There had been a distinct note of . . . something in that question. Not quite anger, but certainly some sort of heightened sentiment. Was Clementinehurtby the loss of this Bull character? Had she not cried off her engagement to the man before he ran off with Olive?
Olive’s expression was uncertain, as if she, too, were unsure of Clementine’s state of mind. “Oh, Clemmie, I’m sorry. I—”
“There will be time for that later,” Archie interrupted. “For now, we must get out of here before someone calls a magistrate. We’ll make our way down the back stairs. The only question is what we should do with Mr. Bull. I’d like your thoughts on the matter before we make our escape.”
“What do you mean what we should do with him?” Clementine asked warily.
Archie huffed a frustrated sigh. He had no doubt Clementine’s flight after her sister had not included any plans for how to manage the aftermath of her wild scheme, should it actually prove successful—which, he had to admit, it had, at least insofar as she had managed to locate her sister and separate her from Mr. Bull. “I came here prepared to call out Mr. Bull and to marry one of you if need be, but I’d really rather not do either of those things if they can be avoided.” Clementine’s eyes widened in a fashion he would have found amusing had the circumstances been less dire. “Do you think if I extract a promise from him to leave England and to never speak to—or of—either of you again, that would be sufficient?”
“Yes!” Olive cried. “You can’t die on our account, Archie!”
“I concur,” Clementine said. “Please, no dying on our account. Or, nearly worse, please, no weddings.” Her scrunched nose jolted him back in time. She used to pullexactlythat face—she looked like she’d smelled something distasteful—when he’d bait her by claiming he could climb a tree faster than she could. Or when she wasn’t convinced by one of his lies about why Mother hadn’t been able to attend a dance at the Chiddington assembly rooms. “But how will you extract this promise?”
Instead of answering Clementine’s question with words, he cracked his knuckles and shot her his own wide-eyed look. She would remember his many youthful pursuits. Archery. Slingshots. Hunting, his particular favorite.
“I see.” Yes. She remembered. “Please try not to kill, maim, or otherwise disable Mr. Bull. He is a complete and utter knave, but I think it vastly preferable we not get caught up in a criminal investigation.”
“He’s bound for the Continent next week anyway,” Olive said, “so I don’t know that you need threaten him at all, Archie.”
“I’ll take that under advisement,” Archie said mildly, but he was turning his mind to the grim task ahead. He hadn’t been lying before: he did want to avoid murder. But perhaps only just. A man did not bring such harm, such potential ruin, down on not one, but two Morgan sisters and escape without consequences.
It was now time for Mr. Bull to face those consequences.
* * *
As Clementine finished changing into her wrinkled dress, she started to feel poorly. Her head ached something awful, her hands were shaking in a manner she wasn’t entirely sure she could attribute to the ale she’d drunk, and something in her chest felt . . . not right.
“Perhaps I ought to change my bonnet?” Olive, who was studying her reflection in the mirror, asked. “If it’s better for you to look like someone else, perhaps I should endeavor to alter my appearance as well? To look different from when I arrived?” They had decided that Clementine should transform herself back into a girl in order to lessen the likelihood that anyone would connect her boy incarnation with . . . whatever Archie was going to do to Theo. He was being maddeningly vague on that topic.
“A good idea,” Archie said.
Clementine motioned toward Olive’s portmanteau, though she felt as if she were watching her arm move under water. “If you’ve another bonnet in there, put it on and give me the one you’re wearing.”
She regarded the monstrosity Olive handed her, hoping her trouble focusing on it was due toitand not her. Like most of her sister’s attire, the hat was a riot of overadornment. Pink feathers competed with a cascade of flowers fashioned from blue tulle. There was even a bird perched in the center of one of the flowers. Clementine found herself unaccountably irritated by the fact that it wasn’t a specific sort of bird, but rather some overpriced milliner’s idea of improving on what nature had already perfected. She grabbed it and pulled.
“What are youdoing?” Olive cried.
“Making this bonnet less obtrusive.” Clementine took a strange pleasure in freeing the bird from its bondage, and, in fact, the act grounded her, made her feel more herself. For good measure, she ripped the tulle off, too, ignoring her sister’s wail of protest.
“Enough,” Archie said, and Clementine couldn’t begrudge him the annoyance in his tone. They really oughtn’t to be bickering about hats at a time like this. “Follow me,” he said, “and for God’s sake,be quiet.”
They encountered no one on their flight from the building. A cacophony of voices rose from the other end of the corridor below as they rounded the landing, no doubt thanks to Clementine’s false account of the gunshot having come from there, but mercifully, their escape went unnoticed.
Outside, Archie’s friend, Edward Astley, Viscount Featherfinch, was waiting for them in the muddy yard, looking like a Gothic hero from one of the novels Clementine secretly enjoyed. He and Archie undertook a kind of silent communication via raised eyebrows and nods as Archie handed off Clementine and Olive and turned on his heel.
“Where is he going?” she whispered as Lord Featherfinch hustled them over to a boy waiting with five horses. He didn’t answer, but he didn’t have to. She knew. Archie was off to “extract a promise” from Theo. Archibald Fielding-Burton, the Earl of Harcourt, could be very forceful in defense of his friends. She considered herself fortunate he apparently still counted her among them.
“Harcourt says you ladies are skilled riders?”
“We are,” Olive was speaking to Lord Featherfinch but looking at Clementine. Her eyes narrowed as if she did not like what she saw. Clementine pressed her hands to her cheeks. They felt colder than they reasonably ought to given the heat of the afternoon.
“We were bound for Cumbria,” Lord Featherfinch said. “We thought it best to leave the coach here and hire fresh horses to ride—it will be much faster and”—he looked in the direction Archie had gone—“given what is likely happening even now, we thought it best to prioritize expediency. Though it is a hard two hours’ ride. We could stop somewhere along the way if need be, but given your precarious situation, we thought it better to go directly there, rather than to be seen at a nearby posting inn, if you ladies can manage the ride.”
“Are you up to the task?” Olive asked Clementine.
“I’m a better rider than you,” Clementine snapped, forgetting for a moment that she was meant to be reserving most of her ire for Theo. “Of course I’m up to the task.”
In truth, though, she wasn’t sure. Whatever had begun to afflict her upstairs was worsening. She felt increasingly light-headed, and her hands were shaking something awful.
