Earls Trip

17 - Lord Help the Mister

17

Lord Help the Mister

Even though Clementine preferred the wide-open country to civilization, she had to admit there was something exceedingly satisfying about walking in the sunshine with a group of cherished friends, taking in the sights and sounds and smells of a village fete. Perhaps her dislike of London was at least in part that she lacked true, bosom friends with whom to sample its enjoyments.

And she did feel that these people were her true, bosom friends. How remarkable. She’d only known Lords Featherfinch and Marsden for a fortnight, yet they felt like brothers. And in that same span, Olive had gone from being mere sister to treasured companion.

And Archie. Oh, Archie. He was the only one of the lot Clementine could say had been her friend before. He had been a lifelong friend, even if their paths hadn’t crossed in recent years.

“Miss Morgan,” Lord Marsden said as they sat at an outdoor table enjoying a light repast, “I hope you won’t think me beastly when I say that this paté is divine.”

“Of course I won’t think you beastly!”

“But you do have me wondering—”

“I beg you all,” Lord Featherfinch said dramatically, “please may we not revisit this topic?” He turned to Clementine. “Let us instead exhort you to make sure Hermes wins this afternoon.”

“I’m not sure there is much I can do but point him in the right direction.” Clementine had attempted to train Hermes, but she had to admit that Olive had been correct earlier: there wasn’t anything for a turtle wrangler to do beyond cross her fingers.

“Need I remind you that I have placed a not-insignificant wager on young Hermes?” Lord Featherfinch said with a wink.

“I shall be quite alarmed if you viewed that wager as a sound investment, my lord!” Clementine protested, though she knew he was jesting. “I was under the impression you made that hazard as a gesture of friendship.”

“And so I did.” He lifted his teacup, and the rest of them followed. “Here’s to you, Miss Morgan, whether you emerge victorious or no.”

Something twisted in Clementine’s chest. She had never been the subject of a toast before. She hadn’t thought to want such a thing.

“I, however, never confuse investments with gestures of friendship.” Lord Marsden set down his teacup and turned to Clementine with a serious expression. “And since I’ve put three quid on Hermes, I believe you ought to take this race more seriously.”

Oh, dear. Clementine, taken aback, did not know what to say. It was only when Olive started giggling, which in turn caused Lord Marsden to crack a smile, that Clementine realized he was in jest, too. “You lot are terrible,” she said, though she meant the opposite. How wonderful to have a group of friends like this, friends to tease one and to . . . wager on one’s turtle.

Archie pulled out a pocket watch. “Well, investments and gestures of friendship aside, we ought to go. It’s nearly two o’clock.”

“I declare,” Olive said as they stood, “part of me doesn’t want the race to start, because it means our time here has almost come to a close. I don’t want to go home! I wish we could stay forever in our falling-down castle in the wilds of Cumbria!”

At the starting line, Clementine made polite conversation with the other turtle wranglers. As far as she could tell, her stiffest competition was going to be a girl of about twelve named Miss Franklin. Last year’s winner, a Mr. Hurt, was, in Clementine’s opinion, overconfident.

The master of ceremonies, a portly, ruddy-faced man who owned the pub underwriting the race, made an energetic speech to the large crowd assembled, making sure to insert the name of his establishment at every opportunity. To the (human) competitors, he said, “Take your marks . . .”

A pistol fired, which Clementine hadn’t been expecting, and she jumped. Her startlement lost her precious seconds; she was late in lowering Hermes to the lawn of the village square, which had been closely trimmed for the event.

Oh well. Her friends would simply have to lose their wagers. They were rich enough that it wouldn’t sting. Though she was sorry she wouldn’t be able to hand her prize money over to Olive as she’d planned. She hadn’t been able to shake the notion of Olive’s wheedling pin money from Father not to waste on fripperies but to advance—someday—her extraordinary list. Perhaps Olive ought to apply to her new friend Lord Featherfinch for a loan. Clementine had yet to talk to Olive about what she’d overheard in the corridor. She did not know how to broach the subject—or even whether to. Archie may have been correct in his assessment: perhaps since her knowledge of the situation was ill-gotten, it wasn’t hers to do with as she pleased.

“Hermes!”

Speaking of Olive, her shriek broke through Clementine’s reverie. Clementine had been woolgathering, but the other handlers had kept pace with their turtles and were a few yards down the green. She hurried to catch up and discovered that Hermes had made up for his slow start. He was firmly in the middle of the pack now.

“Look at him!” Olive’s voice carried from the finish line, where she and the gentlemen had positioned themselves. “Make haste, Hermes!”

The reptilian contestants were approaching a barrier—a row of wine barrels—that was meant to inspire them to make a ninety-degree turn. Only about half of them did, but Hermes was among them.

“Huzzah!”

“Hermes!”

“I say, I think Hermes is going to overtake the leader!”

Clementine kept her attention on Hermes, but she could hear the exhortations of her friends and sister rising above the din. Clementine thought she had the largest—or at least the most vociferous—cheering contingent. She ordered herself not to get too swept away. Hermes was still a good shell-length behind the leader, a smaller turtle named Temperance who belonged to Miss Franklin.

Something happened inside Clementine then, something that had nothing to do with turtles even though it was catalyzed by turtles. It felt as if Hermes was inside her, which she realized was ridiculous. It was as if, in the style of his namesake, he did have invisible wings on his little legs, which pumped furiously. He was trundling toward the finish line, toward a happy, victorious ending, even if he couldn’t see it just yet.

“Hermes!” Clementine cried. “You can do it!” He could! He was!

To her utter astonishment, and slight chagrin, when Hermes came up even with Temperance, he butted her out of the way. Crashed into her on purpose, and, as Temperance reeled, made a break for it.

As Clementine approached the finish line, she was vaguely aware of the huzzahs of Lords Marsden and Featherfinch, and of Olive exclaiming with delight, but she only had eyes for Archie.

“Clem!” he exclaimed, and in two giant strides he was by her side. He picked her up and twirled her around. He had done the same thing this morning, and the other day, and it was beginning to feel usual. As if it was simply the way he greeted her. But of course that wouldn’t do. People would talk.

She wished they had wings on their heels, that they could kick their legs and fly away from here.

But that was pure folly, she reminded herself as he set her down and cleared his throat.

The others caught up, and there was a slight moment of awkwardness, as if she and Archie were children again and had been caught misbehaving. But it faded into the joyous hubbub of the awards ceremony. The burly pub owner called Clementine up onto a makeshift stage and made quite the production of awarding her a ribbon and the pound of prize money.

When all was concluded, she was surrounded by her friends.

“I think we ought to celebrate,” said a grinning Archie.

“Yes, after we collect our winnings, we should have quite the pot of blunt,” Lord Featherfinch said. “Together with your prize, I should think we could buy out this whole village. Or at least order up a fine celebratory feast.”

“I have my prize money earmarked for something else,” Clementine said.

“Oh, for what, Clemmie?” Olive asked.

Clementine hesitated. Perhaps she ought not say anything. Excitement won out, and she held out the golden sovereign. “For you, Olive.” Olive was struck dumb, which was both novel and amusing, and Clementine took the opportunity to explain her largesse to the gentlemen. “My sister is saving for something important.”

“You can’t give me your money, Clemmie!” Olive protested. “You earned it!”

“Hermes earned it, and I can do whatever I want. I don’t have need of it anyway.” It was true. She and Olive were fortunate in that they never wanted for anything—for anything material anyway. There were of course other things they wanted, things one couldn’t put a price on. Clementine’s version of that—to retire to a quiet life at Hill House—was free. It required persuasion rather than pounds. Olive’s version, by contrast, was not. Her list was going to be expensive.

“Then I shall give you my winnings, too, Miss Olive,” Lord Featherfinch said. “I’ve merely to go collect them.”

“Mine, too,” Lord Marsden said, talking over Olive’s objections.

Olive, of course, burst into tears.

“Would you take Hermes?” Clementine said to Archie, handing him the box into which her prizefighter had retired. “Olive and I are going to take a little stroll.” She looked around. “We shall meet you back where we had the tea.” In case Archie was planning to object, to argue as he’d done before that they couldn’t go about unchaperoned lest someone recognize them, she added, “No one here knows us, and we shan’t be gone long.”

Archie nodded and turned away. Rethinking her directive, Clementine called him back. “You may as well set Hermes loose. He’s more than earned his freedom.” She’d been going to do it herself, but what was the point in keeping Hermes in that box any longer than necessary?

Olive let herself be taken by the arm, but when they were sufficiently away from the festivities and Clementine tried to press the coin on her again, she recoiled. “You don’t even know what I want it for.”

“I do, though. You showed me your list.”

Olive sighed.

“Was your list not in earnest?” Clementine hated to think, after all they’d come through, that the list had been a lie. The list had allowed her to see Olive in a new light, and Clementine didn’t want to let go of that version of her sister. The one with secrets and ambitions.

“The list was in earnest,” Olive said carefully. “But I am not truly saving for any of that.”

“What do you mean? What about your travels?”

“When am I going to travel, Clemmie? Realistically?”

“When you are married to a rich older man you esteem but ignore and who esteems but ignores you in return? And also funds the travels you undertake with an interesting yet respectable older companion?”

Olive smiled fondly. “Oh, how I wish. But in that case, I shan’t need my own money, shall I?”

Clementine chuckled. “I suppose not.”

“I am going to tell you something, Clemmie.”

“All right.” Was she finally going to find out about her sister’s long-lost love?

“I have been saving my pin money, yes, but not for frivolities. Not even for the items on my list. I’ve been giving it to Mrs. Scully from Chiddington.”

It took Clementine a moment to catch up. “Mrs. Scully the widow of the surgeon?” It took another moment for Clementine to truly catch up. “Oh. Mrs. Scully, Ralph’s mother.”

“Yes.”

“Why would you do that?” Clementine kept her tone mild.

“Because her husband and son are dead, and she has nothing.”

“That is very generous of you.”

“It doesn’t feel like generosity,” Olive said quietly. “It feels like . . .” She sighed. “It feels like an imperative.”

“You and Ralph were very good friends,” Clementine said carefully, still moderating her tone. She didn’t want to scare Olive away, not when it felt as if they were on the threshold of something.

“Yes,” Olive said.

“I’m sorry I hadn’t realized he died.”

“You didn’t realize because I never told you.”

Clementine wanted desperately to coax out more, but she didn’t know how.

Or perhaps she did. “When we get back to London, I’m going to convince Father to let us spend some time at Hill House. A good, long stretch.” Even if it would be torturous to be so close to Archie and to not . . . have him.

“I don’t want to go,” Olive said sharply.

“You were just saying you wished we could stay here longer.”

“Here, yes. Hill House, no.”

“What is wrong with Hill House?” Perhaps Clementine was pressing too hard, but she could not shake the feeling that they were on the precipice of revelation. That everything was about to make sense.

“Nothing!”

“Then why don’t you want to go?” she pressed gently.

“Because I’m tired of country life!” Olive cried. “Because I want to go back to London where I belong!”

A month ago, Clementine would have heard the words her sister said, and observed the petulant tone in which they were delivered, and dismissed the outburst as childish. She would have silently judged Olive for yearning for the shallow trappings of society.

She had not understood that sometimes self-protection can look like ill humor.

She laid her hand on her sister’s back. One more try, then she would leave it alone. “Olive, love, won’t you tell me what is troubling you?”

Olive didn’t look at Clementine. She didn’t look anywhere, just bowed her head and closed her eyes. “I don’t like being at Hill House because Ralph is dead.”

“You and Ralph were very good friends.” Clementine repeated her earlier assessment, hoping this time Olive would hear the meaning behind it.

“No. Yes. We were . . .” Olive exhaled shakily.

“You were more than friends? Is that it? You loved him, and now he’s gone and you can’t mourn him because no one knew what he was to you?”

Olive did meet Clementine’s gaze then, her eyes devastated and leaking tears.

“Oh, my sister, my love. I am sorry. So very sorry.” She opened her arms, and Olive stepped into them. They stood there for a long time while Olive cried. Clementine didn’t try to shush her. She didn’t say anything; any words she could think of would only sound hollow.

Eventually, Olive spoke, but she did not move out of Clementine’s embrace, so her words were muffled. “I was going to marry him when he came home from Canada. He’d asked me before, but I said no. I was afraid.”

“Of what?” Clementine asked gently.

“I don’t know!” Olive cried, wrenching free from Clementine’s arms as if she’d been confined there against her will. “Of Father, I suppose. Of society. It was fine for Ralph and I to be friends when we were young, when we were at the country house where the usual rules were relaxed. But can you imagine if I’d announced I was marrying the surgeon’s son?”

“Yes. I see.” Clementine wondered if perhaps there would have been a way to make Father come around. While Mr. Scully hadn’t been a physician, which would have meant he was received in society, he’d been respected in Chiddington, where there was no physician. Clementine remembered one occasion when Father had been thrown from a horse and Mr. Smith had been out to tend to him. He’d been invited to dine with the family instead of the servants.

She didn’t say anything on the topic, though, for she suspected Olive knew all that. Olive had probably been flagellating herself for some time. Clementine reached for words of comfort. “If you’d married him before he joined the army, it wouldn’t have changed anything. He would still be dead.”

“You’re wrong. It would have changed everything.” Olive swiped her tears away almost angrily. “I would have claimed him. He would have known I’d claimed him.” Clementine had never heard Olive speaking so passionately before. “Instead”—Olive’s voice rose—“Ralph went to his death thinking he wasn’t good enough for me, when really it’s the reverse.”

“Oh, Olive. Ralph loved you.”

“Ralph was such a comfort to me when Mother died. I want to be that for his mother now that he’s dead. I want to be able to comfort her, and for her to comfort me. But it can never be.”

“I see.” Clementine didn’t know what to say that wouldn’t sound like she was being dismissive. So she didn’t say anything. Just looked into her sister’s devasted blue eyes and tried to witness her pain and regret. To see her. Archie had taught her that sometimes, having someone to witness your pain, even if they couldn’t do anything about it, was a kind of balm.

“I want to show you something when we get back to the castle,” Olive said.

“Of course. Anything you want to show me, I want to see.”

* * *

“Good God, man, will you just let the damn thing go?”

“I’m afraid I have to concur with Simon,” Effie said, clomping through the scrub that lined the shores of a small river that ran through Doveborough. “The ladies are bound to be back soon, ifthey aren’t already, and they will wonder what happened to us.”

“Right, yes.” Archie turned to see Simon approaching, too. The boys had been waiting for him on a bridge that spanned the river but were now headed determinedly toward him as if they were parents come to collect a wayward child. He wondered how long he’d been standing lost in thought. “It’s just that I was trying to find the ideal place in which to set Hermes on his way,” he explained as they arrived at his side. “Do you think Hermes will like it here?” He had chosen this spot because the river sloshed gently over its banks, and Archie reasoned that if he set Hermes loose where water met land, he could decide for himself where he wanted to be.

“I think,” Simon said archly, “that Hermes is a turtle.”

“Yes, but he’s a prizewinning turtle,” Archie said. “He’s earned a happy retirement.”

“Perhaps you should secret him home and have the cook make him into turtle soup,” Simon said. “I had some at the last Lord Mayor’s Day banquet, and it was surprisingly delicious.”

“Dear God!” Archie cried, hugging Hermes’s box tight to his chest. “What a monstrous thing to say!” He gathered from Simon’s raised brows and Effie’s guffaw that he was being mocked, but honestly, he couldn’t find the humor in any of this.

He wanted Hermes to be . . . what? Free?

Yes, but he also didn’t want to say goodbye.

He had to, though, didn’t he?

Captivity, no matter how comfortable, is still captivity.

He shook his head. How had Archie gotten to the point where he was seeing meaning—metaphors—in a turtle? It was just a turtle! An uncommonly swift one, but still. And he took Effie’s earlier point: he didn’t want to leave the Morgan sisters waiting. It was one thing for them to take a quick stroll unchaperoned, another for them to loiter in the village green without a maid.

So he squatted at the edge of the water and gently upended Hermes’s box. The creature crawled out but didn’t go any farther than that. Archie sat back on his heels and regarded the little turtle. The little turtle regarded him back.

“Well, go on, then.” Archie made a shooing motion, but Hermes stayed put. “You’re free, you daft reptile. Go!”

Why wasn’t he going?

“Ahem.” Simon cleared his throat, and Archie stood. He spoke to the boys behind him but kept his attention on Hermes. “You know Miss Morgan will require a thorough accounting of Hermes’s release, and I can hardly tell her that he refused to go.”

“Perhaps if you walk away first?” Effie suggested.

It might work. He just . . . didn’t want to.

A turtle, he reminded himself. Hermes is a turtle.

So he turned and trudged back up the embankment, gesturing for the boys to follow him to the bridge. He leaned his elbows on it, and Simon and Effie did likewise, one on each side. “I just want to make sure he goes,” Archie said.

He took their silence for agreement, and they stood there for a few minutes watching Hermes watch them.

“Tonight’s our last night,” Simon said. “Back to Town tomorrow.”

“The fortnight’s gone so quickly,” Effie said. “Though I suppose it always does.”

“I need to remind you, Archie,” Simon said quietly, all jesting excised from his tone, “that when we’re back to civilization, you can’t act the way you’ve been acting with Miss Morgan.”

That was enough to jolt Archie from his herpetological vigil. He straightened. “I know that, you dolt.”

“Do you?”

Archie bristled at the question. He might not be clever, and he might dislike London, but he did know how to comport himself when he had to. “Do you think I’m going to swan around in green silk calling her by her Christian name?”

“No, but I think you are unaware of the little familiarities that pass between the two of you.”

“What do you mean?” Surely Simon was being his usual overcautious self. He turned to Effie. “What does he mean?”

“The way you embraced after the turtle races, for one,” Effie said.

“I know enough not to embrace Clementine in company. Give me a little credit.”

“Not the embrace itself, or not only that,” Simon said. “It was more the way each of you immediately turned to the other. You were, for a moment, transported to a place the rest of us were not welcome.”

“That’s—”

True. It was very possibly true.

Damn it all to hell.

“All right,” Archie said carefully. “I see that perhaps the informality of life at Quintrell Castle, the high emotion associated with our rescue of the ladies, and a history of friendship with Miss Morgan going back to childhood have perhaps combined to create a kind of familiarity that is ripe for misinterpretation. So I thank you for the warning.” He made eye contact with each of them in turn and gave a little nod. “For if the two of you misinterpreted it, so might those who know us less well.”

“We misinterpreted it, did we?” Simon asked mildly.

“Yes,” Archie said, “you did.”

He turned to check on Hermes. He was gone. Wandered off while Archie wasn’t paying attention. Archie hoped he’d wandered off. Dear God, what if he’d been preyed upon, plucked off the ground by a stealthy goshawk?

What was he going to tell Clementine?

It turned out he didn’t have to tell her anything. Something was wrong with Clementine when she and Olive turned up. She didn’t ask about Hermes, and the smiling, victorious countenance of before was gone.

She held her sister’s hand all the way back to the horses, and the pair of them rode side by side at the head of the pack all the way back to the castle.

“I think,” Archie said, once they’d dismounted, “we ought all to dine together again. It is our last night, after all. We will join you ladies for your meal.” The boys murmured their agreement.

“Oh, you can’t,” Olive said. “Mrs. MacPuddle told me this morning that the cook was hard at work on a final feast for you gentlemen. You can hardly put all that food—and all her efforts—to waste.”

“Right.” They could not. Could they? He wanted to.

“We should be delighted to join you after we dine, though, shouldn’t we, Clemmie?”

Clementine concurred with a smile, but something still was not right with her. He could hardly ask what it was, though, especially given the warning he had just received from his friends.

Clementine and Olive took their leave and retreated. They were still holding hands.

Archie wanted, more than anything, to fix whatever was wrong. He didn’t know how to.

And by next week at this time, he wouldn’t even be around to make such observations.

He got out his beads and wondered where Hermes was.

* * *

“You know my book of days?” Olive asked, crossing over to her bedside table.

“Of course.” The worn, leather-covered volume Olive pulled from a drawer was familiar to Clementine. She had seen it just last week, when Olive had extracted her list from it.

Olive sat on the edge of her bed. “Ralph gave it to me.”

Of course he had. Everything made sense now. Clementine sat on the other side of the bed.

“He gave it to me the day before he left. It was meant to count down the days until we could be together.” Olive rubbed her fingertips over the cover in a pattern Clementine suddenly recognized as a habit. “I told him not to write to me, because I didn’t want Father finding out about us.” She stopped rubbing abruptly and dropped the book on the counterpane. “I told him not to write to me, Clemmie! If I hadn’t done that, at least I’d have letters from him! But I never thought he would die! He went to a place called Fort Henry in Upper Canada, not off to Waterloo!”

“How did he die?” Clementine asked gently.

“I don’t know. I haven’t been able to find out. I only know he’s dead to begin with because I overheard someone talking about it in a shop in Chiddington. The garrison there was supposed to help prevent another American invasion of Canada. There was no active fighting!” Her voice rose as she said, again, “I told him not to write to me!”

Clementine clambered across the bed and put her own hand on the book. She wanted to touch it, to show her sister that she understood now what she hadn’t before. “Olive, you were a child. A girl. You were overwhelmed.”

“I told him that while he was gone, I’d think of a way for us to marry. What was I going to do?” Olive’s voice took on a brittle, almost sneering tone. “Suddenly grow brave and tell Father when I’d spent years not doing that? Ralph went to serve our country, and I couldn’t tell a simple truth.”

“But it wasn’t a simple truth,” Clementine said quietly, searching her sister’s face. Olive wasn’t looking at her; she only had eyes for her book. “It never is, for women. It may not have been life-and-death. I’m not making an analogy to joining a military campaign. But it wasn’t simple. I think you ought to acknowledge that.”

“I want to show you something else.”

Clementine wasn’t sure if her heart could take anymore, but she murmured her agreement.

Olive opened the next drawer down in the bedside table and pulled out the embroidery hoop she had taken pains to hide before. It depicted a gravestone. A large one, imposing gray against a late autumn forest.

Ralph Albert Scully

1801–1819

Son, soldier, beloved

This was what she had shown Lord Featherfinch that night.

“Is . . . Ralph lying to rest in Chiddington?” Clementine asked.

“I don’t know.”

“You could ask his mother.” For that matter, Olive could ask Mrs. Scully about the circumstances of Ralph’s death.

“But how would I do that?”

“Well, what do you say to her when you give her money?”

“Nothing. I send it to her anonymously.”

Clementine had to swallow a gasp. She felt as though she were being cut down as surely as any soldier. How thoroughly she had misunderstood her sister, and for so long. For years. What a waste. But such a lament was not what Olive needed now. And more to the point, there was no sense in crying over wasted years. They had a lifetime ahead of them. She hoped. “You could look for the stone while you’re there.” There were only two cemeteries in the village.

Clementine regretted the suggestion immediately. Olive . . . Well, she crumpled.

Clementine felt terrible. Olive had just told Clementine she could not bear to be in Chiddington, and Clementine was suggesting she wander through its cemeteries in search of the grave of her lost love?

“No,” Clementine said quietly but firmly. “I see that you can’t do that. It was an ill-thought suggestion.” Seeing her sister so upset, knowing she’d hidden such grief—and such love—for so long, continued to make her head spin. “What about the list?”

“You still think I was lying about that?”

“No! I was merely hoping it might provide some comfort in your grief, or at least some distraction. Though I admit it is somewhat difficult to reconcile all that you have told me, all that I’ve seen just now of how losing Ralph has shaped you, with that list.”

Olive lifted one shoulder, and let it fall. The gesture seemed to return some of her former veneer to her, the face she showed the world. “If I can’t have Ralph, I don’t care who I marry.”

“I’m not sure I follow. You don’t care who you marry, yet you seem at least somewhat invested in the list.”

“Well, life is short, is it not? But also long.”

Clementine thought she understood. “You are biding your time.”

“Yes. I will settle for someone, at some point, but I will try to wring as much as I can out of the doing. At least that is what I tell myself in London. I can distract myself there, with parties and dresses and such.” She performed another shrug. “If you have to be in pain, you might as well be surrounded by pretty things and delicious food. If your spirit must suffer, why not coddle your body?”

Astonishing. And logical, in its way. Clementine rued all the days she’d spent thinking her sister shallow, when she was actually burying her pain in pretty things.

Olive shot Clementine a wry smile. “These revelations shouldn’t raise your opinion of me too much, Sister. It isn’t all performance. I do love a party—and a hair ribbon, and when a gentleman prostrates himself at my feet and proclaims his undying love.” Clementine smiled as Olive sobered. “It only works in London, though.”

Clementine wished there was something she could do to ease her sister’s sorrow. “I wonder if there is a way you could return to Chiddington and see it as the site of all your good memories with Ralph, rather than a source of torment.”

“No. Perhaps someday, but not yet. I know the dogs much prefer the country, and I feel guilty keeping them from it, but I can’t bear it there. At Easter, I was miserable.”

Clementine remembered that. She had thought at the time that Olive’s antisocial behavior was snobbishness, that she was being petulant and self-absorbed. How gravely she had misunderstood.

Olive stood suddenly, briskly returning her needlework and book to their drawers. “You will go home, though, to Hill House. I will help you convince Father to allow it. I am very good at manipulating him.”

“And you will stay in London?” Clementine asked, though she knew the answer. Knew there could be no other answer.

“Yes.”

“I don’t like the idea that our home is not the same.” Especially now that she felt, for the first time in years, that she truly saw Olive, and that Olive truly saw her.

“I don’t, either.”

Clementine thought her heart might break. To have gained a sister, then lost her.

But then Olive slid her hand across the bed, the knotted cotton of the counterpane making for a bumpy journey. She grabbed Clementine’s hand. “But we still have tonight.”

“Yes!” Clementine leapt at the consolatory notion like it was an eligible bachelor and she a scheming miss.

“Clemmie, will you sleep with me tonight?” Olive pulled Clementine’s hand to her mouth and kissed it. Clementine was a little startled by the request but also flattered. “After our time with the gentlemen, we can come back here and whisper into the night.”

Clementine pulled their joined hands to her mouth and kissed Olive’s knuckles. “Yes, I will sleep with you tonight.” She would come back here with Olive and hold hands across the bed and whisper late into the night, even though that would mean giving up her last chance to be with Archie.

Gentlemen would come and go. Sisters were forever.

Now that she had Olive back, Lord help the mister who came between her and her sister.

Even if the mister was Archie.

* * *

Archie told himself he wasn’t taking any of the lamb the cook had prepared for their final meal because he wanted to honor Hermes.

But then when he tried to actually articulate—in his mind; he would never have tried to do so out loud—the connection between Hermes and the dead lamb at the center of the table, he lost the plot.

Turtle freed . . . dead lamb . . . and then there was that bacon from the other day. Why had he not just spit it out rather than swallowed it in such a hurry?

And Clem in a tree.

And Clem shattering under his mouth.

He shook his head. It was all so confusing.

He spent the first few minutes of the meal doing as he had done last night, trying to hide from the boys that he wasn’t eating any meat, trying to arrange things on his plate so they wouldn’t notice, trying to take enough of the accompanying dishes to fill his belly. Trying, trying, trying. All in the name of subterfuge.

Bollocks!he thought.

And then he said it: “Bollocks!”

There was no reason to be hiding this from Simon and Effie. When you loved people, you told them the truth, or at least as much of the truth as was yours to tell.

“Are you quite all right?” Simon inquired in a maddeningly mild tone.

“I am not all right! I can’t eat any lamb!”

Effie threw his head back and cackled.

“What are you laughing at?” Archie was affronted. You told the people you loved the truth, and they laughed at you? It wasn’t as if he deluded himself into thinking the world was a just place, but wasn’t the whole point of found families, of salt and strawberries and all that nonsense, that those people took you seriously?

“I am laughing at you,” Effie said merrily. “I am laughing at how it is possible for someone to be so utterly un-self-aware. Were we not just talking, mere days ago, about how attuned you are to the emotional undercurrents of any situation?”

This coming from the man who’d been writing a sonnet and sitting in a house he’d had outfitted in mourning for his parrot while he had entirely forgotten Earls Trip 1821.

Archie huffed.

“Perhaps,” Simon said placatingly, “you have been persuaded by Miss Morgan’s arguments.” He pursed his lips as if he too were laughing, but on the inside. “Or by Mr. Bull’s, but for the sake of your reputation, let’s just say you have been persuaded by Miss Morgan.”

Archie nodded. Yes. Let’s just say.

“So you cannot eat the lamb,” Simon went on. “On the one hand, that is unfortunate, for the lamb”—he took a bite—“is delectable. But on the other, it is not the end of the world, is it? So you have joined Miss Morgan in her renunciation of meat.”

“But what about hunting?” Even as Archie asked the question, the old sentiment, the thrill of the hunt, seemed very far away.

Effie tilted his head, looking intently at Archie, and Archie wasn’t sure he didn’t prefer being laughed at. “I hardly think you can hunt if you have given up eating meat.”

“Well, you could,” Simon said, “but it doesn’t seem very morally consistent.”

“Right,” Archie said, nodding decisively. “I cannot.” And that was . . . fine. Surprisingly so.

He thought back to Earls Trip 1818, the year of the hunting mishap. Archie had considered the ban that resulted from the near-miss a fair trade. Decided he would rather be the kind of man sought out by a friend who wanted urgently to tell him about his dreams than the sort of man who hunted.

He substituted Clementine for Effie in this mental exercise. Her tears when he shot that bird. The way she’d opened up to him later, explained how it affected her. It felt like more than a fair trade. It felt like . . . everything.

“Although,” he posited, thinking ahead to the coming days and weeks, “perhaps all this will . . . wear off once Miss Morgan is back in London, and I am back at Mollybrook.”

The thought was more than a little discomposing.

When Clementine arrived with Olive after dinner, he was stricken by a longing-in-advance. To watch her talking and smiling, and to know that tomorrow everything would be different. To know that the effect of her might indeed wear off. The bittersweet nature of it all was enough to make him maudlin.

He consoled himself that at least they had tonight. One more night.

The evening was tinged with melancholy, and Archie was fairly certain he wasn’t the only one feeling it. They were chatting and laughing as usual, and everyone was recounting the moment when Hermes had overtaken the leader of the pack back at the race. But the evening was overlain with a kind of unspoken, anticipatory wistfulness.

Well, unspoken until Olive spoke it. “I don’t want this holiday to end!”

The boys heartily agreed, and though it was coming on midnight, Effie proposed a game of whist, and everyone got up to move chairs and settle themselves in the new formation. Archie took drink orders. Clementine joined him at the sideboard. His heart thudded when she brushed close, and he spilled some of the ratafia he was pouring for Olive. And it sank when he registered what Clementine had whispered to him. “I am staying in Olive’s room this evening, so I cannot come to you.”

“What? Why?”

“Shh!” She looked around and, once content no one was paying them any mind, said, “She needs me.”

She floated away, drink in hand as if she’d been visiting the sideboard for mere refreshment, rather than to crush Archie, to absolutely level him.

What an ignoble way for this extraordinary fortnight to end.