“I’ll have his, then,” Rhys said, swiping the empty glass from under Mal’s hand and shaking it at Errol for a top up. “I don’t mind the burn.”
“I will also take the wine,” Elias said, once the barman had reached them, though the warmth spreading in his chest did whisper that the swill wasn’t such a terrible experience, once it got past the tongue and throat.
Still, he thought it best he did not appear at the altar in the morning with his head half off.
“So, Lord Selwyn, are you prepared for the gauntlet that is married life?” Malcolm asked, raising his eyebrows. “Did you prepare shackles and repast, as is customary?”
“‘Shackles and repast’?” Elias repeated. “We have a wedding breakfast ready, but I didn’t seek out manacles.”
“Shame,” said Rhys, shrugging.
“I did get her a ring,” Elias said, after considering it. “Is that shackle-like enough? I even have one for myself, provided by the late baroness. All it needed was a polish and a bit of hammering and it’s ready to wear.”
“Willa gave you a ring?” Rhys asked, his curls bouncing up from a fervent concentration on building a pyramid out of emptytiny glasses. “My letter didn’t have any presents in it. Did your lot?”
“What did your letter have in it?” Mal asked, cutting his eyes to the other man. “A feather and a clue?”
“Wouldn’t you love to know?” Rhys sassed back, wrinkling his nose.
“It would be kind,” Errol mused, “providing Rhys with his first clue.”
“Oh, ho ho,” Rhys parroted back in a bored monotone. “Hand me those glasses.”
And then, to Elias’s astonishment, both men did so, watching with clear interest as Rhys completed his transparent ziggurat with a little whoop of victory.
“Right,” said Mal, looking summarily impressed.
“Do you have them?” Errol put in, leaning onto his elbow to nudge one of the glasses a touch to the left, bringing the corners more into line. “The rings, I mean?”
Elias frowned, nodding and reaching into his jacket pocket and withdrawing a little velvet pouch.
He had been returning from the jeweler’s when they’d accosted him, halfway back to the house, after all.
“Oh, shiny things,” Rhys said, plucking the pouch from Elias’s fingers before either of the others could and fishing the woman’s ring out of it before tossing the bag to Mal with disinterest. He held the elegant little band up to the light, peering up at the cracked amber, broken into two halfmoon pieces over a circle-cut garnet. “Pretty!”
“It is pretty,” Errol agreed, leaning closer. “It is very suitable to Hattie.”
“Yes,” said Elias, still frowning. “I thought so as well.”
“Mea culpa,” said Malcolm.
“Yes, we know,” Rhys mumbled, still entranced by the jewels.
“No, you glittering insect,” Mal said, slapping Rhys on the knee and jutting out the man’s ring. “It’s the inscription. Look.”
“In a love token?” Errol said, already pouring more swill into four new little glasses, evidently disinterested in both Malcolm and Elias having said they wanted no more. “That seems an odd thing for it to say.”
“This was Willa’s?” Rhys asked, holding the two rings together like an eclipsed sun against the candle in the middle of the table. “The late Lord Selwyn’s ring, perhaps?”
Elias shook his head. “No. He did wear a ring, but it was silver, apparently. I don’t know whose it is. Certainly a man’s, though, at that size and style.”
“She didn’t explain?” Errol said, sounding truly affronted as he pushed the glasses out in three different directions with seemingly effortless aim, not spilling a single drop in the process. “That doesn’t sound like Willa.”
Elias hesitated, his jaw feeling oddly warm as he cleared his throat and reached for his glass, his lips pressed together. In all honesty, in the madness that had been the last several weeks of his life, he had genuinely forgotten about that letter. Forgotten it entirely.
“Oh, good God,” Malcolm said, a grin spreading over his face. “You haven’t read the letter, have you? You’ve just been carrying around this cursed ring with no context for the last month.”
Rhys gaped at him. “And you’re going to wear it as a love token? What if she left it to you so you’d throw it in the sea? What if it’s got her soul inside it? You going to wear that to bed tomorrow night?”
