Earls Trip

7 - Guess Who’s （Still Not） Coming to Dinner

7

Guess Who’s (Still Not) Coming to Dinner

After their strange-but-satisfying dinner, the gentlemen retired to a dusty drawing room that made Simon sneeze repeatedly. The space was studded with buckets collecting rain that was falling through the roof, so it took some doing to arrange themselves in such a way that facilitated conversation but discouraged dampness. Once they were settled, Effie read his sonnet about Sally. One would think a sonnet commemorating a dead parrot would be ridiculous. One would be wrong.

That was the thing about Effie. He was in some ways ridiculous, with his severe attire and his dreamy demeanor. Though Archie would never countenance anyone besides himself or Simon calling Effie ridiculous. More than one boy at school—chief among them Nigel Nettlefell—had made that mistake and had subsequently come to regret it.

What Simon and Archie and perhaps few others understood was that beneath Effie’s embroidered silk waistcoat beat the heart of a true artist. He had a way, with his best poems, of using a handful of exquisitely economical phrases to pluck at heartstrings one didn’t even know one had.

And this poem, “Lamenter, Be Not Proud,” was one of his best. It was about a bird, but not. Effie had a way of writing around a specific, seemingly small subject in such a way that one ended up astonished at the realization that the small subject wasn’t actually the point as one was blindsided by analogy to one’s own experience of the world. It was rather like believing oneself to be on a pleasant punting outing, only for the boat to suddenly overturn and plunge one into a river of astonishing truths and terrible beauties. It seemed like alchemy, this ability of Effie’s, and it made Archie proud to call him a friend.

Archie and Simon applauded when Effie finished his recitation. Archie had to swallow a lump in his throat before he could speak, because somehow, this poem about a parrot Effie had loved had put Archie to mind of the death of his own father, whom he had . . . Well, whom he had learned not to love, to be frank. And of his mother, who, while not dead, was sufficiently lost to him he sometimes thought she might as well be. He sometimes wondered, as he sat by her side and attempted to engage her in conversation, if he would mourn her. Perhaps a man only had so much mourning in him to attach to any given person, in which case he feared he had spent his allotment for Mother. What he wouldn’t give to come home one more time to her wide-open arms that always greeted his arrival home from school. What he wouldn’t give for one more of her garden games, or one more hand of whist. She always used to beat him at whist, but she always made him laugh while doing so. He had lost all those things so slowly, in such a piecemeal fashion, that he hadn’t known to consider whether any specific experience of them might be the last.

His thoughts were growing mawkish. He cast them away. “You’re going to send this sonnet to Le Monde Joli, yes?” he asked, naming the magazine that occasionally published Effie’s poems.

“Forget Le Monde Joli,” Simon said. “You ought to aim higher than a mere ladies’ magazine with this one. Or never mind that, you’ve enough good ones now that you could publish a chapbook.”

“I’ve already sent it to my editor at Le Monde Joli,” Effie said, “and while I am loath to appear overly self-impressed, I am confident it will be accepted.” Effie was doggedly loyal to the publication that had accepted his first poem, after years of rejection everywhere else. Amusingly, when he’d first submitted, he hadn’t realized the publication was targeted at ladies, but the knowledge hadn’t dampened his enthusiasm one jot. To hear it told, his editor was a harsh taskmaster but one who brought out the best in Effie. “And frankly, if I were a lady I would take offense at your use of the word ‘mere.’”

“As long as you’re happy,” Archie said. It all had to be anonymous anyway. It wouldn’t do for a viscount, the son of an earl—especially the son of the high stickler Earl of Stonely—to be publishing poems, in a ladies’ magazine or any other. Perhaps if Lord Byron were more respectable and therefore provided better precedent, things might be different for Effie, but as it stood, he felt the need for secrecy.

After the poetry, they poured a round of port and a companionable silence settled, the crackling of the fire the only sound. Archie sighed happily, anticipating the slow spread of satisfaction through his bones. This evening, they would drink, they would talk, and they would be together. It would be like old times, at school, in the sense that the responsibilities and pressures of adulthood, and of the earldom, felt very distant. But also not like old times, because they could do whatever the hell they wanted to. There were no teachers or parents or social conventions to stop them. No bloody essays to write—or to beseech Effie to write for him. Nothing but them and the pure pleasure of long-standing friendship.

Archie was aware that to voice such a sentiment would make him seem ridiculous, but this moment was one that he looked forward to all year. If the toast on the way out of Town signaled that an Earls Trip was underway, the first evening they settled in together, after unpacking—or after detouring to a posting inn, getting shot, rescuing some childhood friends, and threatening a criminal sufficiently that he would never return to England—signaled the true start of the retreat. Simon had said earlier that he was sorely in need of respite. Simon was not alone in that sentiment. Earls Trips were about the restoration of Archie to himself. He had always enjoyed these trips, but as the years passed and the situation with Mother deteriorated, he needed them.

He sometimes felt as though he was one of those ghosts he didn’t believe in, that through the course of a year, some essential essence of his being—his spirit, he supposed—slowly became unmoored from his body. As if there were two versions of him that were meant to nestle together as one, but by the time autumn rolled around, the edges didn’t match up at all.

Simon and Effie got his edges matching again.

He rolled his eyes at himself. Was this sentimentality the result of too much drink or not enough? He picked up his glass. Only one way to find out. As he was taking a deep drink, something popped to mind. Another example of this feeling of freedom and camaraderie, one from long ago. “Remember the couple of years we all spent the Christmas holidays at school?”

“Those were grand times,” Effie said.

“I was so happy that first year you stayed back, too, Archie, and then when you joined us the next, Effie,” Simon said, gracing them with a rare unrestrained smile.

“Yes, why did you start staying back?” Effie asked Archie. “Aside from the fact that our school Christmases were so much more enjoyable than those at home, at least in my case.”

Simon had always stayed at school over the holidays because he wasn’t wanted at home. Effie had usually gone home for Christmas, but that year, and one or two others, his parents had been traveling.

“I’d been home previously that year, during a term break,” Archie said, casting his mind back to that disastrous visit. “My mother had undergone a sharp decline in the weeks I’d been away. Her lapses—and outbursts—could no longer be explained away. My father began doubling down on his insistence that I take on more responsibility for the doings of the estate. He sat me down and instructed me to read aloud the latest report from the steward.” He paused, hating that the memory still had the power to make his face heat. “You can imagine how that went. I suppose the charitable interpretation is that evidence of Mother’s decline was inspiring him to think about the succession.”

“There’s also the true interpretation,” Simon said.

“And what is that?” Archie asked.

“That your father was a right arse.”

Archie lifted his glass in acknowledgment of that interpretation.

“The concept of family is a curious one, don’t you think?” Effie was staring at the fire as he spoke, looking broodier than usual.

“How do you mean, Ef?” Simon asked, and Archie sighed happily. Even though the ensuing conversation was likely to be gloomy, the fact of it comforted him immensely.

“Do you know that I felt worse when Sally died than when my grandmother died last year?” Effie said.

“Well, to be fair, your grandmother was a terrible person,” Simon said, continuing to not mince words.

Effie looked cheered. “She was, wasn’t she?”

Archie chuckled, though he did not disagree. The late dowager countess had been known for her casual cruelty. She would think nothing of, for example, “accidentally” spilling tea on a person whose attire she did not approve of and had done so to young Effie on several occasions. He still had a mark on the side of his neck from one incident in which he was burned quite badly.

“My point,” Effie said, “is that if you truly consider it, the idea of family is rather odd. You’re born into a group of people, and it’s as random as throwing salt into the wind. The grains land where they land.”

“Who is the salt here?” Simon asked.

“Anyone is. Everyone is. And perhaps you land on something you’re well suited to—a leg of lamb, say, that is improved by salting. But perhaps you land on something like a strawberry. What good is salt on a strawberry?”

“Is the strawberry . . . a parent?” Literal-minded Simon was struggling to make sense of Effie’s fanciful musings.

“Oh, I don’t know. The metaphor is admittedly terrible. Sally’s passing has got me thinking about how much I dislike my parents. Which would be one thing if I loved them, but I don’t think I do. Although to be fair, they don’t love me either, so one could argue that they started it.” He considered Simon. “Did you love your father? Do you love your mother?”

Leave it to Effie to get right into it. One of the things Archie loved about Effie was his fearlessness.

“I suppose I did love my father, in a generalized, filial way,” Simon said. “Although, like you, I don’t believe my father loved me. Mind you, I don’t think he actively didn’t love me; it was more that he didn’t think of me at all. I was bound for the Church, and that was as much thought as he ever gave me and my fate. I think my mother loves me, in her way, but that love coexists with a sort of perpetual disappointment. Which I understand, to some degree. I was never meant to be earl. I was never meant to be born. Do you know that she still talks about my brothers every day? I miss them, too—I did love them, in the way a boy loves and idolizes older brothers.”

Simon’s much older twin brothers had died five years ago in a fire, thrusting Simon from the seminary into the earldom. As the third son, Simon had gone largely ignored by his mother until he suddenly inherited, at which point she threw herself into trying to make him “worthy of the title,” which really meant making him over in the image of his late brothers.

“Somehow,” Simon went on, “Mother’s constant and vociferous missing of the twins feels rather . . .”

“Hurtful?” Archie supplied. “As if her love for them must be subtracted from her love for you, even though that’s not at all how love should work?”

“Yes, I think that’s right.” Simon looked surprised at the revelation. “I know she will always miss them. I will, too. But I wish she wasn’t always comparing me to them.”

“And you, Archie?” Effie prompted. “I suppose it’s less complicated in your case. You clearly love your mother and she you. And your father . . .” He pulled a face to show what he thought of the late earl.

“I did love my father, I think, when I was younger. There were years where our annual hunting trip, just before the start of Michaelmas term, was the highlight of my year.”

Archie was seized with a kind of uncharacteristic melancholy, thinking of those trips. They’d always been much anticipated. His chance to be with Father away from the day-to-day workings of the estate. But there had been an edge of tension to those outings, too, like a loaf of bread overbaked and surrounded by a too-hard crust. Archie supposed his desire to excel at hunting and outdoor pursuits had originated in a desire to impress his father. He certainly hadn’t been going to do it with his marks.

He also remembered how lovely it had been to return to the comforts of home after their trips, and in those years Mother had been among them. She would tut over the state of him, send him off to bathe, and take tea with him in her sitting room while he rambled about the hunt. Archie had always made the time away seem much more exciting than it had actually been. He’d wanted to impress Mother with how congenial he and Father had been as well as with his own accomplishments. She’d always pulled him close to her on the settee and praised him, telling him what a good son he was and what a good earl he would make someday. Even when he was old enough to know the latter was not true, he always strove to be the former. He still did.

“And now the highlight of your year is this trip,” Effie said with an exaggerated flourish.

“Yes,” Simon agreed jocularly. “No doubt this one is loads more fun than hunting with the late earl. For one thing, the weather is better this time of year. Secondly, one can get foxed with one’s mates in a way one can’t with one’s father. Better company in general, I should think.”

“That’s true.” Archie knew what they were doing. They had somehow intuited that he’d grown morose thinking about his parents. “And I think”—Archie turned to Effie—“that is the answer to your question about family.”

“How do you mean?” Effie asked.

“It does feel like happenstance, doesn’t it, when it comes to the family one ends up with? The only family I know of that was truly and uncomplicatedly happy, where the love each member had for the others was apparent and easily worn, were the Morgans.”

“That’s difficult to countenance,” Simon said. “Would a happy, tightly knit family result in not one but two daughters swindled by a man like Mr. Bull?”

“I take the point.” Archie had never been overly fond of Sir Albert—he was Father’s friend, and Archie had learned, by the time he was out of leading strings, to stay out of Father’s way as much as possible. Yet he carried a vague memory of the Morgans as just that: a happy, tightly knit clan. “I think perhaps Mrs. Morgan was the glue of the family, and that her death has destabilized things, but I don’t think that means they don’t love each other.”

“Sir Albert did go to extreme measures to retrieve his daughters,” Effie pointed out. “His anguish in that letter seemed genuine.”

“Yes. Regardless, my point is that for most of us—and to take up your metaphor, Effie—we’re salt on strawberries. But that’s fine, because that gives us leave—frees us up—to make our own families.”

“Last I checked, one had to be married for that kind of activity—or at least for that kind of activity to result in a respectable family,” Simon joked.

“Not that kind of family. Why must family be defined by blood relations? That’s what I’m trying to say. Why can’t we make our own families by surrounding ourselves with like-minded people? With people who appreciate us?” Archie was speaking as though he had spent a long time honing this philosophy, but in truth the notion had just popped into his head.

“Why can’t we go find a plate of roasted potatoes if we’re legs of lamb, or pots of cream if we’re strawberries?” Effie asked.

“Precisely.”

“Like those years we spent the Christmas holidays at school,” Simon said. “And for that matter, that’s exactly what we’ve done here, isn’t it?” He waved his hand around in the space between them. “Unknowingly, perhaps. But we’re a sort of found family, are we not?”

“A found family. Oh, that’s lovely, Simon,” Effie said. “Yes, we found each other at school, and we made a family.”

Both men looked at Archie, who was starting to feel sheepish even though he agreed with the sentiment—and even though he was the one who had introduced the idea to begin with. It was this business with Clem and Olive. It had him thinking of the past and examining his soul or some such nonsense. “Enough sentimentality,” he declared. “Time to get foxed.”

They often did this, in the evenings during an Earls Trip, talked about serious matters, and when things started to feel too serious, moved on to drinking. Though admittedly in most years the serious matter wouldn’t have been the nature of their own bonds.

But this was not most years, was it? Somewhere under this leaking roof was Clementine Morgan. Archie wondered what she was doing as he got up to fetch the scotch decanter. Was she already asleep? Was she even inside? He sincerely hoped she was not tromping around the grounds in the rainy dark, but he wouldn’t put it past her—and he could hardly go on a mission to find out as he’d told her to stay away. She’d been doing a remarkably fine job of it, if her stubborn refusal to appear for dinner had been anything to go by.

“This is the last round for me,” Simon said as Archie sloshed a generous pour of scotch into his glass.

That was also a familiar refrain. As were Effie’s exhortations that Simon should stay, that he went to bed too early, that he was on holiday, that he was old before his time.

Archie joined in on pestering Simon, but in truth he was not sad to see him retire early. Part of the sweetness of an Earls Trip was that Effie was a night owl and Simon a lark. Archie would gladly sacrifice sleep for the pleasure of spending time with each man in his own milieu. Archie usually needed a holiday from his holiday when he returned to Mollybrook, the result of sleeping too few hours each night. The exhaustion was worth it, though. It was a fortnight of physical fatigue traded for mental replenishment that would last a year.

With Effie, Archie drank and talked about poetry. Apparently Effie’s editor at Le Monde Joli had put forth an opinion about Lord Byron that Effie was having difficulty countenancing. “Of course one can read and enjoy and accept the work of an artist even as one disapproves of the artist himself. It isn’t as if the art itself is tainted by the distasteful behavior and opinions of the artist. Don’t you agree?”

Archie wasn’t sure if he did or he didn’t. The question brought to mind the year Clem, who had probably been around ten at the time, refused to eat Easter dinner. Her family had been dining with his at Mollybrook, and when it was announced that the ham had come from the nearby Smith farm, she had paled, set down her fork, and pronounced herself not hungry. Archie had been the only one who’d known the source of her lost appetite. The pair of them had gone on a ramble a few days previously. They’d stumbled upon Mr. Smith, loudly and cruelly berating his wife for spilling a bowl of slop she’d been taking out to the pigs. They’d been drawn by the commotion and had watched the scene play out from behind a fence. Archie had been paralyzed by shock. He’d never seen such a display, his own father’s cruelties being significantly more subtle. It wasn’t until Mr. Smith raised his hand as if to strike his wife that Archie had been galvanized into action, and to his shame, that action had merely been talking loudly to Clem and pretending they were just strolling up. It had been enough to diffuse the confrontation. But as Clem had said later, on their way home, if that was how Mr. Smith behaved outside, where anyone could come upon them, what was he like at home?

And then she had refused to eat his ham.

“It’s an interesting conundrum,” Archie said to Effie, shaking off the memory. “I suppose one can always err on the side of caution and set aside Byron’s works.”

“So what you’re saying is I have to throw out The Siege of Corinth because Byron is a bounder?” Effie protested.

“No, no. I’m merely thinking that there are so many poems in the world, what’s the harm in skipping over a few of them?” Just as that Easter, the table had been laden with plenty of other things to eat. Clementine hadn’t gone hungry, and neither had he when he had stealthily joined in her abstention, feeding his ham to Olive’s lapdog under the table. But perhaps pigs and poetry were not properly compared in this manner. “I am far from an expert. I’m sure you know better than I about these things. Let’s have another drink.”

It was a lovely evening, all in all, providing a large dose of Effie and his Effie-ness.

And then there was a Simonesque version of the same the next morning in the breakfast room, albeit with tea instead of scotch.

“Perhaps I have judged the Luddites too harshly,” Simon announced from behind a book when Archie appeared.

“I hadn’t realized you’d judged them at all.” Archie knew little about the Luddites, but one didn’t need to know what one was talking about to enjoy a conversation with Simon.

“Yes.” Simon lowered the book, which upon further examination was a pamphlet. “While I have sympathized with their cause, I used to think the violence they espouse reprehensible. And pointless, too. You can’t stop progress. Mechanization is inevitable, is it not?”

“I should think so,” said Archie, who honestly had no idea. He contemplated the buffet set up in the corner of the room and happily served himself a large portion of eggs and kippers. The kitchen seemed to have righted itself.

Did Clementine eat kippers? he wondered suddenly. Surely fish did not rate as “animals” in her estimation? What about eggs? No, that would be taking it too far, even for her. What would she eat for breakfast otherwise?

“I am now convinced, however,” Simon said, “that the sentences handed down in some of the trials were overly harsh. Machine breaking made a capital crime? Obviously, I wasn’t sitting in Lords at the time, but good Heavens!”

“Didn’t the Luddites burn mills, though?” That was about all Archie knew of the Luddites.

“Yes, and I can’t condone that. Absolutely not.”

Archie joined Simon at the table. “Where did you get that pamphlet?”

“I discovered the Misses Morgan outside this morning. Miss Olive Morgan was ritualistically throwing the remnants of her time with Mr. Bull into a stream. It was really rather amusing, given all the mud from yesterday’s rain.” He shook his pamphlet. “I rescued this. Apparently Mr. Bull has been branching out from his original cause. I was idly curious—I do miss my newspapers—but I really ought to consider the source before finding myself persuaded by these arguments. I’m usually much more circumspect. I begin to see how both sisters . . .”

Simon’s monologue continued, but Archie was stuck on the fact that Simon had come upon Clem outside this morning. Archie thought he’d gotten up early, but apparently not early enough.

Though why would he think that? Early enough for what? He had risen early enough to catch Simon at breakfast, which had been his objective. Drinks and poetry with Effie last night; breakfast and politics with Simon this morning.

A perfectly, gratifyingly, wonderfully ordinary Earls Trip. Exactly what he’d been aiming for.

The rest of the day was also satisfyingly typical. After Effie rose around noon, the three of them went for a ramble. Later, they settled in to play cards in the drawing room. At seven o’clock, they were informed by Mrs. MacPuddle that dinner was served.

“She’s a right charmer, she is,” Mrs. MacPuddle said of the new cook, who had indeed been lent them by the neighboring estate. “Do you know she’s embraced Miss Morgan’s challenge and is dedicated to serving the ladies their own three-course meal in the breakfast room every evening?”

“I fail to see why the ladies should not join us here in the dining room, even if their meal differs from ours,” Archie said peevishly as the kitchen maid carried in a platter of trout.

“I believe the ladies have already dined.” Effie turned to Mrs. MacPuddle. “Didn’t they dine earlier?”

“How do you know that?” Archie asked, a little chagrined by the accusatory tone his question had taken.

“I encountered the elder Miss Morgan on my way here, and she told me she was off to meet her sister in the library where she was submitting to post-dinner embroidery lessons.”

“Oh, no. You must have misheard. Miss Morgan does not do embroidery.”

Effie shrugged, and Mrs. MacPuddle said, “Yes, the ladies are finished dining, my lord. Cook is happy to accommodate the misses’ special request, but prefers to do it before dinner for my lords commences, wanting yours to be her sole focus while you are dining.”

“Well,” Archie said. “That is most appreciated.”

Wasn’t it?

This was, after all, an Earls Trip.

Wasn’t it?

* * *

Embroidery was not so bad, Clementine reflected as she climbed out the window of her bedchamber just as the clock in the hallway outside her room struck midnight. She was starting to feel more like herself, having spent the day tromping around out of doors. It turned out the wilds of Cumbria had the same restorative effect as the wilds at Hill House, though the mechanism was a bit different. Around Hill House, she knew the joy of familiarity, could put her hand out to touch the papery birch that marked a turn in the path she knew to anticipate. Here in this unfamiliar forest where she was an interloper, she had the eyes of a beginner, an unwilling city girl suddenly confronted with a network of sessile oak roots covered with moss. But only on the one side—the north. So the tree was a compass, as trees always were; that was one thing that could be relied on in this capricious world. This particular tree had been a perfect combination of strong and whimsical: an octopus, half naked and half dressed in its green Sunday best.

Both sights—the comforting familiar birch at home and the bizarrely delightful oak here—aided in the task of sinking Clementine’s soul back into her body. And it wasn’t only trees restoring her to herself; it was, somewhat surprisingly, people. Generally, she found human company to be quite draining, but she had enjoyed a trip to the nearest village yesterday with Olive and Lords Featherfinch and Marsden. In the process of procuring pies for the gentlemen’s dinner, they’d learned that Doveborough was preparing for its annual fall fete, which she gathered was a big to-do that drew crowds from the region and beyond. The three of them had a grand time watching some ladies decorate an outdoor stage with ribbons and fall foliage, and they’d enjoyed warm spiced cider in a tearoom off the village green.

And today, after helping Olive ritualistically dispose of the remnants of her time with Theo—an activity which had turned out to be surprisingly restorative—the sisters settled in the small parlor they’d adopted because it was far from the one the gentlemen seemed to have settled in. Olive was working on a sampler the likes of which Clementine had never seen. The pastoral scene from the road between Hill House and the village of Chiddington was both ambitious and lovely, and Olive was creating it purely from memory. Clementine had never considered that aspect of embroidery: that one could conjure something from nothing, transform a blank canvas into a thing of beauty. “Men are much ballyhooed for their painting,” Olive had said. “The old masters were just that—masters. I wager there were plenty of old mistresses who were a good hand with a needle and thread, but we don’t talk about them.”

Olive, it turned out, had become a veritable font of wisdom while Clementine hadn’t been paying attention.

Clementine’s dress caught on the window sill, and she had to yank it free, wincing at the ripping sound that resulted. She had only the one dress. She was going to have to borrow another from Olive, for eventually she would need to surrender hers to the housemaid for washing. And now for mending, too, she supposed.

But she was out, ripped dress and all. The window in her room was in a dormer that jutted out from the roofline of this part of the house, and once clear of the window, she could settle herself on the slope of the roof. The slate was cold but not uncomfortable. Being this high up was exhilarating. It reminded her of being perched in a tree, which was a place she used to find herself quite a lot, before being forced to endure London and the Marriage Mart.

The stars were out in force, like buckets of pearls had spilled across the sky. She wondered if it would be possible to embroider the night sky. Could one do a sort of reverse-embroidery where the image itself was blank space, unstitched canvas representing stars, set against a dark, stitched background?

“Success in embroidery is all in your choice of subject,” Olive had said. “You must choose a subject that is achievable and to which you feel a connection.” Clementine refrained from pointing out that Olive’s scene featured a herd of sheep, and Clementine was certain the only time her sister had ever interacted with sheep was while wailing at them when they were in the road preventing her from getting where she wanted to go.

With Olive’s guidance, Clementine decided to attempt a simple collection of leaves from the types of trees most common around Hill House—beech, willow, and alder. She had only just finished the first leaf, and while it looked as if it had been made by a girl still in the schoolroom, she didn’t think it too awfully terrible for her first attempt at embroidery in more than a decade. In truth, the repetitive nature of the task had turned out to be soothing, and after the events of the past few days, she could do with some soothing.

Embroidery also allowed for conversation. In fact, it somehow made it easier to talk to one’s companion, she supposed because it occupied one’s eyes and hands, making the conversation seem idle, even when it was not. In the two evenings they’d been alone together, Clementine had learned a great deal about her sister. Not what she really wanted to know, which was Olive’s mysterious reasons for offering herself to Theo to prevent him from blackmailing Clementine. Olive just wasn’t that selfless. But Clementine had learned other, smaller things, some of which she found unexpectedly delightful. For example, Olive had fascinating, if fanciful, theories on Napoleon’s escape from Elba. And she had, all these years, only been pretending to like their closest neighbors in London.

It was all quite astonishing.

Clementine sighed happily as she pulled a blanket around her shoulders and lay back against the sloped roof. All right: the Pleiades. She probably should have brought a lantern and the star chart she’d been perusing earlier—she’d found the latter in the castle’s chaotic library—but she hadn’t been sure how steep the roof would be. And though she would admit a tendency toward recklessness, even she could see the utility in getting her bearings unencumbered on her first trip out to the roof.

“Clem?”

“Ahh!” She jerked, startled.

“Oh, hell, Clem! Don’t fall!”

Archie. He’d stuck his head out of his own window, which was apparently next to hers. Just as she was registering the presence of his head, he heaved his entire body through the window and was at her side in an instant with one arm extended in front of her—as if his arm would stop her if she were truly falling.

It was a little . . . unsettling to think his bedchamber was just on the other side of the wall from hers. She composed herself. “What are you doing here?”

“Funny,” he drawled, “I was about to ask you the same thing.”

“I came out to look at the stars.”

She expected him to scold her—that seemed to be their chief mode of interacting these days—so she elaborated. “I’d have gone outside—below outside.” She waved her arms to indicate the grounds below them. “But this place is so overgrown, you can’t see the whole sky from the grounds, and I’m trying to find a constellation that’s close to the horizon.”

The upbraiding she was anticipating didn’t come. Archie merely tipped his head back and said, “Ah, yes. Stunning, isn’tit?”

“It is. I’ve missed the sky during my time in London. The daytime and the nighttime versions of it.”

“Do you never get to Hill House? Or do you just not bother to call on us at Mollybrook when you’re there?”

She heard the jesting in his voice and smiled. “I never get there. I wasn’t exaggerating earlier. Father has been so desperate I should marry that he’s kept me in Town, even in the depths of summer. And Olive does not like the country; she prefers the amusements of the city. You know how among my family I’ve always been . . .”

“More inclined toward outdoor pursuits?” Archie supplied, as if he knew she’d been going to finish her thought with something more like “an outcast” and preferred his version. And he was right. Outcast was putting too fine a point on it. Olive and Father loved Clementine and made pains to include her in their doings, as had Mother. They just didn’t understand her, or she them. She could not fathom the appeal of a stuffy, overcrowded ballroom, just as they grew restless and bored after too long a sojourn in the country.

She was the changeling child among the Morgans.

It occurred to her that back when she’d actually been a child, she’d had Archie around. Even when he was at school, she wrote him letters, and when he came home on breaks, they’d be off on their rambles.

She realized that she was lonely. That even though she had spent these past years in the jammed ballrooms and bustling streets of Mayfair, she had been, elementally, alone.

“More inclined toward outdoor pursuits,” Archie said firmly, his previous question transmuted into a declaration.

“More inclined toward outdoor pursuits,” she echoed, because, again, it wasn’t as if she didn’t love her family or they her. “The last time we were at Hill House was Easter, for a week only, and I believe you were in London.”

“Yes.” He was silent a moment. “There was a new doctor I wanted my mother to see. In fact, she is in London now for a course of treatment.”

“Oh, Arch. How is she?” She had been wanting to ask, but since she’d been following his instructions to stay out of his way, she hadn’t had an opportunity. “I always include her in my prayers.”

The silence stretched on. Just when she was gathering her thoughts to issue an apology for asking in the first place—imagine having to apologize for saying something to Archie—he spoke. “She is . . . worse than you remember.”

The Dowager Countess of Harcourt was afflicted with a disease of the mind. She was forgetful beyond what seemed usual for a woman her age, and at times it seemed that she conflated present and past. It had started when they were young, had been something the family grappled with even when Archie’s father was alive, and it seemed to have gotten worse as the years progressed, and to have been joined by occasional flares of ill temper.

“Perhaps that isn’t a fair assessment,” Archie said. “In some ways, she’s better. Do you recall how angry she used to get at my father?” Clementine nodded. She remembered more than one dinner derailed by Archie’s mother’s lashing out at his father for some perceived slight—although sometimes the slights were real. Archie’s father had not been a particularly kind, or patient man. “With my father’s passing, her anger faded.” Archie snorted. “Which is understandable. No one could ever live up to his standards, even those of us in our right minds. But in other ways, she is worse. She doesn’t recognize me anymore, hasn’t for months. She held on to her memory of Miss Brown for longer—you remember the companion I engaged after Father died?” Clementine nodded again, not wanting to interrupt Archie with speech. “Very occasionally, she still remembers Miss Brown, though those instances of lucidity seem to be fewer and farther between.”

How utterly heartbreaking. Clementine missed her own mother a great deal. Though they hadn’t been cut from the same cloth, there was something about a mother’s hand laid against one’s forehead that comforted, no matter one’s age. She rather thought that it might be worse to have one’s mother physically present but at the same time not to have her.

Archie laughed, though there seemed little mirth in it. “Though sometimes Mother thinks Miss Brown is her own mother—my grandmother—which can be darkly amusing. It turns out Grandmother never cared for Father, and Mother seems bent on reliti-gating that old disagreement with Miss Brown.”

Oh, this was sounding worse and worse. Why couldn’t Archie’s mother reminisce about happy times with Miss Brown standing in for her mother? “How curious,” she said carefully, for in her memory, the marriage between Archie’s parents had not been a particularly close, or cheerful, one.

“Indeed. I’d always assumed, given my parents’ cool attitudes toward each other, that the match had been championed by their parents. But according to these reenactments, my mother was the driving force. It was, and remains, surprising.”

“Hmm.”

“I must say, Miss Brown is wonderful about it,” Archie went on. “We’re lucky to have her. She plays the role of my grandmother with kindness and patience, gently trying to assure Mother that she grew to love and approve of Father.” He paused and cleared his throat. “There was a time when they had that conversation at least weekly.”

“Who does your mother think you are when these conversations occur?”

“No one. I’m no one.”

Something about the way he said that didn’t sit right with her. He’d spoken quickly and his tone had gone alarmingly flat, as if he meant the statement elementally, not just as it related to his mother’s affliction. But she thought that was an observation Archie would not appreciate, so she tilted her head back and said, “I am trying to locate the Pleiades.”

“The Seven Sisters,” he said, his voice restored to its usual timbre.

“It’s supposed to be near the horizon.”

“Yes, it’s that clump of stars there.” He pointed. “You see the ones that are very close together?”

“Hmm. That won’t do.”

“Won’t do for what? The heavens not meeting your expectations, Clem?”

She smiled. “Olive and I have struck a bargain in which each agrees to give the other’s favorite pursuit a genuine attempt while we’re here. I have been learning to embroider.”

“Truly? I’d heard something about that, but I didn’t believeit.”

“Embroidery fills the time in a way I must admit is not entirely unpleasant. Besides, after all the upset of late, I have been endeavoring to take a more concerted interest in Olive’s pastimes.”

“And what is Olive doing at your behest?”

“I have yet to decide. It is difficult to distill my interests into a single discernable pursuit. ‘Be out of doors’ is not a pursuit, perse.”

“Yes, I see your dilemma.”

“And I could hardly say walking. That is not specific enough, and it wouldn’t be as if I’d be introducing Olive to something novel.”

“This is the part where normally I’d suggest hunting.”

“You would, wouldn’t you?” Honestly, Archie was one of her favorite people, or at least he used to be, back when they were children, so it was difficult to reconcile that with Archie the murderer of animals. But to be fair, he had always loved the hunt, so it wasn’t as if he’d changed elementally.

Perhaps she had.

That was a disconcerting thought.

Not wanting to get into it—with him or with herself—she said, “I have been leaning toward stargazing, but I’m doing some preliminary investigation in order to make it more interesting.”

“These majestic stars on their own are not sufficiently interesting?”

She smiled, something in her warming at his gentle teasing. “You know what I mean! Olive will respond better if I can superimpose a story on what she’s seeing.”

“Luckily, the ancients did exactly that.”

“Precisely. I found a star chart in the library, and I’m endeavoring to match up what’s on it with what I can see—and with what I can remember of the myths behind the constellations.”

“The Seven Sisters is thematically apt for you and Olive, I suppose.”

“That’s what I thought. Daughters of Atlas, turned into stars. Alas, though, it doesn’t make a picture. It’s merely a clump of stars. I thought if they were bright enough, or . . . clumpy enough, it might not matter, but now that I see them . . .” She shrugged.

“You think they will underwhelm Olive.”

“I fear so.”

“What about the plough? It’s part of a great bear, I believe.”

“Too common. Everyone knows about the plough, probably even Olive.”

“Ah.”

They sat in silence, and it felt like old times. The Archie of her youth, when he came home on school breaks, used to slot right back into her life as if he had never been away. He would simply appear, in her favorite spot in the woods, say, and plop down next to her. Or he’d fall in beside her suddenly when she was walking into Chiddington. “Hullo, Clem,” he might say, as if it had been a mere day, rather than months, since they’d last seen each other.

A bit like how he had popped his head out of the window just now, and was sitting beside her on a rooftop at midnight as if it were the most ordinary thing in the world.

She’d been fretting that there had been too much time between them, or too much fuss with this Theo business, or too much something, to allow things to feel easy between them again. Their reacquaintance certainly hadn’t felt easy, what with the dramatic escape from the inn and Archie’s insistence she not spend time with him and his friends.

But here it was, that ease. Here he was. She hadn’t realized how much she’d missed this. Missed him.

“A pity it’s not later in the year,” Archie said, “for then you could see the great hunter, with his belt.”

“Ah, yes, my favorite activity, immortalized in the heavens for all eternity.”

Clementine had meant the remark ironically, but Archie asked, “You don’t care for hunting?”

“Have I ever?”

“I . . . don’t know.” It was too dark to see any detail on his face, but somehow, she could feel him furrowing his brow.

Oh, Archie. He could be so attentive but also so very . . . daft. “Well, considering that I eschew the eating of animals, it is safe to conclude that I also do not care for the killing of them for sport.”

“I . . .”

She had shocked him. He did love hunting. She didn’t care to get into a moral discussion just now, or to insult his favorite pastime, so she returned her attention to the sky and said, blithely, “Didn’t the hunter follow the great bear into the sky and get stuck there? He is still in pursuit, after all. He must not be a very talented huntsman.”

Archie grumbled, but it was a good-natured grumble.

Another companionable silence settled. Clementine was starting to feel as if she could sit here forever on this roof with Archie, neither of them needing to speak. The quiet between them felt almost medicinal—in the same way the trees and the streams and the stars, even the ones that formed a picture of a hunter, always had been.

“Clem?”

“Hmm?”

“Promise me you’ll stay away from men like Mr. Bull in the future?”

She thought she could, but at the same time, when she went back over it in her mind and considered what she could have done differently, she didn’t come up with much. “Well, if I’d known what kind of man he was, I would have stayed away from the start. But of course I can promise to stay away from men like Mr. Bull because I am resolved to stay away from men in general from nowon.”

“Present company excepted?” he teased.

“I am resolved to stay away from any man who might want to marry me,” she laughingly clarified. “Which in Town, with Father around, is a category that might as well include all men.”

“Perhaps it’s time for a sojourn at Hill House.”

“Oh, how I wish.”

“It might allow you to clear your head, provide a respite from the machinations of London life.”

“I fear that for Father, the machinations are the point. Though perhaps now that both of his daughters have had to be snatched from the brink of ruination, he will permit a country holiday. A palate refresher of sorts.”

He chuckled, and she was gratified that she had the ability to amuse him—and that they could already laugh about their recent harrowing travails.

“But I will exhaust him, Arch, even if he doesn’t permit an immediate retreat to Hill House. I shall outlast him, and when I’m finally allowed to be the spinster I was born to be, I shall retire to the country, and I shall be glad to have you there for a friend.”

She’d been trying for more levity, to gently mock her own situation, but her voice had come out strong and resolute, as if she were making a vow.

“I am sure you will outlast him if you want to,” Archie said thoughtfully. Then, more animatedly, he added, “I say, join us for dinner tomorrow, won’t you? You and Olive both.”

“I thought you didn’t want us underfoot.” Besides, Clementine was thoroughly enjoying her meatless meals with Olive in the breakfast room. The cook they’d borrowed seemed not only to indulge but to genuinely embrace the challenge Clementine’s dietary preferences posed. The sisters had been presented with some ambitious—and often delicious—victuals.

“One meal a day does not constitute ‘underfoot,’” Archie said.

It was kind of him to offer, but when she compared the pause before he’d said, “One meal a day does not constitute ‘underfoot’” to the intensity with which he’d stared at her that first morning when he’d insisted she and Olive stay away from him and his friends, it was easy to see which of the two sentiments was the truer.