She blinked. “Who?”
“Your fellow prodigies,” he snapped, gesturing at her door. “And all their minions. Already, Monica has three seamstresses helping her with the costumes and she hasn’t even gone to see her new storefront yet. And I understand Libba is shipping in a full acting troupe from London?”
“Oh, yes,” said Hattie, deflating, like she was somehow relieved that he was making sense. “But only Lem will stay in the house.”
“Who the devil is Lem?” he demanded, trying to keep his voice down in the midst of exploding.
“A muscle,” she said. “Don’t worry. He doesn’t talk very much.”
“What?!”
“We’ll need another chair at the dining room table,” she realized, tilting her head to the side, “if we have both Lem and the occasional visit from Mr. Harcourt.”
“So they do all intend to live here?” he pressed, a sight more panicked than he’d intended to be. “The whole year?”
She shook her head and wrinkled up that lovely brow. “I do not know. They are all staying in Brighton, but I suppose some might wish to seek external accommodations, even though I think that would be a silly and unnecessary expense. We could ask them.”
“Ask? If people intend to take over our house?” he repeated, incredulous.
“Well, it is their house too,” she said.
“No,” he corrected. “Right now, it is yours, and when we marry, it is ours, but it is not theirs any more than my old dormitory bed at Eton is mine.”
She gave a soft, thoughtful little blink, her mouth melting into a wistful smile. “Oh, that is funny,” she said, reaching up to toy with the braid of bronze hair that was sitting on her shoulder.“I had a bed at the foundling home once. It must be another child’s now.”
He stared at her, a little needle of guilt tapping at his ribs. “You’re saying they have nowhere else to go,” he realized.
“What?” she said, frowning. “No, I was… but there are all these beds, Elias. Why should we keep them empty? And two more when we move into the master suite.”
“For the sake of peace?” he suggested, already knowing he’d lost. “No, no. I know you are right. Hell, Harcourt can have my room.”
She tittered then, just a little thing, such a rare sound that it shot through him, right past that needling guilt and directly into the base of his gut, his eyes snapping up to watch her.
She covered her mouth, shaking her head and giggling again. “Do you think he would redecorate? I have always imagined he keeps a file cabinet next to his bed.”
Elias couldn’t stop himself from smiling at the image, shaking his head in half surrender to the absurdity of this encounter. “So when he rolls over in the morning, he can immediately reach inside?”
“Oh, all throughout the night,” she replied, hiccupping with amusement. “He keeps a pad of paper and a fresh ink pot on top so he can wake in spurts and jot down docket amendments in the wee hours.”
He laughed then, unintentionally and perhaps a little too loud for a man who did not want anyone knowing he was in here. He looked around, resolving to just allow the rest of the conversation to unfold however it might, and realized with a frown, “There are no chairs in here. Just that little vanity stool.”
“Oh,” she said, looking around as though she were just realizing it for the first time too. “You can sit with me on the bed. It is very comfortable.”
As though to demonstrate, she fell backward onto the rumpled sheets, her dressing gown spooling out around her in a silken heap, and patted the space to her side.
His resolve flickered. Perhaps he ought to flee, after all.
“Do you want something to drink?” she asked, her eyes going wide as though she were a new bride receiving her first polite guest. “I have some port here somewhere. Oh! And the little crystal glasses. I can see if you do the same things.”
“What?” he croaked as she pushed herself off the bed and went past him in a gust of that unusual, spiced perfume she wore, in search of said port and tiny glasses.
“Please sit,” she said without turning around, already falling to her knees to dig in the little beverage cabinet next to her vanity table. “Oh, here they are! Bit dusty. I’ll rinse them.”
He was frozen in place, watching her kneeling on the rug in her negligee, bits of her curling brassy hair escaping her braid as she rummaged around inside that cabinet. “Perhaps I ought to go. You were sleeping.”
She paused, glancing over her shoulder. “I wasn’t,” she reminded him. “I was coming to tell you about Barron Field. Ah! The port. Sit down!”
She pushed herself back to her feet in a single elegant motion, taking up the glasses between her fingers and the bottle of port in her other hand as she marched toward him in the direction of her washbasin.
