Chapter 20
Langton sat at the foot of a long, low valley three hours’ drive from London in a stretch of orchards her father had once described to her, in a rare moment of being impressed by anything, as the prettiest in Buckinghamshire.
Alice had not seen it before this morning.
In her two years of knowing Joanna, she had seen a great many sketches of Langton in Joanna’s small leather portfolio.
She had seen, in her parents’ library, the entry for Langton in the small leather-bound Seats of the English Aristocracy her father consulted on matters of social rank.
And she had heard Joanna describe Langton in the offhand way that was Joanna’s habit with everything she had been born to and was not impressed by.
But none of that had prepared her for seeing it with her own eyes.
The carriage crested the small hill above the valley at half past eleven.
She had been looking at her gloves. She had been looking at them for the better part of two hours because she had decided, somewhere between London and Aylesbury, that she would not look out the carriage window on the way down.
She would arrive at Langton with the same composure she had brought to Almack’s a week ago, and she would do this by not allowing herself to be impressed by anything she could see through a window.
The wheels under her had been small and steady on the gravel for the last quarter of an hour. The scent of the box-hedges in someone’s lane had drifted in through the cracked side-glass. She had held to the decision through all of it. She broke it now.
She broke it because her sister, who was seated beside her, had let out a breathy Oh, and her mother, who was seated across from her, had gasped, “Goodness, Alice.”
She looked up to see why.
Langton sat below them in the morning light. It was a long pale yellow house, broad and low, with two wings folded back from a central pediment, set in a stretch of grass that ran down to a bright lake.
The orchards sprawled behind the house in long, neat rows. The lake had a small white folly at its near end, a bridge over its narrowest point, and a path that ran around its edge and disappeared in the trees.
There were perhaps thirty people on the lawn, in pale dresses and dark coats and the particular movements of a house party that had just started.
Alice could see, even from this distance, that someone had set up an archery target in the meadow at the far side of the lake. She had never in her life held a bow.
She told her pulse to settle. It did not, in fact, oblige.
“Alice,” Daphne said softly.
“Yes?”
“It is very beautiful.”
“It is.”
“He has done well for himself, has he not?”
“He has done very well for himself, Daphne.”
“You are going to be very rich, Alice.”
“I suppose I am.”
Alice did not say what she was actually thinking which was that she had not, in any of the imagining she had done about this marriage in the last week, accounted for the existence of Langton.
Her imaginings had had Cassian in them. They had had Joanna.
They had had a civil ceremony, a large empty drawing room, and the careful management of a life she had not chosen.
They had not had this. They had not had a long pale yellow house in a green valley with an orchard and a lake and a folly. They had not, above all, had a house that looked very much like the house in which a woman who had wanted a family for sixteen years might have one.
The carriage rolled to a stop at the front steps a quarter of an hour later.
Joanna was on the gravel before the footman had unfolded the steps. “Alice.”
“Joanna.”
“Come with me, now. I have a great deal to show you. Mrs. Pendleton, I will be perhaps an hour; see the trunks taken up. They will be in your rooms when you return. Alice, give me your hand. Daphne, you as well. Lady Westbury—”
“Joanna,” Lady Westbury cut in gently. “Perhaps the girls—”
“They will be back for nuncheon, My Lady. I promise it. Come, Alice.”
Alice was pulled, along with Daphne, around the side of the house and down a small gravel path to the lake. The path ran between two long borders of late tulips.
Up close, the lake was perhaps four hundred yards across at its widest and quite shallow at the near end where there was a small wooden landing for a boat.
There was no boat at the landing. However, in the meadow at the far end, there were a great many figures, a great many bows, and as Alice now saw, no target at all.
“Joanna.”
“Yes?”
“Where is the target?”
“There is no target.”
“There is—”
“There is no target. Cassian shall explain. Cassian!”
He was standing at the center of the meadow in shirtsleeves with his coat slung over his arm, the Viscount Greencliff at his elbow, and Richard Sutton at the other.
He had the particular look of someone who had spent the last quarter of an hour organizing a piece of foolishness and was now ready to set it loose.
He looked up and saw Alice. He held her gaze with the particular intensity he had shown ever since the orangery and then crossed the meadow toward her.
“Lady Alice. Lady Daphne. Lady Westb—Ah, Joanna has lost your mother.”
“She will recover,” Joanna said airily. “Mrs. Pendleton will manage her.”
“Very well. Welcome to Langton, Lady Alice.”
“Your Grace.”
Cassian took Alice’s gloved hand and bowed over it.
He did not, on this occasion, kiss it. He had said, four days ago in Mrs. Hatcher’s paneled back room, that he would not press her this week, and Alice realized with a leap of her heart that he meant to keep his word at every public bow as much as at every private one.
He let her hand go and turned to the meadow. “Lady Alice. Lady Daphne. Before you have a bow shoved into your hands, here are the rules of the game: there are no targets. There are no targets because Joanna has informed me that targets are for the unimaginative.”
“They are for the unimaginative,” Joanna affirmed.
“Each of you will shoot one arrow into the meadow. As far as you can. The farther the better. When all have shot, you will, on a signal from Lord Greencliff, run to retrieve your arrow and then run back. The first to return wins.”
“That is—” Alice began.
“That is, yes.”
“That is somewhat undignified, Your Grace.”
“It is entirely undignified, Lady Alice. It was my sister’s idea. I take no responsibility for it.”
“Lord Greencliff?”
“My Lady,” said the Viscount, who had come up to Cassian’s elbow. “I am the impartial judge. I take no sides. I will, however, observe that the lady who looks most ready to laugh at the whole affair shall perform best.”
“That is not boxing advice, Lord Greencliff.”
“No, My Lady. It is, however, advice.”
Alice looked at him.
He had only one good eye. The other was a small dark socket under a soft black patch he had tied at the back of his head with a length of cord. He was perhaps sixty years old and was leaning slightly on a black cane. Wrinkles of long use lined the corners of his mouth and his good eye.
Evidently, he had been amused by a great many things in life and had found the amusement worth keeping. He was watching her with an assessing look like someone who had been told a great deal about a pupil and was deciding whether the teller had been right.
She decided, in the next breath, that she liked him very much.
“My Lord.”
“My Lady.”
“I will do my best.”
“That is all any of us will do, My Lady.”
A bow was put into her hands. It was not a very heavy bow.
It had been chosen, she suspected, for the wrists of the ladies present, for it had a light pull and a small arrow.
Alice lifted it to her shoulder with a bright readiness.
She had decided that she was, for the next forty minutes, going to do an undignified thing well.
She looked at Cassian.
He was watching her. He was watching her with the careful neutrality he had kept up all morning. But at the corner of his mouth, there was the small upward tilt that meant he was trying very hard not to smile.
“Your Grace.”
“Lady Alice.”
“How far is far?”
“Far is over the small fence.”
“The small fence?”
“The small fence at the far end of the meadow at the foot of the orchard. Approximately ninety yards.”
“Ninety yards.”
“Yes.”
“That is very far.”
“It is.”
“Your Grace?”
“Yes.”
“Have you shot already?”
“I have.”
“Where did your arrow go?”
He pointed, and she looked.
His arrow was a small dark line in the grass, perhaps one hundred and twenty yards away, well past the fence, halfway up the apple orchard.
“You are mocking me, Your Grace.”
“I am not mocking you.”
“You are plainly mocking me.”
“I have been shooting arrows since I was eight, Alice. It is not a fair contest.”
“Then I am allowed to cheat.”
He raised an eyebrow. She raised hers.
Then she nocked an arrow, pulled the string, and shot.
The arrow flew not over the fence, but quite respectably into the long grass near the willow at the lake’s edge, perhaps forty yards away.
It was not a serious shot. It was not, in any sense, a winning shot. But the willow was, Alice noted with a bright satisfaction, the closest thing to the lake. She had been thinking very fast in the last six seconds. In fact, it was the closest thing to the small wooden landing.
She lowered the bow and, with a small curtsey, handed it to the Viscount. “My Lord,” she said, “I am ready to run.”
“Lady Alice, I shall give the signal when the others have shot their arrows.”
“Yes, My Lord.”
She waited.
Joanna shot badly and laughed.
Daphne shot more accurately than anyone had expected, perhaps sixty yards into the meadow, and went pink.
Two other ladies shot. Three gentlemen shot.
The Duke of Ronvale shot with a great careless competence, almost as far as Cassian.
Then Lord Greencliff lifted his cane and brought it down sharply on the grass.
“Go,” he said quietly.
Alice went.