“I am now convinced, however,” Simon said, “that the sentences handed down in some of the trials were overly harsh. Machine breaking made a capital crime? Obviously, I wasn’t sitting in Lords at the time, but good Heavens!”
“Didn’t the Luddites burn mills, though?” That was about all Archie knew of the Luddites.
“Yes, and I can’t condone that. Absolutely not.”
Archie joined Simon at the table. “Where did you get that pamphlet?”
“I discovered the Misses Morgan outside this morning. Miss Olive Morgan was ritualistically throwing the remnants of her time with Mr. Bull into a stream. It was really rather amusing, given all the mud from yesterday’s rain.” He shook his pamphlet. “I rescued this. Apparently Mr. Bull has been branching out from his original cause. I was idly curious—I do miss my newspapers—but I really ought to consider the source before finding myself persuaded by these arguments. I’m usually much more circumspect. I begin to see how both sisters . . .”
Simon’s monologue continued, but Archie was stuck on the fact that Simon had come upon Clem outside this morning. Archie thought he’d gotten up early, but apparently not early enough.
Though why would he think that? Early enough for what? He had risen early enough to catch Simon at breakfast, which had been his objective. Drinks and poetry with Effie last night; breakfast and politics with Simon this morning.
A perfectly, gratifyingly, wonderfullyordinaryEarls Trip. Exactly what he’d been aiming for.
The rest of the day was also satisfyingly typical. After Effie rose around noon, the three of them went for a ramble. Later, they settled in to play cards in the drawing room. At seven o’clock, they were informed by Mrs. MacPuddle that dinner was served.
“She’s a right charmer, she is,” Mrs. MacPuddle said of the new cook, who had indeed been lent them by the neighboring estate. “Do you know she’s embraced Miss Morgan’s challenge and is dedicated to serving the ladies their own three-course meal in the breakfast room every evening?”
“I fail to see why the ladies should not join us here in the dining room, even if their meal differs from ours,” Archie said peevishly as the kitchen maid carried in a platter of trout.
“I believe the ladies have already dined.” Effie turned to Mrs. MacPuddle. “Didn’t they dine earlier?”
“How do you know that?” Archie asked, a little chagrined by the accusatory tone his question had taken.
“I encountered the elder Miss Morgan on my way here, and she told me she was off to meet her sister in the library where she was submitting to post-dinner embroidery lessons.”
“Oh, no. You must have misheard. Miss Morgan does not do embroidery.”
Effie shrugged, and Mrs. MacPuddle said, “Yes, the ladies are finished dining, my lord. Cook is happy to accommodate the misses’ special request, but prefers to do it before dinner for my lords commences, wanting yours to be her sole focus while you are dining.”
“Well,” Archie said. “That is most appreciated.”
Wasn’t it?
This was, after all, an Earls Trip.
Wasn’t it?
* * *
Embroidery was not so bad, Clementine reflected as she climbed out the window of her bedchamber just as the clock in the hallway outside her room struck midnight. She was starting to feel more like herself, having spent the day tromping around out of doors. It turned out the wilds of Cumbria had the same restorative effect as the wilds at Hill House, though the mechanism was a bit different. Around Hill House, she knew the joy of familiarity, could put her hand out to touch the papery birch that marked a turn in the path she knew to anticipate. Here in this unfamiliar forest where she was an interloper, she had the eyes of a beginner, an unwilling city girl suddenly confronted with a network of sessile oak roots covered with moss. But only on the one side—the north. So the tree was a compass, as trees always were; that was one thing that could be relied on in this capricious world. This particular tree had been a perfect combination of strong and whimsical: an octopus, half naked and half dressed in its green Sunday best.
Both sights—the comforting familiar birch at home and the bizarrely delightful oak here—aided in the task of sinking Clementine’s soul back into her body. And it wasn’t only trees restoring her to herself; it was, somewhat surprisingly, people. Generally, she found human company to be quite draining, but she had enjoyed a trip to the nearest village yesterday with Olive and Lords Featherfinch and Marsden. In the process of procuring pies for the gentlemen’s dinner, they’d learned that Doveborough was preparing for its annual fall fete, which she gathered was a big to-do that drew crowds from the region and beyond. The three of them had a grand time watching some ladies decorate an outdoor stage with ribbons and fall foliage, and they’d enjoyed warm spiced cider in a tearoom off the village green.
And today, after helping Olive ritualistically dispose of the remnants of her time with Theo—an activity which had turned out to be surprisingly restorative—the sisters settled in the small parlor they’d adopted because it was far from the one the gentlemen seemed to have settled in. Olive was working on a sampler the likes of which Clementine had never seen. The pastoral scene from the road between Hill House and the village of Chiddington was both ambitious and lovely, and Olive was creating it purely from memory. Clementine had never considered that aspect of embroidery: that one could conjure something from nothing, transform a blank canvas into a thing of beauty. “Men are much ballyhooed for their painting,” Olive had said. “The old masters were just that—masters. I wager there were plenty of old mistresses who were a good hand with a needle and thread, but we don’t talk about them.”
Olive, it turned out, had become a veritable font of wisdom while Clementine hadn’t been paying attention.
Clementine’s dress caught on the window sill, and she had to yank it free, wincing at the ripping sound that resulted. She had only the one dress. She was going to have to borrow another from Olive, for eventually she would need to surrender hers to the housemaid for washing. And now for mending, too, she supposed.
But she was out, ripped dress and all. The window in her room was in a dormer that jutted out from the roofline of this part of the house, and once clear of the window, she could settle herself on the slope of the roof. The slate was cold but not uncomfortable. Being this high up was exhilarating. It reminded her of being perched in a tree, which was a place she used to find herself quite a lot, before being forced to endure London and the Marriage Mart.
The stars were out in force, like buckets of pearls had spilled across the sky. She wondered if it would be possible to embroider the night sky. Could one do a sort of reverse-embroidery where the image itself was blank space, unstitched canvas representing stars, set against a dark, stitched background?
“Success in embroidery is all in your choice of subject,” Olive had said. “You must choose a subject that is achievable and to which you feel a connection.” Clementine refrained from pointing out that Olive’s scene featured a herd of sheep, and Clementine was certain the only time her sister had ever interacted with sheep was while wailing at them when they were in the road preventing her from getting where she wanted to go.
With Olive’s guidance, Clementine decided to attempt a simple collection of leaves from the types of trees most common around Hill House—beech, willow, and alder. She had only just finished the first leaf, and while it looked as if it had been made by a girl still in the schoolroom, she didn’t think it too awfully terrible for her first attempt at embroidery in more than a decade. In truth, the repetitive nature of the task had turned out to be soothing, and after the events of the past few days, she could do with some soothing.
