“I suppose he was like me,” Olive said. “You taught me from birth. I could use sign language before I could speak. Even when I did start talking, my signs were always more fluent than Mother’s.”
“And me,” Elijah added. “I was also taught from birth, although I did not have an Academy of Deaf friends to converse with. It was more like a private language between me and my father.”
“But if Milbotham took the time to teach you an entire language you didn’t need to know...” Papa blinked in wonder. “Then he expected wewouldreconcile one day.”
“Or hoped you might,” Olive agreed softly.
Elijah gave a crooked smile. “As a child, I thought he’d made me learn to use signs so that other people wouldn’t hear him being nice to me. Ordinary conversations were sign language, but all of our arguments were mortifyingly out loud.”
“Almost as if sign language was just for good memories,” Olive said. “Almost as if our fathers aren’t vengeful Machiavellian tacticians after all, but rather two stubborn old fools each waiting for the other one to wave the white flag first.”
Papa’s eyes slid away as though pretending he hadn’t seen her comment.
She waved her hand toward his face. “I’ll forgive you on one condition.”
That got his attention.
“Anything.” He quickly made the signs. “Name your terms.”
“Go and talk to him,” she said in exasperation. “He’s only up the road in the castle. All you have to do is—”
“He’s here?” Papa’s eyes widened in shock. “Milbotham swore he would never come north of London.”
“Climb to the fifth story, take the first door on the left,” Elijah said. “With a panoramic view of the Harper stud farm.”
Olive shepherded her protesting father out of the dining room and over to the front door.
“Elijah and I are no longer the middlemen in your drama.” She handed her father his coat and hat. “Don’t come back until you’ve invited the marquess to our wedding on Sunday.”
“But—”
Olive shut the door behind her father before he could argue further, then turned to face Elijah.
They both burst out laughing at the same time.
“I can’t believe you knew how to use sign language and didn’t tell me,” she said with her hands.
He shook his head. “I can’t believe our fathers might have wanted to reconcile all these years, but needed someone else to manipulate them into doing it.”
“We had the greatest tutors,” she said with a sigh.
He pulled her into his embrace. “The best Christmas I ever had was the day that pair of ruthless blackguards manipulated me back into your life.”
“Me, too,” she admitted. She wrapped her arms about Elijah’s neck and smiled wickedly. “In fact... Christmastide is not yet over. Might you have another present you’d like to share with me?”
He swung her into his arms. “Every day with you is another Christmas. And I have the perfect way to celebrate our festive spirits.”
They didn’t leave her bedchamber for hours.
Epilogue
Twelfth Night
Eli leaned an elbow on the back of the Duke of Nottingvale’s pianoforte and couldn’t repress a grin. He might be at the duke’s party, dressed in the duke’s fashionable castoffs, but Eli was living his very best life.
His soon-to-be bride was among the eleven ladies dancing a merry tune on the lymewashed floor. Rather than hide her smiles behind her hand, Olive hadn’t stopped beaming from the moment they’d announced their upcoming nuptials.
Since he wasn’t dancing with her until the next set, Eli was free to interpret conversations to Olive’s father... but his services in this matter were unneeded. Mr. Harper was spending another evening arguing with Eli’s father in his suite at the castle.
