Earls Trip

11 - A Proposition （Not That Kind）

11

A Proposition (Not That Kind)

And so it went for the next two days. In the evenings, Clementine and Olive joined Archie and Effie and Simon after dinner. It was great fun. The five of them had wide-ranging conversations, often uproarious, sometimes serious. It was akin to being with Simon and Effie alone, yet not. Which was a completely daft thing to say, Archie supposed—it either was or it wasn’t. He only meant that the addition of the Morgan sisters did not change the tenor of their evenings, even if it did change the content of them. As an example of the latter, Effie was learning to embroider. He and Olive would sit together on the settee with their heads together, half participating in the group conversation, half in their own world.

Archie’s two sets of friends were becoming one. It was very satisfactory.

Yet he was simultaneously dissatisfied. Clementine hadn’t been back on the roof. He had steered clear the one night as per her instructions. But the next, when he’d stuck his head out the window of the bedchamber next to hers, she hadn’t been there.

Seeing Clementine only in the group setting meant there were so many things he wanted to ask her but could not. How had the stargazing gone, for one?

He began to wonder if the three nights they’d spent on the roof had actually happened.

“What did you have for dinner?” Effie asked the sisters, once they’d all assembled that evening.

“A tomato aspic followed by stewed brussels sprouts,” Clementine said primly, inching her chair to one side to remove herself from beneath a leak in the ceiling.

“Tomato aspic!” Effie, incapable as ever of masking his true emotions, made a face of dismay as he placed a bucket under the leak—an afternoon storm had seen the buckets pressed back into service.

“What did you have?” Olive asked.

“Roast guinea fowl,” Effie said, “dressed with parsley and mushrooms and bacon.”

Olive sighed plaintively.

“Miss Olive,” Archie said, “do I sense that your devotion to your sister’s diet is faltering?”

“No!” she said, a touch too vehemently.

“Olive,” said Clementine, “you know you needn’t dine withme.”

“Oh, but I want to.”

“Perhaps we could swap places for a day, Miss Olive,” Simon said. “I confess that even though a permanent meat-free diet, especially if the alternative is tomato aspic, does not appeal to my stomach, it is, from an intellectual standpoint, an interesting proposition.” He turned to Clementine. “You will correct me if you’d prefer I not bring him up, but I read Mr. Bull’s pamphlet, and several of his points resonated with me in terms of their potential to improve the lives of the poor. Certainly it is less expensive to feed people grain than meat. It just had never occurred to me that a person could live on grain alone.”

“Well, not grain alone,” Clementine said, and they were off, discussing advances in agriculture and potential food distribution systems with great gusto. Olive and Effie had given up any pretense of participating in the conversation and were bent over their embroidery.

“And you know,” Clementine said, “Mr. Bull is not the only one who has written on the topic. The poet Shelley has an essay called A Vindication of Natural Diet. And he was influenced by a man called John Frank Newton, who advocated a diet of vegetables and distilled water only, which I personally think is taking it too far. And Newton was influenced by another man before him.” Clementine’s eyes twinkled. “I take comfort in the fact that these ideas have an intellectual history, so I needn’t throw them out along with my erstwhile fiancé.”

Simon chuckled, and it did Archie’s heart good to hear two of his favorite people enjoying a shared amusement. “In some ways,” Simon said, “the arguments aren’t dissimilar from those in favor of temperance.”

“Indeed, and as a former student of divinity, you would know that many of those ideas overlap with theological matters.”

With that, they were off, talking about whether the plight of the poor was more important than any suffering an animal might endure to feed a hungry person. Archie liked the notion that on one side of the room, Effie and Olive were sewing, and on the other, Clementine and Simon were engaged in a lively moral discussion.

“But surely,” Archie said when he was able to get a word in with the latter pair, “you must distinguish between animals who meet their fate in slaughterhouses and those who fall prey to hobbyists such as myself. My hunting has no bearing one way or the other on the plight of the poor.”

“I think you’re missing the point,” Simon said after a beat of silence.

“How am I missing the point?”

“What you’re saying is you—you personally—don’t need to hunt to live, I think?” Clementine asked.

“That’s exactly what I’m saying. It’s a pastime.”

“Then why do it?” She was speaking in a clipped, almost annoyed-sounding tone. He had never heard that tone from Clem before. He didn’t like it.

He thought back to the awkward turn their conversation had taken the other night regarding the constellation Orion, and considered dissembling. But this was Clementine. He couldn’t lie to her. “I hunt because I enjoy it.” And that was understating it.

A look of dismay passed over her features, though she quickly pasted it over with a kind of haughtiness he had never seen on her. “Killing animals when you don’t need them to subsist is enjoyable?” Now she sounded like one of his teachers back at school, mockingly reading aloud to the class from one of his essays. Archie had always been able to hear how stupid his attempts at writing were in a way he couldn’t see when he was putting pen to paper.

He wasn’t that boy any longer, though. He didn’t have to stand for this treatment.

But also . . . Clementine was not his teacher. She was his friend. His friend with whom he was having a disagreement.

That was new, and distressing. He and Clem had never disagreed, about anything. Their youthful friendship had been full of enjoyment and accord. He reminded himself that he hadn’t seen Clementine for five years, and that many more still since they had truly talked. Perhaps he had been romanticizing their recent time spent on the roof. Perhaps the darkness that had allowed an unusual exchange of confidences had lulled him, made him forget that they weren’t the children they used to be.

“Anyway, Archie is not allowed to hunt on our trips anymore,” said Effie, who apparently hadn’t completely abandoned the conversation in favor of his sewing. Bless him, he was trying to diffuse the tension—by steering them back onto easier territory: needling Archie for his illegal weapon. Archie welcomed the diversion.

“So I gather,” Clementine said. “I’ve heard you speaking about rules?”

“Yes,” Effie said. “I am not allowed to write poetry, Simon is not allowed to talk about Parliament, and Archie is not allowed to hunt.”

“Why ever not?” Olive asked. “An annual holiday where you disallow your favorite activities would seem not to make a great deal of sense.”

“Hmm,” Effie said. “That is an excellent point.”

“Though perhaps we might consider that hunting is categorically different from writing poetry and talking politics,” Simon said with a smirk. He turned to Archie. “Tell the ladies why hunting in particular is banned.”

Bollocks. Archie mumbled his response. “Three years ago there was a bit of an unfortunate mishap.”

“What does that mean?” Clementine asked.

“He almost shot Effie,” Simon said smugly.

Clementine swung to face Simon. “Tell me more.”

“I thought I was alone in the woods,” Archie said quickly. If this story had to be trotted out, he was going to be the one doing the trotting. Simon would only embellish it in a manner that would be unflattering. “A flash of white caught my attention. I thought it a deer . . .” He winced, still remembering the close call. “It was Featherfinch’s cravat.”

“So what you are saying is that while I accidentally shot you in what could reasonably be considered self-defense—you have to admit there was no way I could have known it was you entering that room and not Mr. Bull—you accidentally shot Lord Featherfinch due to pure carelessness.”

“That is not at all what I’m saying!” he protested, though Clem was only teasing him. He thought—he hoped. This business of hunting was the only thing between them he couldn’t quite parse. “It was overcast, and Featherfinch’s black attire blended into the tree trunks!”

“Now, now,” Effie said soothingly. “If anything, it was my fault. Archie could never have expected me to appear in the woods. Simon sometimes hunts with him, but I never do. And I never rise from bed that early. But that day I’d had the most extraordinary dream, and I’d gone in search of Archie to tell him about it.” He paused. “And then I found him, and he almost shot me. It was all terribly exciting.”

Archie did not remember that day as “terribly exciting.” He’d felt awful—he still did—though Effie ought to have known better. Archie had accepted his hunting ban the next year with good cheer. As much as he loved hunting, had he to choose, he would much rather be the kind of person Effie sought out to discuss his dreams than be a huntsman. But last year—and this—the uproar having faded somewhat from memory, he smuggled a firearm along on their holiday.

Olive, who had been watching the conversation silently but with great apparent interest, said, “I wish I had friends like you gentlemen.”

“You do,” Effie said. “We are your friends, are we not?”

Olive smiled, widely at first, but it turned wistful. “That is not precisely what I mean.”

“What do you mean, then?” Archie asked, thankful for the redirection.

“Oh, I don’t know.” Olive shook her head and picked up her embroidery. “I’m speaking nonsense.”

Archie thought he knew what she meant even if she didn’t. It was the whole salt-and-strawberries business. Olive had a loving family, though, even if that love was sometimes frayed by the pressure exerted on it. Still, what she was talking about was the unconditional support—if leavened with good-humored insults—and camaraderie that came with having long-standing friends one trusted and could rely on absolutely. Found family, Simon had called it.

The conversation moved on, but something had been lost. Archie thought about that first evening Olive and Clementine had joined them. They had all laughed so uproariously, what with the dressing-gown business. But after the laughter had faded, a kind of understanding had flowed between Clementine and Archie as they stared at each other. A recognition. It had felt as if they were alone, though they most definitely had not been. And there had been flashes of that silent understanding from time to time since. A joke someone made that hit them both the same way and caused them to look at each other. A memory recounted that turned out to be shared.

That feeling, that sense of being seen, was gone. Archie still felt Clementine’s attention from time to time, knew when she was glancing at him. He always met her gaze. But there was none of that previous sense that they were alone together in a crowd, allied somehow. He almost had the sense that she was disappointed in him.

Why was that? Was it just about the hunting? Or was it more . . . elemental?

He was being ridiculous. She wasn’t disappointed in him. And even if she was, what did he care?

* * *

He cared.

For some damn reason, Archie couldn’t bear the thought of Clem thinking ill of him. It had to be the hunting.

Because if it wasn’t the hunting, it was him.

And if it was the hunting, she was misunderstanding. Hunting wasn’t murder. It was the natural way of things. He didn’t do it to satisfy a bloodlust. The only bloodlust he could recall having felt in recent memory had been aimed at Theodore Bull. Hunting was altogether different. It put Archie into a meditative state. Calmed his mind the way nothing else did. Other pursuits worked a little bit. Boxing, riding, his beads.

Just not as much as hunting did.

Restless, he rolled over and punched the lumpen mass that passed for a pillow in Quintrell Castle.

Hunting took Archie’s oft-fragmented attention and honed it into a perfect, smooth tunnel where he was at one end and his prey at the other. One got to the edge of that tunnel by paying close attention to the forest and the trees and the air, by sensing the minute currents that moved through them. Clementine sensed those currents, too, he just knew it. He had seen her doing so.

He would admit, though, that in addition to being calming and clarifying, hunting was also bloody. But so was life.

He threw back his covers and padded to his window to peer out through the misty night, though he knew he wouldn’t see her. There had been no sign of her yesterday, leaving him to conclude that, having given her stargazing lesson the previous night, she was done with nocturnal roof-sitting. Even if she hadn’t been, it was wet out there. She was still awake, though: her room glowed dimly.

He should go back to bed.

He should apologize.

The two sentiments were at odds with each other. And since he didn’t even know what he should be apologizing for, “go back to bed” was the more sensible option.

Which was why he could not explain why he dressed, hurried along silent corridors, entered the room next to Clementine’s, heaved himself out the window onto the roof, inched over wet, slippery slate to her window, and tapped on the glass. He held his breath as if he were a Montague about to be beset upon by a band of hostile Capulets.

It only took a moment for her to appear, holding a candle. He watched surprise make way for recognition on her face. Her hair was down. He wanted to put his fingers in it. She unlatched the window. “Archie?”

“I wanted to speak with you.” He paused, realizing how odd that sounded. She was probably wondering why he couldn’t speak with her tomorrow like a normal, reasonable person. “It’s urgent.” Or it had felt so. He hadn’t been able to sleep fretting that things were not right between them.

“Why did you not just come to my door?”

That . . . was a good question. He didn’t have a good answer for it. “It seemed a little improper?” He considered the exceedingly relaxed evenings the group had passed together. While Effie had refrained from wearing his dressing gown beyond that first night, no one was clinging to any pretense of formality. In fact, when the group had disbanded for the evening a few hours ago, Effie had taken Olive to the guardhouse to show her the ravens, and no one had had anything to say about that except Archie’s warning them to be careful on the widow’s walk in the dark and Clementine’s instruction that her sister should not oversleep breakfast, as the cook was planning an experimental porridge that included locally foraged ingredients Clementine had collected herself.

“A little improper,” Clementine echoed.

He ignored the incredulity in her tone. “I’ve a proposition for you.”

“All right. Shall I come out?” She pushed the window open wider.

“No, no. It’s slippery out here. It’s raining more than I’d realized. I’ll come in.”

She lifted her candle, illuminating a skeptical face—she was doing that signature nose-scrunch of hers. “Through the door?”

“Just back up and make room, Clem.”

He proceeded to make a very ungraceful entrance through her window, landing on the carpet with a thud and shedding water droplets like one of Olive’s spaniels. He looked around as Clementine used the candle she’d been holding to light two more. He’d been in this room before, of course, that first night, but it hadn’t been hers at that point. Now, with the bed mussed and an open book on the bedside table, the space felt occupied. Intimate. As if he were seeing something he shouldn’t.

He turned from the tableau, but that put Clementine herself in his sights. She was wearing a white cotton shift and a shawl. She was covered from neck to toe, but seeing her attired thusly added to the sense of transgressive intimacy.

She pointed at the only chair in the room, climbed onto her bed, and reclined against the ornate, carved headboard.

Clementine in bed: the wild, forest girl of his youth all cozily tucked in. The contrast was . . . something. She’d set her candle on the bedside table, so she was barely illuminated, but he could still see the contrast between her dark hair and pale skin. Dark hair and pale skin: Effie would be disappointed by such meager descriptive efforts. Raven hair and alabaster skin? That wasn’t much better.

“Well?” she said impatiently, puncturing his pathetic poetic admiration.

Right. “You and I ought to enter into an agreement akin to the one you and Olive had.”

“How do you mean?”

“We’ve been arguing about hunting, about the eating of meat, et cetera. So I propose that I spend a day your way, and you spend a day my way.”

“You’re going to need to be more specific.”

“I abstain from eating animal flesh for an entire day, and—”

“I venture out into the woods and kill animals? No, thank you.”

“No. You venture out into the woods with me while I kill animals.”

“You make it sound so appealing.”

“I’ll be doing it anyway, so your presence or absence won’t have any bearing on the death toll.”

“You’re macabre.”

“Think of it as a day spent in your beloved outdoors, but with a purpose.” He truly believed her imagination was running away from her, and that if she accompanied him on a hunt, she would gain a better understanding. This was the same woman who’d been expounding on the natural way of things when it came to the mating of grasshoppers, for Heaven’s sake. Surely she could be made to see that birth and death were part of this same rhythm of life. And perhaps he could show her what hunting meant to him in a way he hadn’t heretofore managed.

She was silent a while. Just when he was about to admit this had been a daft idea and heave himself back out the window, she said, “All right.”

“Really?”

“But we do your day first. I want time to prepare the cook before I feed you.”

“Who is this cook, by the way? She looms large in the mythology of this trip. I know from experience that she’s very good at what she does, at least on the gentlemen’s side of the table, but reportedly she is also capable of delivering such atrocities as tomato aspic.”

“Her name is Susannah, and she’s wonderful. Her mother is the cook at Winslow House, which is just this side of Doveborough. She is possessed of quite the culinary imagination, and as I’m sure your Lord Featherfinch knows, the first drafts of artistic endeavors do not always enter the world exactly the way one had perhaps imagined.”

“Point taken.”

“I wish to consult with her, to make sure there is nothing like the aforementioned aspic—which I will admit was rather unfortunate—on the menu. Will the other gentlemen be joining you?”

“I should think not, but let’s discuss it tomorrow at breakfast. Perhaps we can make a swap for Olive in the manner jestingly suggested by Simon.”

Clementine’s demeanour softened. “That would be a good idea. While I appreciate Olive’s steadfastness, I know she would give her favorite dress right now for a plate of ham.”

“We are agreed, then. We shall make the arrangements tomorrow morning, then set out for the woods.” He was unaccountably excited. One of his favorite people in one of his favorite places. It had been too long. “And the next day, I will join you at all your meals.” Oddly, he was equally excited about that day.

He wanted to ask one more thing, but he feared that to do so would strengthen her hand in this hunting dispute they seemed to be having. But he couldn’t help himself. “Clem, may I make a request?”

“Certainly.”

“Can we have those roasted pears again the day after tomorrow?” He couldn’t stop thinking about them.

“Pardon me? Was that you requesting a dish that does not involve dead animals? I must have misheard.” There was laughter, and triumph, in her tone.

He decided to compound her sense of victory, though he had no idea why he would do that. “You heard correctly. Those pears were wonderful.”

“Of course we shall have the pears again, if you like.” Her voice had gone soft and, he dared say, fond. It was a great relief to know that whatever discord had arisen between them earlier this evening had been smoothed over. He yawned. He would be able to sleep now.

Clementine got up and went to the window. “The rain has picked up. I should hate to have to miss my inaugural hunting trip because you fell to your death off this pile of rocks. Might I suggest you leave through the door? You’re only in the next room, after all. Who is going to see you? And if they did, what would it matter? Neither Olive nor their lordships would ever suspect there was anything besides friendship between us.”

“Of course they wouldn’t.” There was nothing besides friendship between them. Unless one considered this persistent need, beating like a drum in his veins, that she should understand him, and think well of him.

He didn’t have that with Effie and Simon.

While he was pondering the nature of friendship, she made her way to the door. He followed, and just as he opened it and was preparing to bid her good night, the door across the hall began to open, too. Instinctively, he moved to close Clementine’s door. He hadn’t quite gotten it all the way shut when he heard Effie speak.

His first thought was, what the hell was Effie doing in Olive’s room in the middle of the night? His second, that there was no way anything untoward could be happening between Effie and Olive. Archie had never heard Effie express any carnal or romantic feelings. Part of him wouldn’t be surprised to learn that Effie reserved all such sentiment for his poetry. Regardless, he was too good a man to take advantage of Olive.

And after all, one might ask the same question of Archie: What the hell was he doing in Clementine’s room in the middle of the night?

He was asking her to go hunting with him, and no doubt there was an equally bizarre-yet-innocent explanation for whatever was happening across the hall.

“Thank you for showing me your work, Miss Olive.”

There it was. While Archie’s faith in Effie was ratified, he was now wildly curious as to what “work” Olive was doing, and why she would be showing it to Effie at such a late hour.

“Thank you for appreciating it,” Olive said.

“It would take an imbecile not to. It really is extraordinary.”

Archie sent an inquiring look at Clementine, who used the hand that wasn’t holding the candle to turn her palm up to signal that she had no special sisterly insight. Unsure what to do, he took another step backward, deeper into Clementine’s room, but she must have had the opposite impulse. They collided, her front to his back, and he hissed involuntarily, almost as if she’d shot him again. It was the same sensation he’d had the other night on the roof, when she’d touched his hand, but . . . more. It was as if he’d been violently shaken to life after a decade of slumber.

She pushed him out of the way, which wasn’t hard as he was still reeling, set down her candle, and put her ear to the cracked door.

Well, if she was going to eavesdrop, so was he. He went to stand behind her, his height sufficient to allow him to slot his head in above hers. That this put them in contact again, this time in a reverse position—her back to his front—did not help with his discombobulation. This contact was less of a shock since he had initiated it, but it was still unsettling. Her nightdress was thin. He could feel the pointiness of her shoulder blades, and the softness of her arse. She was sharp and soft at the same time, and if that didn’t perfectly sum up Clementine Morgan, he didn’t know whatdid.

She shifted against him, making him realize he was half hard. How mortifying. Hoping she had been too distracted by the conversation in the hallway to notice, he took a step back, severing the contact between them, and ordered himself to concentrate on the espionage at hand.

He didn’t have to try very hard because Olive’s next words were blurted with vehemence. She wasn’t yelling exactly, but her urgently whispered cry of “Lord Featherfinch, I beg you, hold up a moment!” pierced the silence of the night. As did the clicking sound that followed. Effie was in a phase of wearing elaborate, old-fashioned court shoes. The clicking drew nearer until it stopped. After a beat, Olive said, “There is something I’ve been wanting to tell you, but I haven’t known how to say it. Or, in fact, whether to say it.”

“Ofttimes in these situations it’s best to simply speak, don’t you find? It’s usually such an enormous relief. If you—”

“I have developed a tendre for you!”

Olive had spoken so quickly, it took a moment for Archie to register her words. In fact, he sensed Clementine, who had always been smarter than he was, stiffen before Olive’s declaration fully penetrated his mind. He lifted a hand to Clementine’s shoulder, and she batted it away—batted him away from the door entirely, as if she thought he was going to go charging out into the corridor. He’d only meant to soothe, to offer his presence as a kind of ballast. It was all he knew to do.

Keeping one palm facing him, she returned her ear to the small crack in the door. Once again, he joined her, though he took pains that there should be no contact between their lower bodies. Clementine did not object as Archie arrived again behind her, but she held a finger to her lips to signal quiet. He nodded.

The corridor was silent. Archie could imagine Effie cycling through confusion, comprehension, shock, dismay. He was marshaling his words to deliver a response that would let Olive down gently. He would do a good job. If one had to have one’s heart broken, Effie was the man to do it.

“Well, say something!” Olive cried.

“Miss Olive, I’m flattered by your interest. Positively flattened by it, actually.”

“Do I sense a ‘but’ coming?”

“You do. I am sorry.”

Archie admired Effie. People tended to look at him and think him flippant, given his disinterest in social conventions. And he could be flippant—sometimes he even leaned into that interpretation of his character for reasons Archie didn’t fully understand—but at his core, he was sensitive, kind, and profoundly good. He would never lie to get out of a situation like this. He would tell the truth, but he would do it with exquisite gentleness and probably a good dose of self-deprecation.

“I don’t know why I ever thought it might be otherwise.” Olive huffed a short, resigned sigh. “I know I’m quite far beneath you.”

“No! It’s not that at all.”

“It’s all right. I’m clear-eyed about my position. I am a gentleman’s daughter, yes, but you are a viscount and heir to an earl.”

“It’s not that. Miss Olive, please believe me when I say that any man with good taste and eyes in his head would be thrilled beyond belief to be the object of your affection. You will forgive me for speaking so openly, I think, since you have been brave enough to do so yourself?”

“Of course. And you flatter me.” She paused. “Or else you are saying you are not in possession of good taste? Or that you do not have eyes in your head?”

“I most certainly have eyes in my head, and honestly, can anyone question my taste? Good Heavens! Look at me!” Olive laughed a little, which had no doubt been Effie’s aim. Archie smiled, too, imagining Effie, who had come to dinner wearing a black velvet jacket over a pink silk waistcoat embroidered with black flowers, his snow-white cravat tied in an excessively elaborate waterfall knot, striking an intentionally haughty pose punctuated by his beribboned pumps. His tone had changed, though, when he spoke again. “No, there is an entirely different reason I cannot entertain your proposition.” He paused. “My heart belongs to someone else. She owns it. She always has and always will.”

What the hell?

Also: she?

Archie had wondered if the reason Effie’s proclivities remained mysterious was because those proclivities did not tend toward ladies the way Archie’s and Simon’s did. Not that they ever discussed the matter. It was more a . . . feeling. And since it didn’t matter to Archie—Effie was Effie and that was all that mattered—he had never pressed the issue.

That aside, Archie knew everything there was to know about Effie’s life. He knew about his social engagements, his frustrations with his family, and his secret poetic ambitions. Just now, he had predicted perfectly how Effie would handle Olive’s declaration. Archie knew Effie.

He’d thought. But come to find out that not only was Effie in love, he had been for a very long time? It boggled the mind.

Archie was distracted from trying to make sense of Effie’s astonishing statement by the fact that Olive, instead of answering Effie, burst into tears.

Clementine gasped and made to open the door, but Archie stopped her, tugging her hand off the knob and pulling her body into his, his careful attempts to avoid contact be damned. He bent his head and spoke into her ear. “Leave them for a moment. Effie is the person she needs now.” He didn’t know how he knew that, but he did. “Trust me.”

He expected her to fight him. She’d batted his hand away before when he tried to comfort her. He would let her go if that was what she wished, but to his surprise, she relaxed in his arms. She did more than that: she sagged against him. His body throbbed with awareness, but it was a different sort from before. Thankfully, his prick remained docile. Now, he wanted to use his body to protect Clementine from whatever was about to occur but also, he observed with some wonderment, from anything and anyone who might wish her the slightest ill.

He shoved that last thought aside and held her up as they listened.

“Oh, Miss Olive,” Effie said, “I am so sorry.”

“It isn’t you,” Olive managed through sobs. “It’s that my heart, too, belongs to another—always has and always will, as you say.”

Clementine gasped, loudly enough Archie feared they would be discovered. She must have thought so, too, because she turned in his arms and pressed her face into his shoulder, as if to forestall any further involuntary outbursts. He kept holding her up. It was all he knew to do. But he also knew that he knew how to do it, how to hold Clementine Morgan upright when the world would fell her. He wasn’t good at many things, but he was good at this.

“This was what your embroidery was about, wasn’t it? His was the name depicted?”

“Yes,” Olive whispered.

“Does anyone else know about your lost love?” Olive must have shaken her head no, for Effie said, “Mine either.” After a pause, he added, “I wonder if perhaps you don’t carry a tendre for me. Perhaps it is that something in you can sense something in me that is the same. I myself have grown so fond of you these recent days, and I wonder now if we are meant to be each other’s confidants.”

“I’ve never had one of those.”

Clementine stiffened again, not as severely as she had before, but enough to tell Archie that she’d been hurt by Olive’s words.

“Shall we go for a stroll tomorrow?” Effie said. “You can tell me about your love—just as much or as little as you like—and I will do the same.”

“Yes. I would like that. And do you think . . . ?”

“Do I think what?” Effie asked gently.

“Might I write to you, later, after we’ve all gone home? I have always wanted a regular correspondent. And since I have never had a confidant or a regular correspondent, how wonderful it would be to have both in the same person.”

“I can think of nothing I would like more than to receive letters from you, except possibly to write you back. I do enjoy writing and receiving letters.”

Archie thought back to Effie’s speech the other night about embracing color, and finding moments of joy. He’d made vague reference to correspondence. Hmm.

The pair said their goodbyes, Effie clicking away down the hall until all was silent.

Whereas before Archie had felt strong and assured in his ability to hold up Clementine, he didn’t know what he was meant to do now that the holding-up part was over. This would be the analyzing part. He felt very ill-equipped for that. So he just kept standing there, kept holding up Clementine.

She surprised him by whispering, into his shoulder, “Who is Lord Featherfinch’s long-lost love?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea,” he said into her hair. He still wanted to put his hands in it. To tangle his fingers in it and let them rest in the mahogany nest like baby sparrows in need of shelter. He settled for turning his face and resting his cheek on her head. Her hair smelled like the sea, which should have been impossible as they were nowhere near it. “I am all astonishment.”

“It has been a day of astonishment,” she said, and when she pulled away, he let her go, though he very much did not want to. “A week of astonishment. Nay, a month. Astonishment can be so very exhausting.”

Here he thought she would want to dissect Olive’s revelation. He’d felt unequal to the task, but the idea that she was going to say nothing about it left him oddly bereft. Because that would mean it was time for him to go back to his room.

But what could he say? “Effie will be good to her,” was all he could think of.

“Yes,” she agreed.

“If you are exhausted, you should sleep.”

“Yes.”

Clementine had never been this agreeable. He wasn’t sure he cared for it. He led her to the mussed bed and pulled back the covers. She slipped in, and he smoothed them over her.

Then there was nothing left to do but leave.

“Arch?” she said into the quiet dimness, just as he had reached the door.

Feeling the reprieve of that word, the shortened version of his name he used to think he disliked, he turned and caught the end of her readjusting her posture. “Yes?” He couldn’t be sure, but he thought she’d been holding out her arms, like a child asking for an embrace. But no. He must have imagined it.

She looked at him for a long moment, and he would have sworn he saw her swallow a sentence, a thought she’d been going to vocalize but decided not to. “Good night.”

“Good night.” He consoled himself that he would see her in the morning. They were to spend the day together outside, and he could think of nothing better.