Stay strong, my darling girl.
You are going to be a fine baroness.
All my love,
Willa Starling Selwyn—your mother in my heart.
Part II
The Shape of Things
Chapter Seven
Elias hadn’t hadanything more after that first pint, but he had remained for another hour so, unable to tear himself away from observing what must have been some sort of rehearsal for the dowager baroness’s imminent funeral.
He remembered their summer showcases very well, of course, though he had only ever attended two of them.
The first two.
Willa had called each of them ‘a gauntlet’ and ‘an opportunity,’ a yearly chance to show the world that talent trumps all. There was nowhere else in the world like Brighton to do something so audacious. Prince George had still been young then, but his fashionable exodus to the Brighton shores had already begun to catch, as well as the attractions under the grand pavilion and smaller stages dotted down the coast.
She would spend weeks bringing in experts, hiring propmakers, and rehearsing with her wards so that their showcase would outshine every other act put before the denizens of Brighton that summer. The festivities were, without question, the highlight of the year, not just for Willa, but for every one of her wards, save Elias.
He imagined they had only grown in scale and grandeur during his years away at school. He could close his eyes and see it now, under a shaded pavilion in the summer sun, the surf high and the smell of salt in the air while lanky, adolescentRhys pulled scarves from his mouth and Malcolm performed unseemly feats of counting and calculation to applause.
Errol had always come with a grange display and a few of his pets to do tricks. It was never something so pedestrian as a dog. No, no. He would have a rabbit sitting and standing on command or a duck hopping through hoops. One very notable time, he’d trained a spider to answer commands.
Ruby, blindfolded, would identify scents and foods and combinations, already flirting with adults she couldn’t see from behind the blinders on her eyes.
He shook his head, running a hand over his own eyes as he lay in bed, back to the sun. He might have even enjoyed all of that, if he’d seen it as a guest, rather than as the only child in the house without an act.
“What’s my talent?” he had asked Willa once, hoping she might know the secret.
“You are a baron,” she had answered, shrugging. Then, perhaps realizing how she’d sounded, she’d put a hand on his shoulder and turned him to face her, amending the statement with, “You are like me. People like us got the luck of birth, so we have to try a little harder elsewhere. It is how the universe keeps balance.”
He sighed.
Maybe she’d been right.
He could hear Hattie’s boot stomping on that bench tonight as the pub-goers cheered for her nonsense insults in half a dozen languages.
God, she’d been magnificent up there. And it had been nothing at all to her. Just a funny skill she had, a thing she could do without much trying.
Insufferable.
He’d never been quite so irritated by someone before, and he’d met plenty of unbearable people at school. And in the military.
Plenty and more.
A flash of her collapsing back on that bench, her skirts flouncing up around her like an exploded dandelion, played behind his eyes, her brassy hair tickling her cheeks. It sent a spear of heat into his belly that was just as unwelcome as everything else about her.
Insufferable, he thought again.Perfectly irritating.
Glorious.
Something about her had always just been… glorious.
He wondered how many languages she spoke now.
