“Get up,” Clementine said curtly. She tried to summon some of yesterday’s faith that her sister had not knowingly and callously betrayed her. But with a clear head and in the bright light of morning, it was harder to cling to that certitude. The fact remained that Olive had run off with Theo.Olive had run off with Theo. With the fear and panic of recent days having faded, what remained was anger, and while Clementine had a healthy supply of it for Theo, at the moment there was plenty left over for Olive: for stealing Clementine’s erstwhile, good-for-nothing fiancé, for almost throwing away her youth and good name on such a man, for sending them on a wild-goose chase that could have ended very badly for both of them—and thathadresulted in Archie’s being injured.
“Clemmie?” Olive said sleepily as Clementine stood looking out the window. In novels, anger was often described as hot. Invigorating. A force that animated a person, making her impulsive and rash.Thisanger was like snow, white and cold and deadening.
Perhaps she ought to stop expecting life to be like novels.
“Clemmie, are you all right?” Olive asked. “I was so worried about you last night.”
Slowly, Clementine turned and saw that her sister believed what she said—that shehadbeen worried. Olive was, generally speaking, careless and selfish and impulsive. She thought nothing of manipulating people and situations to satisfy the most passing of whims. Olive neverintendedto hurt people with her behavior, but the fact remained that shedid, because she didn’t think about theimplicationsof such behavior, beyond whether it would get her what she wanted.
But to be fair, Olive was also loyal to a fault. It was as if Olive had drawn a circle around herself, nay,brandeda circle around herself, scorching a line in the earth with fire. The result was an unmovable enclosure, and if you were inside it, there was nothing Olive wouldn’t do for you. Clementine had seen this pattern unfold dozens of times, had witnessed her sister give the cut to people whose only crime had been a slight, sometimes even an unintentional one, against one of Olive’s friends.
Clementine and Olive had little in common and had never been close. There were five years between them, and though they’d shared a governess for a while, at some point a tutor had been brought in for Clementine, and later, when Olive’s interests had bent more toward drawing and singing and painting, music and art masters had been brought in for her. The sisters were like stars that appeared close together in the sky, but in truth existed on different planes. Still, Clementine would have thought she’d be inside Olive’s circle by virtue of blood if nothing else.
But why? Why would she think that? What was blood, really? Look at the brotherhood Archie had forged with his bosom friends.
“I am fine—physically,” Clementine said slowly, turning her mind to her sister’s question. “But for all you know, my heart is broken.”
Olive tilted her head and said, “It isn’t, though, is it?” She threw off the bedclothes and extended her arms, inviting Clementine to embrace her.
Clementine kept her arms by her side. The anger was still cold; it was making her brittle, disinclined to allow such a gesture of comfort.
Except it wasn’tonlyanger. It was pride, the only defense she had here, outside of the circle. “Olive, everyone knows you’re the prettier of us.” Clementine’s voice sounded as cold as her body felt. Her tone was dispassionate, as if she were commenting on, say, a piece of embroidery—and it was difficult to overstate how little she cared about embroidery.
Olive started to bluster over Clementine’s remark. Clementine held up a hand. “You’re clever, too, so don’t pretend not to understand me. You’re pretty, you sing like a lark, and you speak three languages. You embroider and play the pianoforte with great skill. And your father is a baronet.” Olive’s brow furrowed. Clementine would have to spell it out, which somehow made it all the more mortifying. “I have the same baronet father, of course, but I don’t have those other qualities. I don’t have your classic English beauty, your charm, or your mastery of the feminine pursuits. I know what people say about me, that I’m odd and wild and unbiddable and in possession of an ugly nose and that I ought to do a better job concealing my freckles if I want to catch a husband. You, on the other hand, could have any man alive. Why did you have to take the only one I’d ever wanted?”
She had tried to keep the hurt out of her voice, but was very much afraid she had not succeeded.
She saw understanding dawn as Olive climbed out of bed and came to stand in front of her. “But you didn’t want him anymore, did you, Clemmie? That was exactly the point—and the problem.” Pity flooded Olive’s expression as she took Clementine’s hand.
That could not be allowed to stand. Clementine snatched her hand away. “What do you mean? How do you know that?” Howcouldshe know? Clementine had spoken to Father about her change of heart regarding the engagement, but he had been attempting to convince her to stay the course. Whether he’d have been successful or not, he wouldneverhave breathed a word to Olive. Father believed his younger daughter to be more innocent than she was. He was forever trying to shield Olive from the machinations of men when really what he ought to be doing was shielding men from the machinations of Olive.
“Theo told me,” Olive said calmly. “He told me you’d cried off, that he’d taken your maidenhood, and that he was going to tell everyone as much unless you changed your mind and agreed to marry him after all. He was preparing to blackmail you.”
Clementine did not like to think of herself as a gasper. She was not the sort of lady who swoonedorgasped. She had once stared down a wild boar, for Heaven’s sake. But the gasp that ripped from her throat at Olive’s matter-of-fact recitation of Theo’s misdeeds was so theatrical as to be worthy of inclusion in a pantomime.
The last few days had proven very lowering indeed.
She had not thought Theo capable of such cruelty. But she had also not thought him capable of many other things she had gone on to witness him doing, including ordering not one but two plates of roast beef.
“So I suggested thatImarry him instead, in exchange for his keeping quiet about you,” Olive went on, summoning another gasp from Clementine. “I am not as witless as you think, Sister. One of us was as good as the other from his perspective, I reasoned. What Theo wanted was a generous dowry and to marry into a respectable family. He didn’t actually care aboutyou.”
So Clementine had learned. She wanted it not to sting, but it did.
“Or me,” Olive added, and that stung, too, but it was more akin to a bee sting, a galvanizing pinch that made Clementine angry. HowdareTheo not care about Olive? Even though Clementine was angry at Olive.
This was all very confusing.
“But Iknewhe didn’t care about me,” Olive went on, “so I wasn’t bothered by it.”
“Then why would you offer to take my place?” Clementine asked. “Why would you sacrifice yourself for . . .” Oh. Oh no. “Olive, did you also . . . ?”
Why couldn’t she finish a sentence? In addition to not gasping or swooning, Clementine did not dissemble.
“No,” Olive said firmly, and in a way that suggested she’d heard the unarticulated part of Clementine’s question. “No, I did not.” She looked at Clementine with an expression that seemed to say,Unlike you.
Clementine’s cheeks burned. Not with shame over what she had done exactly. Perhaps to her discredit, she had not seen any great moral problem with anticipating her marriage vows. Nay, her hot cheeks heralded shame over her spectacular lapse in judgment in choosing Theo to begin with. She shoved it down. Her humiliation was not the point here; getting to the bottom of Olive’s extraordinary actions was.
The only explanation left was that Olive carried a genuine tendre for Theo. Olive did tend to do that. And Theo was a very good actor. Clementine sighed. “Had you fallen in love with him, Olive?”
