She picked up her story. “I’d begun to fret that I mightn’t be able to keep holding off my father indefinitely. He was exceedingly upset when I turned back my most recent suitor. With Mr. Bull, I was suddenly presented with a way to break the stalemate. A different sort of suit. A marriage, yes, but one that would allow me to do some good in the world. This seemed a union worth settling for, all things considered.”
She hated the way that sounded. While she hadn’t harbored any starry-eyed, missish ideas about making a love match of the sort her parents had—she knew most people were not so lucky—she also did not like to think of herself as someone who could be so calculating, so mercenary, when it came to matrimony. She wasn’t Olive. This wasn’t how she wanted to be seen by Archie’s friends. Or by Archie, whose countenance remained inscrutable. She wasn’t accustomed to not knowing what Archie was thinking. But then, she supposed she wasn’t accustomed to Archie himself anymore, not to this grown-up, unsmiling, imposing version of him, anyway.
“So you accepted Mr. Bull’s hand,” Lord Marsden prompted, drawing her attention from Archie.
“Yes, and my father was thrilled.”
“Oh, he wassohappy!” Olive added.
Clementine thought about how to tell the rest—whetherto tell the rest.
No. As Olive had said, every detail, every sentiment, need not be aired. All that mattered was the outline of the events themselves, the external shape of them. “After I accepted Mr. Bull’s suit, I came to understand that his interest in me had been largely financial.” She thought back to his questioning about Hill House. “He wanted to know how big our country house was, how many servants we had there, whether it was entailed.” And, oh, how ardent his attentions became after she’d answered that last question in the negative. She should have seen what he was doing. It had all been right there in front of her. As Olive would say, he had been showing her who he was, if she had only cared to look.
“It’s not that I flattered myself he thought me a great intellect,” she went on, trying to explain her actions to herself as much as to the assembled gentlemen, “but it turned out I had vastly overestimated his regard for my ideas, or even merely for my utility as a helpmeet—”
Another of those vague scoffing noises from Archie, but louder this time, so much so that it stopped her mid-sentence and drew everyone’s attention.
“Did you have something to add, Harcourt?” Lord Marsden asked.
Archie made no response other than to gesture for her to continue.
“My father had offered quite a sizable dowry, you see, given how desperate he was for me to marry, and while Mr. Bull had enjoyed a period of acceptance in some society households, he was certainly never going to make a match among the highest echelons of the aristocracy. I was, to put it plainly, the best he could do.”
“And with a cheery nature and the prettiest hair in Town—not to mention eight hundred pounds and an unentailed house—you are no consolation prize, Clemmie!” Olive cried with a tone of affront.
Olive thought she had pretty hair? Clementine’s hand floated up to touch the mass she had tried to tame into a chignon before nuncheon. But that was not the point. Theo hadn’t given a fig about her hair. “I should have seen that the money and the house were what he wanted. I’d been utterly daft not to. The maddening part”—the mortifying part—“is that even if I had, even if I’d fully understood that Mr. Bull regarded me a financial means to an end, and not the helpmeet I wanted to be, I still might have reconciled myself to the situation, for it is certainly true that married ladies enjoy a great deal more freedom than their unmarried counterparts. But then, certain . . . matters came to light. Certain . . . realizations were had.”
She kept returning to Olive’s refrain in her mind. Her audience needn’t know everything. The fact that there had been realizations that inspired her to break the engagement was the salient point; the content of said realizations was not.
“I cried off,” Clementine concluded, hoping that would be the end of it. In fact, there was a way to make sure thatwasthe end of it—or of her part of it anyway, and that was by telling the truth about what happened next. “And the next thing I knew, my sister had run off with him.”
As Clementine had hoped, all eyes swung to Olive.
Who promptly burst into tears.
The gentlemen were greatly shocked, Clementine less so. This happened sometimes, with Olive. Everything would be fine, seemingly, then Olive would be overtaken with a dramatic bout of despair. Sometimes these bouts seemed performative, perhaps even manipulative. Other times, as now—and last night, at the inn—they appeared sincere. These episodes, the sincere ones, were puzzling. Why, for example, was Olive so distraught over Theo when this morning she’d been dismissive and had professed relief at being rescued from him?
“Oh, Olive,” Archie said sympathetically, offering her his handkerchief and patting her arm.
Why couldn’t Archie be kind to Clementine in such a fashion? Why, when it was her turn to speak, was he either stonily silent or else expelling incredulous huffs and skeptical snorts, yet the moment Olive became distraught, he was all chivalry and solicitousness?
“Will you tell me what happened with Mr. Bull when you confronted him?” Clementine asked Archie. “What did you say to him—or do to him?”
Archie turned from Olive and furrowed his brow at Clementine. He was trying to decide how much to tell her, which irkedher.
Though her question had been directed at Archie, it was Lord Marsden who answered. “To put it plainly, we assaulted Mr. Bull.”
“I see.” Clementine appreciated the honest answer. “And are you confident he will not reappear in society?”
“He will not,” Archie said firmly. “He’s bound for America.”
“America!” Olive exclaimed. “I thought he was bound for the Continent.”
“Harcourt gave him—”
“He will not reappear on English soil.” Archie shot a quelling look at Lord Marsden. “Rest assured.”
Clementine tried to tamp down her annoyance. She ought to extend the logic of Olive’s maxim to Archie and Lord Marsden. She needn’t know exactly what had happened. The salient point was that she and her sister were here, safe—and blessedly unwed. “Thank you,” she said quietly, suddenly humbled by the magnitude of these men’s loyalty. Archie’s to her and Olive, and the others’, she supposed, to Archie. “Thank you for everything.”
