“That is a thought, though,” Ruby Little had put in, holding the Jadwiga costume up to herself in the mirror. “I’ve not made a scent for Elias yet. What do you think, Hattie? What smells spark in that strange, little mind of yours when you think of him?”
“None with vanilla,” Hattie had remarked primly and then ignored the knowing glance that Monica and Ruby shared in response.
As for Elias himself, she had not truly spoken to him since that day in the master suite. The odd comment here and there, like the barb about going to hear the banns, had been exchanged. There had been plenty of silent language to untangle from meal to meal. But there had been no private discourse, and as a matter of consequence, no further kissing or intimacy whatsoever.
She did not care. Not one whit.
And she did not think it mattered how well she liked the new red dressing gown, either. It was only that it was odd, how well it fit her. The other one, the one that had gone missing, had always been just a little too large above the waist, and a bit too tight about the hips.
This one fit like she had allowed Monica to pin it to her during creation.
It was not worth pondering that she liked the garment itself. Nor was the thrill that Elias had been moved to do something so spectacularly childish for her, specifically. No, not worth pondering at all.
Still, she had grabbed Ruby by the arm and told her in no uncertain terms, “Saltwater accidentally swallowed, bonfire smoke, and the smell of clouds heavy with rain they are about to unleash. Silver and gray and the rumble of far-off thunder, rolling ever nearer.”
And Ruby, for once, had not mocked or needled her about it, but only nodded, wide-eyed. “Anything else?”
“Eight,” Hattie had said, and then she’d sighed in frustration and fled to her next task.
If it had occurred to her to be so petulant in her ruminations on Elias’s withholding of private discourse, she might have made hyperbolic notes on what could compel him to finally come toher, as he ought. And if, had she been so compelled, she had allowed her mind to flit toward hypothetical grandiosity, she might have thought that perhaps it would take a royal decree to simply make him behave sensibly. For once.
As it happened, one came.
And so did Elias.
“Harriet!” he called, stalking through the halls in his Hessian riding boots like an angry schoolmaster. “Did you write to the prince?!”
Hattie, in that moment, had been sitting with the Polish seamstress, practicing a volley of rhymes. “Me?” she said, truly confused. “No. At least not the English one.”
“Harriet,” he said again, slower and less patient as he brandished forth a letter. “I do not have the patience to address your retinue of princes just now. This was addressed to you, fromourPrince Regent.”
She stood, crossing the room, and took it from him, ensuring that their fingers brushed as she did so. “Oh,” she said, flipping the thing over in her hands with a little sigh of annoyance. “He always sends this. Or he used to, anyhow, when we did the showcase as children. He attends.”
“Oh, ‘heattends,’” Elias said mockingly in what she thought was a very poor mimic of her voice. “What the devil am I supposed to do to prepare for it?”
“Shall I go?” the seamstress said, already halfway gone, using Hattie’s nod as the final seal on her retreat.
“Look what you’ve done,” Hattie said, frowning after the young woman. “I’ve only got a week left to practice, Elias!”
He was staring at her with an incredulous, simmering heat in his eyes, like he wanted to grip her by the shoulders and shake her. “Practice,” he repeated. “Yes, perhaps that is something we ought to discuss? Are there rehearsals for this event? A schedule? Anything resembling structure?”
“Of course,” said Hattie, frowning. “Libba does that, usually. She was ever the director.”
“She hasn’t said a word to me about it!” he said, throwing his hands up. “What is my role here?!”
Hattie narrowed her eyes. “She told you to find a poem. I was there, Elias. We discussed it.”
“Oh, find a poem!” he exclaimed, sarcasm tipping each consonant. “Is that all?”
“Well, no …”
He made a noise like a kicked cat, throwing his hands up and stomping around her to collapse on the chaise. His head dropped into his hands, all the while shaking as he muttered unintelligibly to himself and stared blankly ahead at a particular fiber of the carpet between his toes.
Hattie watched this, a little befuddled about why he was in such a state. “You are being very theatrical,” she observed. “Are you often so?”
He blinked, like the carpet fiber were speaking to him, his fingers pressing into the flesh above his eyebrows.
“We will find you a poem,” she decided. “Please do not resign to catatonia on the account of something so small. And I shall speak to Libba about rehearsals if it will soothe you.”
