Earls Trip

12 - A Proposition （That Kind）

12

A Proposition (That Kind)

“Miss Morgan said to tell you she awaits you on the terrace,” Mrs. MacPuddle said when Archie appeared in the breakfast room the next morning, “and that she has made the necessary arrangements with the cook for your meals tomorrow.”

This caused Simon to lower his book. “Effie and I have opted to join you in your culinary experiment tomorrow.”

Archie would rather they hadn’t. He preferred the idea of sending Olive to eat ham with the boys while he had Clem to himself. But he told himself not to be greedy.

“And here is the meal you asked for,” Mrs. MacPuddle said. “Bread, cheese, fruit, nuts. No meats.” She handed him a basket, and Simon cleared his throat as if trying to attract Archie’s attention.

“Thank you.” Archie took the basket and made a point of not looking at Simon as he grabbed a handful of bacon from the buffet. Once he’d stuffed it in his mouth, conveniently, he could not answer Simon’s inquiry about where he was going, so he merely made an indistinct grunt and opened the door to the terrace.

She wasn’t there. Which was just as well: his cheeks were bulging with bacon as if he were some sort of carnivorous man-vole. He surveyed the ramshackle grounds. Ah, there she was, standing at the edge of the overgrown gardens, facing the forest. Clementine, at home at the edge of the wilds.

His breath caught.

Which, given the mouthful of bacon, brought on a coughingfit.

The noise carried across the gardens, such as they were, and drew Clementine’s attention.

She turned, looked up at him, and smiled. Except time seemed to slow as she did so. Or perhaps it was his brain, incapable of taking in such a sight all at once.

Or perhaps it was the bacon. Perhaps he had choked and was dying.

But, no, his legs were moving, carrying him toward her. As he descended the crumbling stairs from the terrace, he suddenly understood what had been wrong with him all these days, why he had been so restless and unsettled.

It had to do with there being two versions of Clementine. He had thought, earlier, about the difference between the girl he remembered and the woman he’d met on this trip. That difference had been disconcerting. But he saw now that the real, more fundamental difference was between Indoor Clementine and Outdoor Clementine. He had been interacting only with Indoor Clementine. Mostly, anyway. He supposed there was also Rooftop Clementine. Perhaps the roof was a liminal locale, a place where they had been suspended, literally, between the staid trappings of society and the green wilderness where Clementine truly belonged.

This Clementine, this woman before him, wasn’t a distinct creature from the childhood version of her. She was that same wild, happy girl of his youth. That girl had had both qualities in excess: happiness and wildness. He understood now in a way he had not when he was a boy that for Clementine, one quality depended on the other. She had to be wild to be happy. The girl had grown into the woman, yes, but that part, the essential inner core of her had not changed.

He had missed her so.

And having her here, under the same roof, but not having her, had been maddening.

“Arch!” she called, moving toward him as he moved towardher.

He was seized with the notion that he ought to spit out the bacon. He looked around almost frantically, a kind of panic rising through him. There was a decaying stone pot, overgrown with weeds, that he could detour past for the purposes of expelling the now unwanted pork.

Why, though? What would that accomplish? He swallowed guiltily.

But, again: Why? There was no call for guilt. Their meatless day was tomorrow. Still, the bacon was overly dry and caught in his throat, and it was an effort to get it down.

Clementine’s cheeks were pink, her smile was wide, and she was hatless. The freckles dusted across her nose popped in the sunshine. Her hair was braided, but, as was typical for Clem, there was more of it out of the plait than in it. It was a windy morning, and loose hanks whipped around her head like airborne serpents. Perhaps she was Medusa. Perhaps she was about to turn him to stone.

That didn’t feel right, though. If anything, the reverse was true. He felt as if something inside him had been slowly ossifying, without his consent or even his awareness, and the sight of Clementine in her natural habitat was softening him, making him supple where he had been hard, allowing for breath where there had previously been only restriction.

As they approached each other, both grinning, he felt alive, reprieved, an insect unexpectedly freed from a spider’s web, testing wings he’d thought irreversibly immobilized.

He had no idea what had come over him. What he had been thinking. He hadn’t been thinking, clearly. If he had, surely his mind would have stopped his arms from grabbing Clem, picking her up clear off her feet, pulling her into an embrace, and twirling her around.

But it was all right: she laughed.

He did, too, relishing that sweet herbal smell of her.

She slid down his body as he released her, and his prick was back to betraying him. He had to push her away.

A sudden, impossible thought entered his mind like a bolt of lightning on an otherwise sunny day: Clementine should marry him. He might even have impulsively suggested it, had she not been, on several occasions, so vehement in her objection to the institution itself. While he felt no pressure to marry, from his perspective, marriage to Clementine would be convenient. She was his dear friend. One of his favorite people. And apparently he could no longer deny that he found her attractive.

He shook his head. He was being ridiculous. Even if Clementine had wanted to marry, the idea of her groom being him was preposterous. He knew where this flight of fancy had come from. Clementine—and Olive—had just come back into his life, and he wanted to hold onto them this time. Make sure she—they—didn’t slip away.

But he was being daft. She was right here, with her copper eyes and her unkempt hair and a brilliant yellow shawl draped haphazardly over her blue-muslin-encased shoulders. Effie ought to writea poem about her.

“You’re up early,” he said, noting the telltale muddy hem that suggested she’d been out and about already.

“Yes. I’ve been putting Hermes through his paces. Now that I know your friends have wagered on the outcome of the race, I feel some pressure to perform.”

“Where are you keeping Hermes?”

“He lives in an enclosure I’ve fashioned and submerged in the pond in such a way that he can choose to be in the water or on land.” She pointed at a pond that abutted one side of the ramshackle garden. “I feel poorly about it, though. I grew overexcited when I learned of the races in the village and signed up without thinking about how I would have to keep my contestant confined until after the race. I might have had a mind to let him go and bow out, but now everyone is so invested, sentimentally and monetarily.”

“Well, you can free him the day after tomorrow.” It was sobering to think that the races would happen that soon. After that, they would have to go home. At least he and Clem were finally outside together, roaming as they used to. As they were meant to, it felt like. He cleared his throat. “Perhaps you can use some of your prize money to buy Hermes a . . . large portion of whatever it is turtles like to eat.”

“Oh, I’m giving my prize money to . . . I have plans for my prize money, should I be lucky enough to win any,” she finished almost primly, and he intuited that she did not want to speak on the matter. A companionable silence settled as they set out across the garden toward the forest. It was a beautiful day, and it was spread out before them like a feast.

There was a bright quality of watchfulness Clementine always had while out for a ramble. He recognized it because he had it, too. It was the same nimble attention required for a successful hunt. One had to be alert but at ease, watching the path ahead and the trees around while remaining firmly aware of one’s more immediate surroundings. It was a kind of split attention, where one watched even as one watched oneself watching. At the best of times, it felt almost reverent, mystical. Akin to the way one was meant to feel at church, he gathered, though he never did, church requiring too much of the kind of singular concentration that had made his school days such a struggle.

It was such a respite from the way his mind usually operated, all jumpy and fragmented.

When Clementine slowed, he knew what had drawn her attention because it had drawn his, too. A grass snake, wriggling at the side of the path. She moved closer. He followed. It was actually three grass snakes, one large and two tiny.

“Is it a mother and her babies?” she whispered.

“It must be.”

They watched for a long time. This was one of the things he loved about Clementine. She never tired of doing things like staring at snakes. Effie and Simon could be counted on for a ramble, but after a while they grew bored, or cold, or started talking so much and at such volume that they scared away everything alive.

“I miss my mother,” Clementine said suddenly, quietly, still watching the snakes. “Even though I believe I was something of a mystery to her, she loved me, and I miss that. I miss the fact of her love.”

Something in Archie’s chest folded over, crumpled beneath the force of a powerful fondness that was almost painful. Clementine Morgan was the only lady in the world—nay, the only person in the world—who could attach such a sentiment to snakes.

“I miss my mother, too,” he said, as a gesture of unity but also because it was true, and because Clementine Morgan was the only person in the world to whom he could say that.

To his shock, she grabbed his hand. He thought it would be a quick squeeze, her way of sending some understanding back to him. She kept it, though, and straightened, done with the snakes.

“What would you tell her, if you could?” she asked, as if that were an ordinary sort of query. As if it were unremarkable to ask such a question while holding his hand.

It felt unremarkable, was the thing.

And it was a good question. Most people who asked after his mother, even Effie and Simon, who did so with true care and interest, asked how she was faring, or sometimes how Archie was faring with respect to her. They never asked anything specific, though, anything that would require him to respond unambiguously. “Well,” he said, considering, wanting to do Clementine’s question justice, “if I had known our last conversation was going to be our last, I would have handled it differently. I’d’ve said things.”

“What things?”

The answer that rose through him was, initially, surprising. Yet he recognized it. It was rather like hearing one of Effie’s poems, and thinking, Oh, yes, that’s how it is, isn’t it?

“Love,” he said decisively. “So not things, plural. Just one thing. Love.”

“The only thing, in the end.”

“Yes.” He had never thought of it like that, but she was right.

“You have to believe that she knew you loved her.”

“Do I? Do people know things we don’t tell them?”

“Mmm.” She looked off to the horizon. Had she forgotten they were holding hands? “What would you tell yours?” he asked, because he knew that was what she was thinking about.

“I would tell her not to issue that blasted deathbed order to my father to see me married!” she exclaimed, though it was a good-natured outburst. It was also forceful enough for her to yank her hand from his and do a little dance of frustration down the path ahead of him.

Well, she had to let go sometime, and the dance made him smile. Outdoor Clem, Wild Clem, dancing among the trees.

“It seems odd,” he said, “that your mother would consign you to such an unhappy fate.” His memory of Mrs. Morgan was of a kind woman who was liberal with her affection, even if she and her daughter were very different sorts of people.

“I’ve wondered if she said that because she wanted me to be happy, and she couldn’t imagine a woman being happy without a husband and children.” Her brow furrowed, as if she were trying to make sense of something very puzzling. “Something Olive said recently has made me reevaluate much of what I thought I knew about my parents’ marriage. Apparently it was never the love match I’d always believed it to be. But I do think—I hope—that my mother was happy with her life, in the end.”

“For what my observation is worth, your mother seemed to be made very happy by her husband.”

“And yet your mother was not made such by hers.”

He sucked in a breath. It wasn’t that he disagreed, or that she was telling him anything he didn’t already know. Still, he was set back on his heels by the simple statement of truth. He wasn’t accustomed to people knowing about Mother. But of course Archie himself had told Clem all about her, had split open his heart if that were something he did.

“That is true,” he ventured once he’d got hold of himself. “Though it is difficult to parse. I have come to believe she did love my father, at least initially. If I am to believe her conversations with Miss Brown playing the part of her own mother, she went against her parents’ wishes to marry him. So I am not sure why, by the time I came along, she and my father had grown so chilly with one another. I am left to ponder whether it was motherhood that did not agree with her. I have always wondered why she never had another child after me—she had the heir but no spare. Perhaps that is the question I would ask her if I could.”

“Oh, Arch, it was always apparent to me that your mother adored you. The pair of you always seemed to have a special bond.”

It cheered him to hear her say that. He’d been wondering, these recent years, if he’d been imagining the degree of his mother’s regard, or even the fact of it. “We did, didn’t we?”

“You did. And I didn’t mean to cause distress. I merely meant to point out that each person is different.”

“I know, and I am not distressed. It is curious, though, isn’t it, that your parents apparently did not marry for love but ended up, so far as we can tell, loving each other? Whereas mine, it seems, started out with love, but it faded.”

“But did they start with love? Or was it merely something else masquerading as love?”

“Such as?”

“Infatuation, perhaps. I . . . Well, I was going to say akin to what I’ve observed in Olive, but perhaps that isn’t correct. A day ago I would have said that Olive was fickle, bestowing and withdrawing her affections at whim, and that all of those affections were shallow. But now?” She shrugged. “Now I have to wonder if I know my sister at all.”

And Archie had to wonder if he knew Effie at all. “I take your point. Perhaps my parents mistook infatuation, or passion, or some other transitory sentiment, for love, and when that sentiment faded, there was nothing left.”

“We’ll never know, I suppose, but I do know that your mother loved you. It was plain as day on her face.”

“Do you remember a game we used to play in the garden, where we would process around chairs and compete to sit on them when prompted? There was always one fewer chair than the number of players, so one person always lost out?”

“I do! That is a prime example of what I mean when I say it was obvious your mother loved you. She was always organizing games like that. She would take such delight in them, but mostly in you enjoying them. She would embrace you and tease you no matter if you won or lost.”

He had always thought so, but, again, recent months had been testing his certainty. It was profoundly relieving to hear Clementine’s assessment of the situation.

“And my mother loved me,” Clementine went on. “Even if she didn’t understand me, she loved me. I do not doubt that. Which is why I have to believe that if she were alive, she would see how miserable London, and the Marriage Mart, is making me and would allow me to retreat to the country.”

“But what about your wish to have children?”

“It isn’t a wish so much as something that would be . . . nice. A compensation of sorts, as I said, that might help cushion the blow of an unwanted marriage. But in truth, such an outcome wouldn’t be fair to the children. I would make a perfectly terrible mother.”

He disagreed. Clem was curious, warm, and profoundly nonjudgmental—a rare combination of qualities any child would be fortunate to have in a mother. “I don’t know. I seem to recall you nursing more than one abandoned baby bird back to health. And are you forgetting that time you rescued those tadpoles from a puddle and raised them in a soup tureen in the garden?”

“Oh, I remember that. It was one of the worst months of my life.”

“Whatever makes you say that? I would have thought you’d be in your element, saving defenseless animals, if one can even consider tadpoles animals.”

“You are forgetting that I had to mince earthworms to feed those tadpoles.”

“Oh, I am, aren’t I?” It was coming back. The knife she’d nicked from the kitchen at Hill House. She’d had him sharpen it for her halfway through the month, as it turned out hacking earthworms to bits with a paring knife blunted it faster than one might think.

“Yes. It was excruciating. I felt as if I were plunging the knife into my own flesh. I used to cry after each feeding, but only after you’d left because I didn’t want you to see me.”

He was taken aback. “Why did you do it then, if it pained you so?”

“A tadpole can only eat earthworms. It can’t eat, say, a leaf—believe me, I tried that. I am not immune to your arguments, you know, about the natural order of things. It’s just that I don’t believe we need to eat animals. We can exist perfectly well without them on our plates. You probably don’t see the distinction.”

“I do see it.” He just thought she was taking it too far. “Is it possible that neither of us is purely wrong, or purely right?”

She looked as though she was going to agree, but then her eyes glinted mischievously, and he was glad the mood had shifted. “No. I am right. I always am.”

His laughter echoed across the forest.

* * *

Clementine forgot they were out for the purpose of hunting. Forgot.

She’d been simultaneously excited for and dreading this outing. She’d been so looking forward to a long ramble. Trees and fresh air and . . . Archie. He was so interesting. He always had been, but he seemed even more so now than when they were younger. And with his long limbs and his gentle ways, he had a kind of ease about him. A freedom.

But on the other hand: hunting.

Whyhad she agreed to this?

But on the other hand—the third hand?—was there any “this” involved? Though Archie had his weapon slung over his shoulder, he had given no indication he planned to use it—and he was carrying a picnic basket, so she wasn’t even sure he could if he wantedto.

They’d been walking, just walking, for an hour, and talking. About weighty topics sometimes, like mothers and marriage, but at other times about silly things like whether the common stinkhorn would taste worse or better than it smelled and whether the senses of taste and smell were dependent on one another.

And sometimes they didn’t talk at all, which was one of the best things about Archie. With Archie, one didn’t have to talk all the time. One could stop and listen to the staccato percussion of woodpeckers in the distance without having to remark on it. He never hurried her and was just generally so accommodating. Her mind could meander the way it did when she was alone. But when it was done meandering, there he was, having stood sentry but happy to hear from her again.

Oh, Archie. He was so . . . Archielike. So very much himself, and that was such a good thing to be. They found a spot to eat, and as they feasted on the contents of his picnic basket, he told her tales of his school days with Lords Marsden and Featherfinch. She liked his friends a great deal, and it made her smile to think of the boy versions of them having adventures.

“All right,” he said after they’d finished their repast and he’d laid down and stared at the sky for a bit. “I’d better get up or I’ll fall asleep when I’m meant to be hunting.” He sat up and brushed breadcrumbs off his coat.

“Yes, why hasn’t that happened yet?”

“I suppose because we’ve been talking too much.”

Her first impulse was to apologize. Of course one couldn’t sneak up on defenseless animals if one was making a racket.

Her second impulse was to keep talking, to say more things and to say them louder.

But that would violate the spirit of their agreement, and he was already packing up.

“But also,” he continued, “because we’re in the wrong spot entirely for hunting. We’ll leave our things here and circle back to get them before returning to the castle.” He was tidying as they spoke, folding the square of muslin on which they’d reposed.

He got up. She reluctantly followed.

“The first rule of hunting is safety. I want you to stay behind me once we’re out of the woods. Be mindful of where my weapon is and in which direction it’s pointing.”

“What do you mean once we’re out of the woods? Where are we going?”

“Back the way we came. To that old pastureland we traversed earlier.”

It was true that they had passed over a scrubby, relatively open patch of land punctuated with the odd grouping of trees, but many fewer and much younger than in the forest proper. It seemed as if it had been cleared at some point in the past and subsequently abandoned. “Whatever for?”

“Because we’re hunting birds. Pheasant. Perhaps grouse. One finds birds in scrubby bush, not so much in mature forests such as this.”

“But then why did we come into the forest at all?”

“Because you love it so, and I—” He looked abruptly stricken, as if he’d thought through to the end of what he’d meant to say and found it lacking. “I remember how much fun we used to have in the woods around Mollybrook,” he finished weakly.

That was true, though she still had the sense that was not what he’d initially meant to say.

“I wasn’t supposed to be hunting on this trip, you understand, so I only brought this fowling piece. Too bad, as I saw a stag in these woods yesterday. What a kill that would be.” He waved dismissively. “Much too big a kill, though. We wouldn’t be able to take it home. And although I’m sure Sir Lionel wouldn’t mind my hunting a few birds—technically one requires the permission of the landowner to hunt—anything else seems an overreach without his express permission.”

Clementine started to feel ill as she trudged along. A stag was such a majestic creature. Antlers; big, liquid eyes; legs vibrating with leashed power. While she was, of course, glad they weren’t out here stalking one, it was dismaying to think that in Archie’s mind, the only barriers to doing so were logistical ones such as not having permission.

To think of such a creature versus a man. In a fair fight, the stag would gore the man. But the gun would make all the difference, its shot tearing through the stag’s rippling musculature, allowing it to be cut down from a great distance, its life snuffed out in an instant.

Her lunch was sitting like a pile of buckshot in her stomach. “Why was there no meat in our lunch basket?” she asked suddenly.

“Because you don’t want to eat any,” Archie said, as if the answer should have been obvious.

“But you do.”

“But I’m dining with you.”

“But our meatless day isn’t until tomorrow. I have no jurisdiction over what you do or do not eat until then.”

“I was under the impression that not only did you not want to eat meat, you didn’t want to witness the eating of meat.”

That was true, in an ideal world, but she was well aware that the world was far from ideal. She would never have expected Archie to be so accommodating, especially on “his” day of their agreement. He could be so very thoughtful, and also . . .

“Part of the art of the hunt is to match your weapon and any other tools with your target,” Archie said, adopting a lecture-like tone.

. . . so very maddening.

“We’ve a fowling piece, so we’re hunting birds,” he continued. “And happily, we have a habitat in which we’re likely to find birds. We marry our knowledge of local fauna and terrain with the proper tools.”

“The proper tools being the gun.”

“Yes, though perhaps not exclusively. In this instance, for example, we could do with a bird dog.”

“The dog would run ahead and flush out the birds?”

“Precisely, and find them after we’ve shot them.”

“After you’ve shot them, you mean.”

Ignoring her correction, he said, “Without a dog, it can be difficult to find felled birds.” He was speaking with enthusiasm; this was clearly a topic close to his heart. “Do you remember Baron? What a birder he was.”

She did remember Baron, but she was still focused on the logistics of what Archie was saying about the hunt. “So you might end up killing a bird but be unable to find it?”

“Yes, unfortunately.”

To kill animals purely for sport seemed infinitely worse than killing them to eat, but she held her tongue. Though she’d sparred with Archie about hunting before, seeing him here, witnessing his almost boyish excitement, the way he all but blossomed as he held forth on the topic, made her reluctant to be so overtly dismissive. They proceeded in silence. The trees thinned as they approached the meadow.

He stopped suddenly, pointed—with his finger, not his weapon. There was a bird standing on the ground not ten feet off. It was fat, patterned with gray and brown markings. It was a grouse, and it had no idea what was coming.

She squeezed her eyes shut and braced, willing herself not to cry.

Nothing happened. When she found the courage to open her eyes, Archie was quite a way ahead of her. She hurried to catch up, but, heeding his warning, stayed behind him. “Why did you not shoot that bird back there?”

“I prefer to shoot them on the wing.” He kept walking and was scanning the skies as he spoke.

“What does that mean? You aim for their wings?” How barbaric.

“No, it means to shoot them while they are in flight. If you’re quiet enough and careful enough, it’s possible to come upon a bird while it’s on the ground, as we just did. Of course, neither pheasants nor grouse fly much, but still; it doesn’t seem fair to shoot them where they stand.”

“As opposed to shooting them as they flee.”

He abandoned his survey of the sky and turned to her, a bit taken aback, she thought. “I beg your pardon?”

“I think the problem is in trying to frame any of this as fair. How can a man with a gun versus an animal ever be so?”

“They do get away a good fraction of the time,” he said, as if that was at all a reasonable argument.

“You speak of the natural order of things, but is a gun part of the natural order? Animals are meant to kill and eat each other? All right; some of them are, yes. But are they meant to do it with man-made tools of death, with iron and lead and gunpowder?”

“You’re misunderstanding.” He frowned. “And if there are any birds around, you’ve scared them away.”

She winced. Yes, her voice had gone shrill. She’d agreed to this outing; it wasn’t fair to sabotage it.

“May we carry on?” There was just the tiniest hint of rebuke in Archie’s tone, detectible only in a tightness that seemed to have papered over his usual affability, but to Clementine it felt like being given the cut direct.

She pressed her lips together and nodded, some of that same tightness spreading across her throat.

For several minutes, Archie stood stock-still, so she did, too. Eventually, she closed her eyes again, to help blunt the blow she knew was coming. In her experience, the disabling of one sense heightened the others, and here, now, she could use that fact to her advantage. There was a slight breeze, and if she concentrated, she could hear the grasses rustling. So, grasses in the wind. What else? The air was warmer here than it had been under the cover of the trees, and the sun heated her cheek. She tilted her head slightly, playing with the angle, feeling the warm spot move along her jawline.

Archie shifted, just slightly, but she could sense it. She opened her eyes but kept the rest of her body still. He hadn’t moved, but he had raised his rifle. She could almost tell herself he was a mere statue, more marble than man. The scene consequently began to take on an air of unreality as she stared at Archie the statue. Perhaps she was a statue, too. She rather felt like one, or at least she felt less than human. Cold, removed from her surroundings.

But then she was thrust back into the world, its wonder and terror slowly converging on her. It was a subtle swishing sound at first, like pond rushes in the wind. The sound grew louder, more agitated, an angel crash-landing, its wings flapping wildly. Then a short, sharp, two-note call, like a rooster whose morning song had been cut short. She gasped when the animal appeared. Pheasants, especially the males, had such lovely markings, but their bodies were so heavy-looking, lopsided almost, and seemed so unsuited for flight, which she supposed was why they didn’t do it very often. Yet here was one climbing almost straight up, its red feathered head majestic against the clear blue sky, a small, everyday miracle of flight, nature triumphing in that relentless way it always did. She felt as if her heart were tethered to this bird, rising from its burdensome, corporeal constraints up into the sky, up, up—

Bang!

There was the blow. The coiled fist she had sensed, just out of range of her senses, coming down. Her body wanted to scream, and indeed, it started to. The bellows of her lungs prepared to discharge her anguish, like poison being expelled, but she stopped herself with her lungs stuffed full of air. Screaming wouldn’t help anything, or anyone: not that bird; not her.

“Damn!”

That was Archie. He had missed.

He had missed!

She didn’t know much about hunting, but she had the vague idea that gentlemen usually traveled with servants to carry and pass along additional weapons when the first was spent. He would have to reload.

She would leave while he did so. She would simply turn and run. It wouldn’t change anything, she understood. It was an impulse rather like that of a child covering her eyes and assuming that meant no one could see her. But the fist had struck, and Clementine had bruises to tend.

Bang!

Somehow, the gun discharged again. She turned abject eyes to the sky, and the creature plummeted straight down to earth, all its majesty and wildness snuffed out in an instant. That fall, so fast and vertical and undeviating, felt to her a desecration, a final indignity visited upon one of God’s creatures—visited upon this whole forest, it felt like—by a force more brutishly powerful yet so very, very much weaker than it.

And, just like Olive, Clementine burst into tears, which surprised her as much as Archie, for she’d thought it a scream, not a sob, that had been queuing in her throat.

Archie wasn’t merely surprised; he was panicked. He whirled, dropped the gun, and began interrogating her. What was wrong? Had she been injured? Where did it hurt? When all she could do was shake her head and weep, he began examining her body, holding out one arm at a time to inspect it, then running his hands up and down both arms as if trying to warm her. He then clasped her shoulders, held her at arm’s length, and searched her face. Apparently finding no answers there, his hands landed on her throat, his long fingers sliding around to pluck at the skin on the nape of her neck.

She kept shaking her head. He would not find what he was looking for, which was a visible wound—blood or a bruise on the surface of her skin. It was all inside. Her tears were abating. She whispered, “I am well.”

Archie returned to holding her shoulders. He searched her face. “You’ll forgive me for saying so, but you don’t look well.”

“I believe I am . . . having hysterics.” She felt as though she might faint. How lowering. Last week she had informed Archie she wasn’t the kind of person who swooned. Apparently she was the kind of person who swooned. “I . . . wasn’t expecting that second shot,” which was true but also not at all an adequate explanation for what had happened. “I thought you would have to stop and reload,” she finished weakly.

Archie looked at the ground behind him, where he’d dropped his gun, then back at her with an expression that was part worry, part puzzlement. “It is a double-barreled rifle. Two barrels; two triggers. It lets you get off two shots before you have to reload. It’s . . . good for hunting that way.”

He leaned in, putting his face close to hers, as if he were examining an unfamiliar specimen under a looking glass. He was so near, she could feel the warmth of his breath on her skin. “But it’s bad for you, I think? This whole business is bad for you, isn’t it?”

* * *

Archie was trying to listen to what Clementine was saying. He had, after all, asked her a question. Generally, when you asked a person a question, you listened to the answer. The problem was, she was saying things like, “I know you think me a very sensible girl. Stoic even. Ruled by my intellect . . .” He was trying to listen—he wanted to listen—but the voice inside his head was louder. It was saying What the bloody hell were you doing taking Clementine Morgan hunting? Clementine Morgan! Hunting!

The voice was right. He had been so focused on making her understand, making her see what hunting did for him, that he’d completely disregarded what it did to her. He had proposed a swap: a hunting outing for a day of eating vegetables, as if these two things were symmetrical. For him, they were. For her, they were not. He should have seen that. What a bloody idiot he was.

There would be time for self-reproach later. He forced himself to attend to what Clementine was saying. “I’m sorry, Archie. I’ve ruined the day. I’ll tell the cook—”

“No.”

He had spoken more harshly than he’d intended, although the vehemence of the single syllable was proportional to the level of alarm he was feeling. He didn’t want this, a Clem who called him “Archie” instead of “Arch” and was all brusqueness and efficiency as she papered over what had occurred and began making plans to release him from their agreement.

He wanted her to talk to him. As she had on the roof. He didn’t want a speech on how she had ruined his holiday; he wanted to know what was in her heart.

“Come with me,” he interrupted, turning back for the forest. He’d seen a tree not too far in that would do nicely. When after a few steps he realized she wasn’t following, he doubled back, grabbed her hand, and said, firmly, “Come along.”

When they reached the tree, which was a gnarled oak with a large, long bough that met the trunk six or so feet from the ground and then sloped gently upward, he dropped her hand. He laced his fingers together, turned up his palms, and held them out at the level of her knees. “Up you go.”

He expected her to object, and he was prepared to override those objections. She did not protest, though, merely raised her eyebrows, stared at him in wonderment for several moments—moments that seemed like hours, for he felt as if he were being judged by God himself—and, as if having come to some sort of silent conclusion, nodded. She set her foot in his hand and said, “I should like to say that I don’t need help, but alas, I probablydo.”

“You probably don’t, but take it anyway.”

She was slightly less nimble than she’d been as a girl, but she was still strong, and her arms did more work than his as she hauled herself into the tree.

He followed. He’d thought they would sit side by side on the wide, welcoming limb, swinging their legs and talking, but by the time he reached it, she’d begun climbing higher. He craned his neck and watched her ascent. When she stopped, presumably because she had found a perch that met with her approval, she settled herself, smoothing her skirts over her legs. She leaned forward, met his eye, and cracked a grin.

That grin was like the scotch they’d been drinking in the evenings—sharp but soothing. It told him that things were right between them, or at least that they could be made so. That his error of judgment had not been fatal. That he had not lost his friend, his . . . Clem.

A thought arose, one he’d been having more and more lately for reasons that escaped him: contrary to her self-assessment on the matter, she would make a wonderful mother. He could see it, her tromping through the wilds with her children. Their father lifting them over stiles as she ran on ahead to exclaim over the beauty of a stream or to aid an injured animal. Or perhaps it was nighttime—she would let her children stay up scandalously late over their summer holidays—and she was laughingly telling them the stories of the stars, of the ineffectual hunter who spent centuries not catching the bear. Their father would carry the sleepy youngest back to Hill House, and the entire family would go to bed smelling of pine resin and damp earth.

He found himself irritated at Sir Albert for not seeing this vision. For pushing Clem toward Theodore Bull, who not only would not join the family stargazing outings, but whose only interest in Hill House was to own it, to possess it. Worse than that even, Bull had aimed to possess Clem, a wild woman to whom domestication would be a fate worse than death.

When he swung himself up to Clementine’s branch with a grunt—he had not retained the same degree of grace she had in matters of tree climbing—she started apologizing again.

He refrained from roaring no at her as he had earlier, but he was doing it in his head. “Please stop, Clem. If anyone ought to apologize, it’s me, but can we just talk about this? Talk openly and without guile or fear of judgment? Can you tell me what happened back there? Help me understand?”

Though he did understand, didn’t he? Hadn’t his understanding been the source of his frustration over how Sir Albert didn’t understand?

“I’m not sure I understand it myself.” She sighed and stared up into the leafy canopy, and he smiled to himself. Sir Albert didn’t understand her; she didn’t understand herself. For Archie to claim that he did was the height of presumption, yet he continued to feel as if a perfect grasp of the situation had been conferred on him, albeit too late to have spared Clem significant upset. “I know only that the thought of an animal suffering needlessly genuinely pains me. I am not affecting a stance to cross you.”

“I didn’t think you were.”

“Perhaps it is that I reserve my true affection, my true devotion, for the animal kingdom. I hear you saying that what you love about hunting is the chase, the joy of being outdoors, the taking of fresh air and sunshine. I don’t understand why you can’t do all those things without the killing.”

“The killing is the point.”

“Do you hear yourself?”

He . . . did. “That was poorly phrased.” He sighed, considering how to convey to her the feeling of hunting. “It’s not the killing so much as the thrill of the hunt, the slow honing of attention that is required until all that exists is oneself and one’s prey and the air humming all around.”

He thought back to a recent after-dinner discussion, in which the boys made him tell the story of how the Earls Trip hunting ban came to be. He had at the time cheerfully accepted the barring of his favorite pastime because he had thought how much he would rather be the kind of person Effie sought out to discuss his dreams than be a hunter.

He felt the same way here. He felt more of the same way here. He would give up hunting forever rather than cause Clem any distress.

“I understand,” Clementine said. “Well, I don’t, but I can see how what you are saying is true for you. Regardless, I’m afraid I shan’t be able to continue with our agreement.”

“Oh, that goes without saying.”

“It does?”

“Of course!” Did she think he was going to march her down this tree, thrust a rifle in her hands, and compel her to shoot?

The affront must have come through in his tone. She said, quietly, “I am not accustomed to men listening to me when I say what I want, much less allowing me to have it.”

Ah, the knowledge that he had been, even briefly, one of those men made him ashamed. “I’m sorry I didn’t listen, Clem.”

“You did, though. You are.”

“Now, perhaps,” he scoffed. “Took me a while. Though we have discussed what a poor student I was. That’s what you get for having an idiot for a friend.”

“No, that’s what I get for having a mortal man as a friend. It is rather amazing, isn’t it, how we can rub along with other people and somehow not hear them? Not see them?”

“Mmm.”

“I’m not talking about you,” she rushed to say. “In fact, you’re more highly skilled in this regard than anyone I know.”

“Were you talking about you and Olive?”

“I was indeed.”

“Have you spoken to Olive about what we overheard?”

“I have not. She was still abed when we left this morning, though in truth that is somewhat of an excuse. I’m nervous about the prospect of bringing it up. How does one broach a conversation like that?”

“Yes, I see the dilemma.”

“That wasn’t a rhetorical question. I’m actually asking you. You are uniquely good at this sort of thing, at having conversations that are . . . sticky.”

He grinned like a boy at her praise, but he didn’t have much of an answer. “I suppose you can’t take her up a tree and simply ask her who her long-lost love is?”

“How could my sister have had such a love—and have lost it—right under my nose?”

He was fairly certain that was a rhetorical question, so he didn’t answer. “I was jesting, but only somewhat. If you think I’m uniquely good at having ‘sticky’ conversations, it may only be because I blunder ahead and just . . . have them.”

“You do, don’t you?”

“One feels so much better having done so, don’t you find? Even if the doing makes one feel somewhat inelegant? And if the outcome isn’t what one would have wished, at least there is an outcome.”

“I think I agree.” She looked back up at their green ceiling and said, “Hmm.”

“Though this case is complicated by the fact that you are in possession of knowledge you weren’t meant to have. Blundering ahead and having a conversation with Olive about a secret she’s keeping isn’t the same as doing so regarding a secret you’re keeping.”

“You are saying that perhaps it isn’t my place to initiate such a conversation.”

“I’m not necessarily saying that, but it is a consideration.”

“Are you going to ask Lord Featherfinch about his long-lost love?”

Archie had asked himself that same question last night. “I think not. I believe if he wanted to tell me about it, he would have.”

“Hmm,” Clementine said again. “You’ve given me a great deal to think about.”

“Shall we go back to the house?”

“What about that bird? Shouldn’t we go find it?”

Ah. Yes. Speaking of sticky conversations. “We should not. I shall, but later.”

“Will you eat it tonight?”

“Yes. I’ll give it to Mrs. MacPuddle to give to the cook.” That seemed to satisfy her, or at least to not visibly distress her. “We’ll dine separately tonight as usual, which reminds me that I gather you’ve spoken to the cook about tomorrow? Apparently Effie and Simon plan to join us for dinner, so I fear Olive’s plate of ham is to remain as elusive as ever.”

“Oh, no.” She waved dismissively. “The happy outcome—for you—of my little outburst this afternoon is that you are released from our bargain as well.”

“I don’t care to be.”

“Arch. Come now. We had an agreement, and my conduct has nullified it.”

He was unaccountably glad he was back to being Arch in her estimation. “That is of no consequence. I shall be joining you for meals tomorrow. The only question is how many additional place settings there will be at our table. I am merely trying to confirm that we can’t figure out a way for Olive to have her ham, and perhaps to persuade Effie to join her for it.” And Simon, too. Archie wanted more time alone with Clem, though he knew he was reaching for the impossible. And he was aware that to wish for time away from Effie and Simon on an Earls Trip was perhaps ill-done of him.

It was just that they had so little time left. He would see the boys again, but when would he next see Clem? Even if he made good on his pledge to see more of the Morgan family, when would he next see Clem alone?

“Oh, Arch.” Clem was looking at him like he was . . . well, like he was one of those snakes she’d been admiring so intently earlier. “You are too good to me.”

“Hush now. We had a misunderstanding. It’s been sorted.”

“I wish more people were like you. You listen. And not just now, but always. You listen, and you try to make things better. That’s rare.”

Unwilling to hear any more praise, given how ill-thought-out this whole outing had been, he swung himself down to the lower, larger limb below them. Standing on it, his head just about reached the limb he’d vacated, putting his eyes level with Clem’s dangling legs. He could quite clearly see a slice of bare skin on one leg where her stocking had fallen down and was bunched around her ankle. Damn it all, his prick was taking notice. He tried to tell his prick that this was not the time, but of course it didn’t listen, just observed with interest the fine smattering of hair on her calf. He tore his gaze away. “Shall we go? I’ll walk you back to the house, then come back for our things.” And the dead bird. Yes. Think about dead birds.

“Arch?”

“Hmm?” He had to tilt his head back to see her, and he steadied himself with one hand against the tree’s trunk.

She was leaning over, looking down at him and wearing a small, impish smile. “I should like to ask you a question.”

“I am all ears.”

“It is of the sticky variety.”

“You know you can say anything to me, Clem.”

“It’s more of a favor, really,” she said, and was she turning pink? He must be imagining that, because Clementine Morgan was not the sort of lady who blushed, and aside from the rosiness of her skin, her expression was quite stern.

“As long as it doesn’t involve getting shot, I shall happily grant you any favor you ask.”

He was trying to be amusing, but her countenance remained implacable. “Do you recall the conversation we had about the anticipation of marital vows?”

As if he could forget it. “I do.” Though that was not exactly what he wanted to be remembering at this moment given that he was trying to get his prick to calm down.

“You implied there was pleasure to be had in the act—for the female.”

Dear God. Archie was not the sort of person who blushed either, yet he’d be damned if he couldn’t feel himself doing exactly that. “Ah . . . yes.”

“I should like to experience that, and I wonder if you will help me. I propose that you and I engage in the anticipation of marital vows, except without the marital vows part.”

He fell out of the tree.