“I… No,” said Hattie, blinking furiously.
She had been sure. So sure, when she’d woken.
The dream she’d had…
Ruby sighed, patting her on the shoulder. “That’s what I thought. I say, where did you get that robe? Who keeps putting Hattie in jewel tones when we have always known those are mine to wear?”
“What if we find a way to ask him what he thinks about the idea, as a gestureafteryour wedding, without giving the game away?” Libba suggested. “I’ll tell Mal to do it when the boys kidnap him tonight. Would that ease your mind, love?”
“‘Kid…’” Hattie hiccupped. “‘Nap’?”
“They’re taking him for drinks at the Coin and Cauldron,” Monica explained, still soothing along Hattie’s scalp with her fingers. “Against his will, most likely.”
“Should we join them there?” Ruby pondered, tilting her head to the side. “Or shall we create our own festivities?”
“‘Festiv…’” Hattie began, only to be immediately shushed by three cooing voices.
“It will be all right,” Monica assured her, and though Hattie wanted to argue, she also still had the hiccups.
“I have champagne for tonight,” Ruby volunteered. “I thought perhaps it might be time to finally show us the mysterious master suite. We may indulge our vices and our curiosities all at once, hm?”
“‘Curio…’” Hattie began, only to be shushed and smothered again, this time with another splash of tea and a warm pastry on her lap.
“I have always wanted to see those rooms,” Libba said wistfully, in the tiny wedge of silence that followed. “I think Willa would bless the endeavor, us gathering there to giggle over Elias’s thigh muscles in his riding breeches. It is decided.”
“Is that all right, Hattie?” Monica asked, stroking her hand over Hattie’s tangled hair. “Champagne in the master suite while we prepare your bridal things?”
“Bridal?” Hattie said. “Yes.” And she hiccupped one more time, for luck.
*
Elias was notentirely certain how he’d come to be at the Coin and Cauldron. Only that he had other things he very much needed to be doing instead.
And yet here he was, seated at a rustic wooden table with a tiny, squat glass of nondescript, murky liquid in front of him, and a firm voice in an Irish brogue telling him in no uncertain terms to swallow, not sip.
“It’s not a pleasant drink,” Errol elaborated. “But an effective one.”
“What is it, exactly?” Malcolm asked, examining his own little glass.
“Swill,” said Rhys, taking a third gulp from his row of them. “Aren’t you listening? To the groom!”
“Yes, but what’s in i—Rhys!” Malcolm sputtered as Rhys tipped Malcom’s glass forcefully into his mouth. “Christ! It burns!”
“It burns!” Errol agreed, lifting his glass as though it were a toast.
“It burns,” repeated Elias, lifting his own and tipping it back into his mouth, come what may.
It did burn.
“That’s exactly the face you made when you were told to marry Hattie,” Rhys observed. “You don’t seem quite as opposed to it these days.”
“You don’t, at that,” Malcolm agreed, looking a bit green about the gills as he slapped a flat hand over the top of his glass. “No more for me. I’ll have something civilized, thank you very much.”
“Killsport,” Errol said with a grin, raising two fingers to signal for the barman. “Wine, I presume?”
“Anything but that,” Malcolm said, mostly with his bottom row of teeth.
The diversion in topic at least prevented Elias from having to acknowledge their observations about his match or impending matrimony, though he did suspect that was the reason for this outing.
