Chapter Thirteen
If it wouldnot have announced his petulance to the world at large, Elias Selwyn would have taken dinner in his room.
As it was, he would not give her the satisfaction. Or himself, he supposed.
It wasn’t exactly that he was displeased that she’d read him and read him well. It was just that she’d caught on so damned quickly. He thought he’d have at least one full day of enjoying the upper hand in their endless sparring.
Instead, he’d had about twelve hours.
And damned if he wasn’t proud of her amidst the frustration.
Yes, pouting in his room over a solitary meal had held some appeal, but he was coming to enjoy these communal meals in a queer sort of way. The more time he spent with the wards, grown as they had into mostly adults, the less outside their sheen he felt. They squabbled and faltered and blustered like any other person.
And that was oddly comforting.
Besides, he had been taught once and over again in the cavalry that there are only two options in moments of combat: engagement and retreat. And one should only retreat if defeat is a certainty or as a strategic gambit.
Retreat, Elias knew, should never be a thing of indulgence.
Still, it burned him a little that he could not indulge.
And he liked lamb, he supposed. Tonight they were having lamb.
“Mint jelly is a vile thing,” Ruby Little observed, jiggling a sample of it on the edge of a spoon. “Tell me, why do we explore the globe, corner markets in divine samples of all things sensory, and then put mint on lamb?”
“Why eat lamb at all?” Errol Cagney pondered, helping himself to more summer cauliflower, roasted to a caramelized golden brown. “Sweetleanbhaí.”
Ruby frowned at him. “Do not make me feel guilty. I only wished to lament the lack of cumin.”
“Mint jelly,” Elias echoed, glancing at Hattie, who was also looking at hers with a discontent wrinkle of her brow. “Three?”
She blinked, looking up at him with a flash of alarm. “What?”
“Three,” he repeated, slower, a little glow of pettiness alight in his chest. “Isn’t it?”
She blinked. Thrice. “Yes.”
“Oh, excellent,” said Rhys Caradoc. “Now there are two of them.”
Elias grinned for the first time since that afternoon, but he did not take his eyes off Hattie, lingering and relishing in the deepening of her frown.
He supposed the others were observing them, but it was hard to care.
He wondered if she had torn her room apart yet, looking for that hideous tiger-striped dressing gown.
She wouldn’t find it.
And the new one would suit her much better, anyhow.
He had taken his time choosing it. He had considered which colors might glow against her skin and hair. Which hues best suited brass and molten bronze.
He had settled on a glinting, garnet red in cool, liquid satin, with bell-shaped sleeves and a broad sash resembling an Easternkimono. The boxes had vanished from the chaise in the parlor, but he did not know if she had opened them yet.
She was going to have to, he thought, if she wanted to wear anything other than a shift after changing out of her dress tonight.
Libba Lennox cleared her throat very loudly and made a show of clicking her knife against her plate as she cut into her lamb. She whispered a word under her breath that might have been, “Lewd.”
He smiled to himself, dropping his eyes to his plate, and curated his own bite of food.
