Elias allowed himself a light chuckle, rounding down the hall toward the front of the house and passing by Errol, who was fully dressed, and Ruby, who was in a sagging, velvet dressing gown with a steaming cup of tea in her hands.
“Three weeks just isn’t enough time to grow anything worthy of a grange,” he was saying to her as she yawned behind her hand. He glanced up at Elias, nodding in greeting, just as a series of raps sounded on the door behind them.
“Oh, you were right,” Ruby said absently. “Someoneisat the door.”
“I’ll get it,” Elias offered, stepping around them.
It gave him an opportunity to pass near to the parlor without going in, lest there be something worth overhearing.
Sadly, the only voice he heard was Libba Lennox’s, ranting about housing accommodations for a dozen people she apparently had plans to ship in from London for the funeral.
“Lem can stay in the house, but the rest of them will make off with the crockery,” she announced.
Elias sighed and turned toward the door, where another series of crisp raps sounded. “I’m coming, I’m coming,” he muttered under his breath, grabbing the knob and swinging the damned thing open.
On the stoop was the bright-faced, ginger-haired visage of Jasper Townsend, Malcolm’s best mate and lifelong fixture of Starling’s Rest, even during Elias’s short tenure here. He lookedjust as fresh and chipper as Elias himself felt, turned out in a crisp, gray day suit.
“Ah,” Jasper said, blinking in surprise. “Well, sink me. Lord Selwyn? You answering your own door?”
“We have to hire a staff,” Elias said with a shrug, stepping back. “Malcolm’s in the dining room. Did you leave early last night?”
“’Course not,” said Jasper, hopping into the house. “Why?”
“No reason,” said Elias, instinctively retreating inward.
No, he thought.You’re a man now.
“It’s only that all the others look like they were dragged home behind a horse,” he added immediately, squaring his shoulders.
Jasper turned to him with a blindingly bright grin. “Really? Even Mal?”
“EspeciallyMal,” Elias assured him.
Jasper chortled. “Well, out of practice, aren’t they? Still, must go gloat. Cheerio, Baron.”
“Morning,” Elias managed to answer, a little dazed by it all as he watched the other man lope down the hall past Ruby and Errol toward his quarry.
Libba emerged from the parlor just as he passed it, nearly colliding with him, and gave him an earful about his carelessness the rest of the way to the dining room.
“My apologies, Princess Xandine!” he answered bombastically as their voices faded down the hall. “Don’t have me beheaded!”
“It would take too long to carve off that kettle of yours,” Libba snapped back. “My headsman needs his strength.”
Elias shut the door slowly and craned his neck side to side.
This place was still a madhouse.
He scratched at his hair, glancing into a hallway mirror as he passed it, just to remind himself that he was not still apudgy, uncertain child, and sighed, shaking his head at his own foolishness.
What was it about people from the past that dragged one straight back to the place they’d been in the last time they’d been amongst them?
It hardly seemed fair.
At least they’d taken verbal note of his transformation, for what that was worth.
Or Ruby had, anyway.
He grimaced, making his way into the parlor.
