.
Barren fields had been the final straw. That day on the pier, as he’d paced and stewed and tried to reason that he was worthwhile too. That he was better than all of them, in the end, and Hattie trailing behind him, refusing to shut up. Chattering, chattering, chattering, and then hitting the sorest nerve.
Splash.
He groaned and covered his face.
Perhaps he could just stay here for the next year, have a vicar come and wed Harriet to him without even mussing the covers, and never face the outside world again.
Naturally, such a thought was immediately interrupted by a rap at the door.
He ignored it.
And it sounded again.
He grunted, pushing himself to his feet and padding over to the door, expecting perhaps Mr. Harcourt, come to talk logistics, or Malcolm here to pitch coming out to the pub after dinner again, neither of which interested him in this moment.
