“There are a few things we need to discuss,” she said, sinking into a chair next to Archie before he could organize his limbs to stand in acknowledgment of her arrival. “First, I do not swoon.”
“And a good morning to you, too,” he remarked, trying not to be too obvious about letting his gaze roam her person, searching for any signs of lingering damage.
She was wearing a slate-blue day dress, which aside from the mud, was unremarkable. Her mahogany hair had been braided and the braids pinned up, but the whole thing was sloppily done. Hanks of hair hung loose, and the still-pinned-up part was listing off to one side. Her cheeks were pink and her brown-copper eyes bright. She had a smattering of freckles across her cheeks and slightly-beaky nose. This was all familiar. The Clementine of his memory had often looked like this. Yet somehow, today, all these usual characteristics added up to something different.
He tried to think how long, exactly, it had been since he’d seen the Morgans. He’d attended Mrs. Morgan’s funeral, of course, but the sisters had been veiled and surrounded by well-wishers. Beyond that, it had very likely been four, perhaps five years. He did some arithmetic: he was twenty-seven, which would make Clementine twenty-four. Suppose she had been nineteen the last time he saw her. How could the difference between nineteen and twenty-four be so great?
Yet itwas. She was different.
Or perhaps, he thought with unease, she was the same, andhewas different.
“I am not the sort of woman who swoons when confronted with unpleasantness,” she declared. “I don’t faint my way out of trying situations.”
“I should think not. You’re the sort of woman who shoots your way out of them.”
Her posture softened. “Iamsorry about that. How is your shoulder?” She leaned closer. “And your face?” She must have bathed, for whereas yesterday she had smelled . . . not bad exactly, but the way a person smelled after spending days on the Mail coach, today she smelled like . . . sugar and herbs. She smelled like Clementine.
And she had twigs in her hair, little ones that could only be seen from this close vantage point. He turned his head away to smile so she wouldn’t see. A man shouldn’t be seen to be too fond when discussing his own near murder. He composed himself before turning back and saying, gruffly, “I’m fine.”
“Did you require a surgeon?”
“No. The injury looked worse than it was, bled more than was called for.” Mrs. MacPuddle had interrupted the boys’ ineffectual fussing over his wound last night and given him two stitches. It bothered him still, the sharp pain of yesterday having settled into a deep ache, but Clementine didn’t need to know that.
“And this?”
She reached out as if to touch the scrape on his face, and he instinctively leaned back to dodge her hand, though he wasn’t sure why. “Fine. Healing over already.”
Now that he was calm and some time had passed, he could scarcely believe that he and Simon had . . . well, they’d ganged up on Theodore Bull. Archie was an avid boxer, sparring with a teacher in Sevenoaks, the town nearest Mollybrook of any size, as often as he could. And Heaven knew, he’d gotten into enough scuffles at school. But he’d never gotten into a proper, adult fight before. It was disconcerting. But it had worked: they’d gotten in several jabs before Mr. Bull surrendered. They’d frightened him enough, Archie dared say, that they could trust his promise to disappear. Simon had left him with a warning: “We knoweverything, and we shall make it public if we ever see or hear of your presence in England again.” When Archie had questioned Simon about the threat, Simon had merely said, “Men like that always have secrets. I don’t know what they are, but he doesn’t know that.”
So Archie supposed their fit of violence had worked. He eyed Clementine. He’d do it again if he had to, as uneasy as it made him.
“Well, good,” Clementine said, “but I’m still sorry for shooting you, and for dragging you into this mess to begin with.” She sighed. “Oh, Arch.”
“Don’t call me ‘Arch.’”
“Why not?” she asked. “As diminutives go, ‘Arch’ is much more dignified than ‘Archie.’”
“I don’t like it,” he said, though that wasn’t precisely true. When Clementine called him “Arch,” tossing the single syllable off as if it were her right, it made his insides feel wobbly, the same way his knees had yesternight at her bedside. Like a blancmange being transported too aggressively. Archie did not fancy being compared—even when he was the one doing the comparing—to a blancmange. “It doesn’t suit me,” he added peevishly.
“Well, you do it to me, too. You call me ‘Clem.’”
“I do not,” he said reflexively, though he wasn’t sure why, as she was correct. He did call her “Clem.” Or he used to. Yesterday aside, he hadn’t had occasion to call her anything for several years.
“You do, though.”
“Well, it isn’t only my habit. Olive calls you ‘Clem.’”
“She does not. She calls me ‘Clemmie.’ You’re the only one who calls me ‘Clem.’”
Was that true?
“I call you ‘Arch’ and you call me ‘Clem,’ but usually only when other people aren’t around.”
Wasthattrue? He would certainly never have used her Christian name in company, nor she his, but when they’d been alone, or among immediate family, they’d never stood on ceremony. Archie called Olive by her Christian name, too, in private. But again, that was years ago now, and both sisters had since had their debuts. And he had been trying to remember to call Simon and Effie by their titles here. Although this remote pile of rocks could hardly be considered society.
He shook his head. They were getting lost in the weeds here; none of this mattered. “Are we going to talk about yesterday?”
“What about it?”
