“Just so, my dear, just so,” said his stepfather, squeezing his mother’s shoulder. “We should have held the barony, regardless. We would have raised you correctly. We would have prevented this spectacle the dowager orchestrated.”
Elias only stared. For a long moment, he simply stared.
“Is that what this is about?” he finally asked, after he’d managed to digest this latest outburst. “You resent that you had a son?”
“Of course not,” his stepfather said, flinging himself out of the chair and marching toward the basin in what appeared to be a very tardy impulse to tidy himself. “A man needs heirs. And you’re a good boy. I just wish you’d been mine own and come along later is all.”
“Yes, precisely. It is only that we were premature,” his mother added with a grimace. “And evidently poor guidance.”
“In that we can agree,” Elias said flatly. “How much?”
“A place in that house to start,” his mother said immediately.
“No.”
She blinked at him, giving a short, shrill little laugh. “No, indeed? How dare you?”
“No,” said Elias again, clenching his jaw. “You will go back to Rottingdean and stay there.”
“Oh, we haven’t lived in Rottingdean in five years,” his stepfather grumbled. “Shows how much you care.”
“Yes, I suppose it does,” Elias said, leaning back against the door because he could no longer stand on his own accord. “How much?”
“Just restore what we were given before, I suppose,” his mother said with a sniff and a sigh. “Though that is terribly cruel, given your good fortune. Even Willa Starling cared for an elderly aunt for the whole of her cursed life, and only an aunt by marriage at that. Some common barmaid of a girl now living in luxury on Selwyn coin in her dotage. If you do not honor us, you should at least honor your beloved patroness.”
“I do,” he said through his teeth. “And in so doing, I refuse to continue to humor the two of you more than absolutely necessary. You extorted her for all of my life and I am only just now learning of it.”
“‘Extorted,’” tutted his stepfather. “Such language.”
“Oh, do you wish to speak about language?” Elias said, raising his brows, a flash of heat fanning in his chest. “Perhaps we should start with how you spoke to and about my wife?”
“‘Wife,’” his mother echoed in a venomous whisper. “The scullery maid?”
“Thebaroness,” Elias corrected, turning his mother’s face red. “Something you will never be.”
“She was always such an odd little bird,” said his stepfather, using a comb to get his beard clean with a click of his tongue. “Your children might be odd too, you know. Touched and vacant, commenting on the oddest non-sequitur things in polite company. Terribly embarrassing.”
“Hattie is not embarrassing. She is brilliant,” Elias snapped. “She has been feted by the crowned heads of Europe. Who fetes you?”
“Oh, please,” said his mother with a roll of her eyes. “Is that what she told you?”
“In just the last week, she has received wedding gifts from the Tsar and Tsarina of Russia, two Italian dukes, and a Swedish princess,” Elias told them, raising his brows. “Not to mention the personal note I intercepted from our own prince regent.”
Both his parents froze for a moment at that, his stepfather’s dark-blue eyes narrowing.
Elias had those eyes. Selwyn eyes.
“Nonsense,” his stepfather said, gruffly. “You are making things up. You always were a liar, boy.”
Elias smiled then. It was an odd thing, an unexpected feeling as it spread over his face. “You think so?” he said. “Perhaps you ought to attend the funeral tomorrow if you don’t believe me, and meet His Royal Highness yourself. It would do you good, I think.”
“Meeting the prince?” his mother said, clearly intrigued. “Of course it would.”
“No,” said Elias. “Seeing a well-attended funeral for a woman who gave instead of took. It might make you both reflect on your own mortality.”
His stepfather bowed up, his chest puffing out as he opened his mouth to rebut, but Elias only held up a hand.
“Come or don’t,” he said. “But if you interfere at all, it will be the last we speak of any allowance. The same applies to anyattempt to punish Mr. Harcourt. I require him if I am to release any funds at all to you, after all.”
