“I propose a walk down to the forest.” Lord Featherfinch gestured to the encroaching wilds. “I understand that the path of the marauding MacCallum clan can still be seen, even all these centuries later. Supposedly, nothing grows over the route their invasion took.”
Clementine had to admit that was a sight she would like to see, not because she believed the spirits of the long-dead MacCallums had salted the earth but because a stand of beech trees near Hill House had fallen subject some years ago to a rapid and terrible blight that had resulted in similar-sounding conditions.
Archie cleared his throat, drawing everyone’s attention. He hadn’t spoken yet, but Clementine had been acutely aware of him since she arrived at the table. He had a commanding presence she didn’t remember from their youth. He’d always been tall, but he was leaner than he used to be, with prominent cheekbones and a fall of dark hair that made him seem very grown up and very polished. He had grown into his title. “Ghost-hunting is all fine and good for those so inclined, but we have matters to discuss first, do we not?” He looked at Clementine censoriously. “Now that we are all present, shall we get on with it?”
Yes. As much as Clementine wished the ghosts of the MacCallums would seize this moment to spirit her off, she owed these men an explanation. She took a fortifying breath. “I suppose I shall have to tell you all everything.”
“I wish you would,” Lord Featherfinch said. “I have a notion it’s bound to be a most exciting tale.”
“Ihave a notion that both you and your sister have been grossly mistreated,” said Lord Marsden, his voice laden with kindness and affront in equal measure. “If you would care to tell us what happened, you can rest assured we will do what we can to assist.”
“Indeed,” Lord Featherfinch agreed. “I assure you that my interest, while perhaps not entirely selfless—I am a poet, after all, so human experience is my muse—is not salacious.”
“Thank you,” Clementine said, and she meant it. “And thank you for all you have already done for us.”
“Yes, thank you,” Olive said, reaching for Clementine’s hand under the table.
Clementine let her keep it this time, allowed herself to be bolstered by the gentle pressure of her sister’s hand. She thought of the woods she would escape to after this meal.
“I met Mr. Bull at a party given by some neighbors in London,” she began slowly, thinking back to that unfortunate evening with the benefit of hindsight. “I was in my third London Season, which was for me three too many.” She glanced at Archie, who was watching intently, though he remained silent. “Lord Harcourt will remember that I was never inclined toward Town, preferring to spend my time at my family’s house outside Chiddington, near Mollybrook.”
“Two of a kind you are that way,” Lord Marsden said. “Harcourt’s aversion to London is such that I hardly see him anymore.”
“My father has been anxious that I marry,” Clementine continued, “despite the fact that I realized early on in my first Season that I had no desire to do so. So we have been spending nearly all our time in Town, or in Bath, these recent years. Anywhere my father thinks I might catch a husband.” She paused, trying to think how to put this. “I have not as yet found one I can abide.”
“Ah,” Lord Featherfinch said, “the men of the Upper Ten Thousand are rather a disappointment, are they not?”
Clementine wasn’t sure if he was in jest. Regardless, she might as well tell them the unvarnished truth. “It’s more that I discovered how constitutionally ill-suited I am to matrimony. Perhaps I started too late: my initial Season was delayed two years by my mother’s lingering illness. It may be I was already too formed in my opinions by the time I debuted. Regardless, I have declared my fervent wish to remain unmarried. My father has nevertheless remained insistent, and so we have been at odds.”
“It was our late mother’s dearest wish that our father see us married,” Olive explained. “And that wish runs counter to my sister’s natural inclinations,” she added diplomatically. Hmm. Perhaps Olivehadbeen more observant these recent years than Clementine had given her credit for.
“To put it plainly,” Clementine said, deciding to be direct, “I’m not a good prospect, and Father is growing desperate.”
“Not a good prospect how?” Lord Marsden objected. “You seem a very capable sort to me.”
“It’s not every man who wants a wife who would run away alone to confront a criminal,” Archie said drily.
“I am well aware that my interests and inclinations run counter to those of most well-bred young ladies.” Clementine did not want to enter into a debate about her marriageability. To do so suggested she was entertaining the notion to begin with, which she most decidedly was not. She pushed on with the story. The sooner it was out, the sooner this would be over. Archie’s friends were very kind, but she couldn’t escape the feeling that she was on trial. “Mr. Bull is a proponent of what is deemed vegetarianism—the removal of animals from one’s diet.”
“So we have heard,” Lord Featherfinch said.
“He’s written a pamphlet. It was all the crack early last Season. I read it, and even though I now understand that Mr. Bull is the worst sort of hypocrite”—the image of that plate of roast beef still boiled her blood—“I was taken by his ideas. I’ve always been a friend to animals and have often wished I didn’t have to eat them. His writing was the first time I’d seen anyone put words to the notion that perhaps Ididn’thave to. And not only that, but perhaps Ishouldn’t. Perhaps no one should.”
She glanced at Archie, who had raised a single eyebrow—she’d forgotten that he could do that—before continuing. “Mr. Bull and I struck up a friendship, and before I knew it, he was . . .” She closed her eyes briefly. It was so lowering. “Well, he was flattering me, I suppose. It happened very quickly, and it was all so . . .” She cleared her throat. “He proposed. He said he was in need of a wife who could be a helpmeet. He begrudged the time he had to spend overseeing the production of his writings and the dissemination of his ideas. If he had someone to whom he could dictate his manuscripts, on whom he could rely to liaise with printers, keep track of social and speaking engagements, and so on, this would liberate time for higher-level thinking. I wanted to be that person. I was enamoured of his ideas. Not just his ideas, if I’m being truthful. I even came to . . .” She’d been going to say that while she hadn’t loved Theo—she didn’t think—she had held him in great esteem. She had been able to imagine a kind of love growing, over time, alongside their righteous shared purpose.
“You needn’t tell us what was in your heart, Miss Morgan,” Lord Featherfinch said—again, with a degree of kindness that buoyed her.
“Indeed.” Olive squeezed Clementine’s hand under the table. “What was—or was not—in your heart is not relevant to how we move forward.”
Clementine took the point. The ease with which she’d fallen victim to Theo’s honeyed words was mortifying, but not an essential part of the story as far as these gentlemen were concerned. “I had been in receipt of offers previously, two of them, and I’d declined both,” she explained, wanting to provide some context.
Archie made a dismissive noise she couldn’t quite characterize. Did he not believe she’d had offers? Or was he, as Father had been, upset that she hadn’t accepted one of them? When she looked to him for clarification, that quizzical-bordering-on-skeptical demeanor of his remained unchanged, though at least the previously rogue eyebrow remained in line with its mate.
She pressed onward, turning to Lords Featherfinch and Marsden, who, unlike Archie and Olive, didn’t know Father. “My father is not the sort of man to force me to accept an offer I find truly objectionable. Or at least he hasn’t been historically. But he isalsonot the sort of man to give up when he’s set his mind to something. And so our stalemate has ground on, with no apparent end in sight. My plan had been to wait him out, to trudge through however many Seasons it took for him to accept that I was irredeemably on the shelf.”
Olive giggled, drawing everyone’s attention. “Apologies. I was just thinking that, given how stubborn both my father and sister are, we might be witness, years hence, to a thirty-year-old Miss Clementine Morgan, making the rounds of the Marriage Mart yet adamantly refusing to marry.”
Olive had been jesting, but she wasn’t wrong, so Clementine didn’t chuckle along with the gentlemen. Well, she didn’t chuckle along with Lords Marsden and Featherfinch. Archie was unamused, his demeanor transformed from skeptical to stony.
