“A what?” Mal muttered.
“Cwtch,” Hattie replied softly. “Snuggle. Cuddle. Embrace.”
“Absolutely not!” Mal boomed back, holding his finger up at Rhys’s wide-thrown arms. “You will not!”
It was too late. Rhys threw his arms around Malcolm first, winning a resigned groan from the other man.
For all his protesting, he did not seem to truly mind it. At least not to Hattie’s estimation.
Libba was next, and then Hattie herself, and they returned thecwtchin the spirit with which it was given.
“The girls are inside,” Rhys told them. “Monica just landed yesterday. It took you three ages to get here! Ages! So she’s dead, then? Gone off to the great beyond? Do you think she’s unseated Lucifer yet?”
“Rhys,” Hattie hissed, catching the eye of a quietly amused Errol, a gentle smile playing on his lips as she passed by him. “Errol,” she added. “Good to see you.”
“Hattie,” Errol replied in his gentle Irish brogue, turning and guiding her into the house. “You’re looking well. My da has asked after you.”
“I’ll visit him soon,” she promised, patting his arm.
Errol, like Hattie herself, had started life as part of the staff at Starling’s Rest. While Hattie had been employed directly as a scullery maid, Errol had been the groom’s son and had lived, even after becoming one of the baroness’s wards, in the groom’s cottage outside the stables.
His father had always been very proud.
“My goodness, is that Mr. Harcourt?!” Rhys’s voice echoed from behind her. “Why have you been the same age for twenty years? Tell me your secrets!”
Hattie sighed, increasing her speed as she walked farther into the house.
She could hear feminine chittering from farther in and the click of porcelain teacups alongside the tinkle of liquid being poured therein.
She was dusty, exhausted, and more than a little bit rumpled from the nonstop work and travel of the past three months, but she could not imagine waiting to see the others any more than she could fathom having lived a life without them in it.
“Oh, it’s Hattie! Hattie!” Monica cried, coming to her feet with her sweet, round face in her hands. “Oh, you look so elegant!”
“She looks like she was tossed into the sea and dried out on the mast,” Ruby Little tittered from her reclined place on the chaise, her teacup still held aloft. “But a sight for sore eyes, all the same. Welcome, Hattie.”
“Ruby,” said Hattie, opening her arms for Monica’s quick and warm embrace. “Monica. You both made excellent time.”
Ruby flashed a little smile. “It is among my talents, you know,” she said. “Physics.”
Monica blinked, stepping away from Hattie with a look of puzzlement narrowing her eyes and rounding her cheeks. “‘Physics’? I thought you favored chemistry.”
“I think you will find that one often begets the other, Monica, my love,” Ruby purred.
“She is jesting,” said Malcolm, striding in from behind with his sister in tow. “Greetings, all!”
“My, my,” said Ruby in a little cooing voice, looking him up and down. “You managed to stay neat all the way here.”
“Don’t flirt with me unless you mean it,” he chided, throwing her a wink that immediately made her grimace. “You never do.”
“I never do,” she agreed.
“Good,” said Libba with obvious distaste. “Disgusting.”
“Who’s disgusting?” Rhys asked, bouncing in around a sighing Errol and plopping onto the chaise so quickly that Ruby had to pull her legs up with an undignified squeak. “Still me?”
“Always you!” Ruby snapped back. “Good afternoon, Mr. Harcourt.”
“Oh, Mr. Harcourt,” Monica said, suddenly even pinker than she had been before as she patted at her hair. “I did not know you would be joining us today.”
