“Good Heavens,no!” Olive made a face as if she’d drunk spoilt milk.
“If you didn’t have warm feelings for him, and if you hadn’t given him your maidenhood, why would you offer to take my place?” It couldn’t have been purely to spare Clementine the humiliation of ruination. Clementine wasn’t inside Olive’s circle.
Was she?
“I had my reasons,” Olive said briskly, moving to look at herself in a small mirror mounted above the bureau. Like everything in the castle, it was timeworn. Olive had to contort herself to find an untarnished spot.
“That’s all you’re going to say?” That could not be the end of this conversation. Clementine hadn’t learned anything—well, beyond the ultimately unsurprising fact that Theo had been intending to blackmail her into un-breaking their engagement.
“You needn’t know everything about me, Clemmie, just like I needn’t know everything about you.”
While true, that declaration, and the blithe manner in which Olive tossed it off, caused a pang in Clementine’s chest. A day ago, she would have agreed, would’ve had no wish to know the details of Olive’s social scheming, and no desire to show Olive the contents of her own heart. Today, though, she wondered if she’d been too quick to declare their sisterly differences disqualifying.
“For example,” Olive went on, “I don’t need to know why you gave Theo your maidenhood.” Clementine’s face heated anew. “That’s between the two people involved—and God, I suppose, if a person is inclined that way.”
If a person is inclined that way?Goodness, was her sister secretly a heathen? What else didn’t Clementine know about Olive?
Olive began pinching her cheeks to bring color into them, and all Clementine could do was stand there, agog. “But although I had my reasons,” Olive continued, pressing her lips together in a fashion that called to mind a duck, “and although I’d made my peace with the trade-off I was planning to make, I will admit that I did not understand Theo’s intentions for our life together until our journey was underway. So I do think the best possible outcome was achieved. Thanks to Archie, neither of us is ruined, and neither of us has to marry Theodore Bull.” She finally stepped away from the mirror and turned and smiled cheerily at Clementine. “And now we can put this bit of unpleasantness behind us.”
“But . . .” Clementine wasn’t even sure what she was objecting to. She desperately wanted to know about this trade-off Olive had referenced. She wanted to know whatI had my reasonsmeant. She wanted to know how Olive could be so calm. So cheerful. So not consumed by dread, or even any sense of mild unease, over what might have been. But she knew pressing would do no good; Olive could be endlessly stubborn when she had a mind to be. Regardless, Clementine was certainly in agreement that the absence of both ruination and husbands was a good outcome.
“But what?” Olive prompted.
“But you can’t call him ‘Archie’ here,” Clementine finished weakly, needing something to append to her aborted thought. “In company, he is Lord Harcourt.”
“Iknowthat, silly. Youjustsaid yourself that I was clever.” A small smile suddenly appeared and was just as quickly extinguished.
“He said we may remain here, with him and his friends,” Clementine explained. “Well, we may remain as long as we’re notwiththem. If we agree to stay out of their way, he’ll send word to Father that all is well, and we will return to Town with them at the conclusion of their holiday.”
“Really?” Olive did a little twirl that made her look younger than her nineteen years, and Clementine’s heart performed another confusing pang she did not know how to interpret. “Oh, goody!”
Clementine was a little surprised by Olive’s enthusiasm. As much as Clementine preferred the country, Olive favored the city. “But he is entirely in earnest about us staying away from him. We mustn’t be underfoot.”
“Well, that is a pity. I would like very much to find out who Lord Featherfinch’s tailor is. He certainly is a swell of the first stare, isn’t he? He looks like the hero of a Gothic novel, like he’s meant to be wandering around the heath suffering terrible pangs of unrequited longing.”
Clementine had thought the same, but she was not about to admit to it. She tended to read such novels only when perched high in trees; she always took care that her drawing-room reading was more respectable. Though now that she thought of it, she wasn’t sure why. She was profoundly uninterested in catching a man, and she was beginning to think that life was too short not to simply read what one wanted to read.
“But yes,” Olive said solemnly, “I understand, and I shan’t do anything to compromise our sojourn here, for in my estimation, we truly need it, the both of us.”
“All right, then.” What more was there to say? Apparently nothing, though Clementine could not shake the sense that they were slithering out of this near-disaster too easily.
“I say, are you sure you’re all right, Clemmie?” Olive called after her as she turned to go.
Clementine considered the question. She did not know if she was all right. But if she wasn’t, whatwasshe? Not heartbroken over Theo. Not heartbroken over Olive either, as it turned out, since Olive had apparently been acting at least partially in Clementine’s interest, if for reasons that remained mysterious and were probably at least somewhat self-serving.
She was no longer hungry anymore, either, as she’d visited the kitchen for some more milk and bread this morning and had drunk several cups of tea.
She should be feeling buoyed. Sheshouldbe all right.
“You look a bit unsteady,” Olive added.
Yes. That was a good word for it. She was unsteady. How could something so potentially life-changing, so frightening, end with such a whimper? She’d been primed for so many days to fight. And now, not only was there no need to, it appeared she was on holiday.
“I’m fine,” Clementine lied.
And then she did what she always did when she was in any sort of discomposed state—she went outside.
6
