Chapter 10
Phin was up with the dawn, in spite of his body and mind being so weary he could have stayed in bed for another week. There was something bittersweet about being home. His childhood had been a happy one, in spite of the difficulties of his family’s circumstances and his mother’s death when Amaryllis was born, so the house held more happy memories for him than painful ones. It was the present that gnawed at him the most. Between the strain of his father’s decline and the burning flame of hope, desire, and love he had within him for Lenore, he couldn’t have slept past sunrise even if he’d tried.
“What are you doing up so early?” Hazel asked when he strode into the kitchen, intent on making a strong pot of tea and assessing what needed to be done around the house.
“I could ask you the same thing,” he said, pausing briefly in the kitchen doorway to reevaluate his plans.
Hazel already had tea made and was in the process of shaping scones out of the dough on the counter in front of her. She wore a contraption affixed to her arm and shoulder that looked like some sort of macabre cage of metal and wood that she’d had the village blacksmith build for her. It came with various interchangeable attachments that Hazel had designed herself, though currently she wore one that looked like a blunt club that enabled her to knead dough. His talents were of a literary sort, Lionel’s were for knowing everyone in London and half of the rest of the people in England at large, but Hazel’s talents were of a mechanical bent.
“Someone has to keep this place running,” Hazel answered, nodding to the pot of tea on the stove. “Especially since we have a guest.”
Phin smiled in spite of himself as he crossed to the stove to pour himself a cup. He added cream and sugar from the creamer set on the kitchen table, then took his tea back to the counter where Hazel worked, plucking a sultana from her scone dough and making a point of eating it in front of her. Hazel smacked him with her mechanical arm.
“How has Father been, truly,” he asked on a more serious note, taking a sip of his tea.
“As well as can be expected,” Hazel sighed, finishing with the scones and transferring them to the oven. She had become an expert at using her left arm, even though it hadn’t started out as her dominant hand, and compensating with her invention. “He declines a bit every day, but I don’t believe he’s unhappy.” When Phin arched an eyebrow at her, she went on with, “Well, any unhappier than a man in his condition would be.”
“Do you want me to get him out of bed?” he asked. “Bathe him, perhaps?”
“Let him sleep late,” Hazel said, moving to the table and unscrewing the club from her arm attachment. “He shouldn’t have stayed up as late as he did last night,” she went on, replacing the club with something that looked more like a classic hook that a pirate would wear, “but he knew you were coming and insisted on waiting for you.”
Phin sent her a flat look as he sipped his tea. “Are you sure of that or are you making things up to put a good face on things?”
She glanced his way with a look of melancholy. “Does it matter? Whether he’s aware of anything going on around him or not, it helps the girls to pretend he’s still in there somewhere.”
Phin took another drink of his tea to swallow the lump in his throat. “And how about the girls?” he asked. “Are they keeping up with their schoolwork?”
Hazel sent him an even warier glance as she tightened her hook, then moved to the pile of laundry to sort it. “When they actually make it to school.” She paused, then added, “The truant officer has been around three times already this autumn.”
Phin grunted. “I should really pressure Lionel into paying a visit. Those girls would walk to the moon and back if Lionel asked them to.”
“Have him write a letter instead,” Hazel suggested. “You know what happened last time he was home.”
Phin’s mouth twitched into a grin. They had all been together as a family at Easter the spring before. Hazel had entreated Lionel to strike the fear of God into their unruly younger sisters. Instead, the three of them had ended up letting the chickens out, frightening the neighbor’s pigs, and causing so much of a disturbance in church that they were summarily cast out of the Easter service. Lionel was the biggest child of their entire family.
“And that brings us to you,” Phin said, moving to sit at the kitchen table while Hazel worked. He reached across, taking her good hand and interrupting her work by holding it for a moment. “How are you?”
“Oh, I’m delightful,” Hazel said, sharpness in her voice. “I am the queen of all I survey. I spend my days eating French pastries and sipping champagne. And I have an entire string of handsome suitors lined up out the door just begging to marry me, all of them wealthy as sultans.”
Phin’s chest constricted. Hazel had been a popular beauty, in spite of her young age, before the fire, and before their father’s health was shattered. She put on a brave face, but he knew her well enough to know she longed for love as much as anyone else did.
“Mark my words,” he said, leaning back in his chair and pretending to be as casual as she was being. “You’ll have to construct a stick attachment for that clever arm of yours, because you’ll be beating young men off with it soon.”
She laughed, though she couldn’t hide the pain in her eyes. “I’m not the one who has a beau,” she said, then paused her laundry sorting to grin at him. “Or is a female sweetheart called something else?”
There was absolutely no point whatsoever in hiding his emotions from Hazel. There had never been any secrets between the Mercer siblings, except, of course, for the younger ones. Phin knew all of Lionel and Hazel’s secrets, and they knew all of his.
“I adore her,” he said, as silly as a schoolboy, no need to mention Lenore’s name. “Hazel, she is perfection. She’s witty, intelligent, and doesn’t give a fig for the opinions of others.”
“And I’m assuming she’s wealthy on top of all that.” Hazel flickered her eyebrows to tease him.
“As it happens, she is,” he admitted, leaning back in his chair and propping his feet on the corner of the table. “But I’d adore her even if she was as poor as…well, as poor as us.”
“Were you raised by wolves?” Hazel scolded him, catching the toe of one of his boots with her hook and dropping it to the side so that he was forced to scramble to stay upright.
“You and Lionel are rather wolfish sometimes,” he replied, chuckling.
“And does Princess Lenore know this?” Hazel arched one eyebrow.
“She knows that I am progressive in my opinions and that London society has greatly underestimated my prowess.”
“Does she know about Nocturne?” Hazel asked, leveling him with a flat stare.
“As a matter of fact, she does.” Phin sat straighter, setting his tea on the table and leaning forward. He searched for the right words to say what he needed to, but all he could come up with was, “I’m not sure how much longer I’ll be able to keep that up.”
Hazel was smart enough to look worried. “Why? What’s happened?”