“‘Child of God,’ I believe,” she said, blinking up at him.
He nodded. “Well, I am not the child of parents. ‘Lem’ is not short for ‘Lemuel.’ It is short for ‘Lemon Boy.’”
She blinked, which got a smile out of him.
A truly lovely smile, truth be told, one that transformed his stoic visage into something quite dashing.
“I sold lemons on the wharf in London as a lad,” he explained. “‘Lemon Boy’ became ‘Lem.’ I was a foundling, like you.”
“Oh,” she said. “They called me French because my first word wascoucou.It means ‘greetings,’ but in a very childish way.”
He nodded. “I like Lemuel more. I think I will have it. So you take the lemon as a trade.”
She opened her mouth, uncertain how to reply, but he just reached out and patted her shoulder like she were a fond, little child in his path and said, “Congratulations, Baroness,” before he vanished down the hall, toward the guest chambers.
Hattie carried the lemon and the puzzle box with her as she trailed up the stairs, a little dazed still from the exchange. She walked through the doors of the master suite and past the little salon leading to the bedchamber, inhaling the scent of lavender soap on the air as she went.
They had not yet decided whether or not to reoutfit the library back into a secondary chamber. Too much else had been happening; too much else had been taking priority. Hattie, in this moment, hoped they never mentioned it again. One chamber was perfectly well for this marriage.
She found Elias already bathed, toweling off his wet hair and wrapped in a velvet dressing gown, with water still steaming in a copper tub next to the recently doused hearth on the far wall.
“It’s still warm,” he said unnecessarily, rubbing the towel back and forth over his glossy, black hair as rivulets of scented water trickled down the lines of his throat. “Have you brought me a snack?”
“What?” she said, glancing down at the lemon in her hand. “Oh. No. It is not for eating.”
“No?” he questioned, dropping onto the corner of the bed with a curious raise of his brows. “What is it for, then?”
She frowned. “I haven’t decided yet. I will tell you when I do.”
He watched her for a second, an odd, little smile playing about his lips. “I look forward to when you do,” he said after a moment. “What’s the other thing?”
She held it out to him, crossing the room a few steps so that he could take it from her hand. “A puzzle,” she said. “Built to be solved by two people in tandem.”
He examined it with interest, turning it this way and that. “Hattie,” he said seriously, fiddling with a loose rectangle wedged into the darker block. “We are going to solve this puzzle. Not tonight, but we will.”
“If you say so,” she said, a little surprised at his enthusiasm. “I can’t promise I will be any help.”
He flashed her a boyish grin, a curl of wet hair falling over his brow as he looked up at her over the top of the puzzle. “I just need your hands, love.”
She looked down at them, spreading her fingers apart and turning them over to examine her palms. “Then you will have them.” She nodded.
He chuckled, setting the toy aside and beckoning her closer. “Let me help you out of that dress before the water gets cold,” he offered. “I promise I will actually let you bathe before I try anything untoward.”
“Watching me bathe isn’t untoward?” she asked, crossing the final few steps over to him, anyway, and turning as he stood to help her with the fastenings at the back of her gown.
“Allow me to rephrase,” he said, lips brushing her hair as he breathed her in. “I promise I will let you bathe before I am lecherous with my hands, rather than my eyes.”
“Hm,” she said as the dress loosened and fell down around her shoulders, revealing the chemise and stays underneath. “If you must.”
“I must,” he told her, though he did not take any particular care to avoid caressing her as he unlaced her stays and peeled them off her body.
She tossed him a half-hooded look over her shoulder, crossing to the tub as she pulled a few pins from her hair to secure the loose bits overhead and tested the temperature with her toe. “We should not stay up very late,” she said without turning. “We do have the showcase tomorrow, after all.”
“Yes, I recall,” he said from his place on the bed. “I chose the day before, didn’t I?”
She smiled, withdrawing her foot and gathering her chemise up around her thighs. “You did,” she said as she pulled it offoverhead, listening for his intake of breath at the fully revealed visual of her naked backside.
She stepped into the water quickly, then, oddly shy about the whole thing, and sank down to sitting before he could get a good look at her, losing a few curls to the watery pull of the bath in the process and feeling them sag and cling to her neck.
