She gave it, but she also bit him in the process.
He liked that more than he was willing to reflect upon just now, with so much ahead for the day.
Luckily, Rhys was running late as well, and they were able to share a carriage to the pavilion, crammed into the seats with a variety of his props, including a fencing sword, half a dozen pilfered beakers, and several fabric-wrapped cubes.
It was the cubes on which Hattie was fixated as they went, her eyes narrowing as she beheld one that was a soft marigold color, punctuated with black stripes.
“Rhys,” she said, very slowly, “is that my dressing gown?”
Rhys glanced at the box, and then at Elias, who immediately shook his head and widened his eyes for emphasis.
“No,” said Rhys, unconvincingly and with a queasy smile. “Not anymore, anyway.”
She drew in a hissing breath, her body thrumming out like a primed longbow. “If youthink—”
“Oh, we’re here!” Elias announced, reaching across her and scrambling for the carriage door hinge before the wheels had even stopped turning. “We made good time, didn’t we?”
“We did, indeed. We did, indeed,” Rhys chirped, kicking the door open and rolling out bodily while the carriage was still crunching to a halt. “I’ll send someone for the props!”
Hattie was staring after him, chest heaving, eyes in glittering tiny slits. And it took only a moment for realization to hit her as her head began to pivot from her chaotic fellow ward toher guilty-as-sin husband, watching her warily from the cushion next to her.
“We have to alight!” Elias said. “I have to open the proceedings!”
“Elias!” she breathed, but he was already stepping over her and stumbling backward out onto the pebbled terrain.
He held his arms up to her, holding his face frozen in what he hoped was an acceptably innocent expression, until she sighed, shook her head, and accepted the aid.
“This is not over,” she said to him. “That was an imperial gift!”
“It still is,” Elias said weakly, only to get shoved and have her stalk away, hips swinging and blue-and-gold, orange-and-white skirts swinging like a particularly irate macaw as she marched off to the pavilion.
Rhys reappeared a breath later, though Elias could not account for where the devil he would have been hiding in this flat, open terrain.
“Good show,” he said. “You hold the blade.”
And he did because there was little else to do in the moment, and he needed to go back into the carriage, anyway, to retrieve his literature.
“There you bloody are!” Liberty cried, shoving several titled and well-monied people out of her way as she stalked toward the carriage. “Rhys, your corner isempty. Go fill it!”
“Aye, sir,” he said sarcastically, spinning around Elias with the three cubes and sword stacked in a precarious tower in his arms as he trotted away, top hat gleaming in the sun.
“At least it isn’t raining,” she muttered, tossing a suspicious glance at Elias as though he might summon some rain, just to spite her. “We are starting soon. Go see Errol. Your pig is distressed.”
“Oh, but I need to—” he began, but she had already vanished, her toga-like white gown fluttering out around her like a pair of wings as she flew to her next quarry.
“Right.” Elias looked around for Errol and his menagerie.
He made it as far as the temporary fencing before Malcolm intercepted him, stepping into his path so suddenly that Elias nearly smacked right into the other man, even dressed as he was in scarlet and eye-watering royal blue.
“Selwyn!” Mal exclaimed, gripping his shoulders to stop him short. “Did you read it?”
“Yes, I read it!” Elias shouted back, stumbling back into his footing. “Christ!”
“And?!” Mal demanded, eyes wild.
“And it says what Harcourt said it would,” he replied. “Shall I have a copy drafted for you?”
Malcolm’s eyes narrowed, just a hair. “If you would,” he replied, snidely. “Very kind.”
