“What about the plough? It’s part of a great bear, I believe.”
“Too common. Everyone knows about the plough, probably even Olive.”
“Ah.”
They sat in silence, and it felt like old times. The Archie of her youth, when he came home on school breaks, used to slot right back into her life as if he had never been away. He would simply appear, in her favorite spot in the woods, say, and plop down next to her. Or he’d fall in beside her suddenly when she was walking into Chiddington. “Hullo, Clem,” he might say, as if it had been a mere day, rather than months, since they’d last seen each other.
A bit like how he had popped his head out of the window just now, and was sitting beside her on a rooftop at midnight as if it were the most ordinary thing in the world.
She’d been fretting that there had been too much time between them, or too much fuss with this Theo business, or too muchsomething, to allow things to feel easy between them again. Their reacquaintance certainly hadn’tfelteasy, what with the dramatic escape from the inn and Archie’s insistence she not spend time with him and his friends.
But here it was, that ease. Herehewas. She hadn’t realized how much she’d missed this. Missedhim.
“A pity it’s not later in the year,” Archie said, “for then you could see the great hunter, with his belt.”
“Ah, yes, my favorite activity, immortalized in the heavens for all eternity.”
Clementine had meant the remark ironically, but Archie asked, “You don’t care for hunting?”
“Have I ever?”
“I . . . don’t know.” It was too dark to see any detail on his face, but somehow, she couldfeelhim furrowing his brow.
Oh, Archie. He could be so attentive but also so very . . . daft. “Well, considering that I eschew the eating of animals, it is safe to conclude that I also do not care for the killing of them for sport.”
“I . . .”
She had shocked him. Hedidlove hunting. She didn’t care to get into a moral discussion just now, or to insult his favorite pastime, so she returned her attention to the sky and said, blithely, “Didn’t the hunter follow the great bear into the sky and get stuck there? He is still in pursuit, after all. He must not be a very talented huntsman.”
Archie grumbled, but it was a good-natured grumble.
Another companionable silence settled. Clementine was starting to feel as if she could sit here forever on this roof with Archie, neither of them needing to speak. The quiet between them felt almost medicinal—in the same way the trees and the streams and the stars, even the ones that formed a picture of a hunter, always had been.
“Clem?”
“Hmm?”
“Promise me you’ll stay away from men like Mr. Bull in the future?”
She thought she could, but at the same time, when she went back over it in her mind and considered what she could have done differently, she didn’t come up with much. “Well, if I’d known what kind of man he was, I would have stayed away from the start. But of course I can promise to stay away from men like Mr. Bull because I am resolved to stay away from men in general from nowon.”
“Present company excepted?” he teased.
“I am resolved to stay away from any man who might want to marry me,” she laughingly clarified. “Which in Town, with Father around, is a category that might as well include all men.”
“Perhaps it’s time for a sojourn at Hill House.”
“Oh, how I wish.”
“It might allow you to clear your head, provide a respite from the machinations of London life.”
“I fear that for Father, the machinations are the point. Though perhaps now that both of his daughters have had to be snatched from the brink of ruination, he will permit a country holiday. A palate refresher of sorts.”
He chuckled, and she was gratified that she had the ability to amuse him—and that they could already laugh about their recent harrowing travails.
“But Iwillexhaust him, Arch, even if he doesn’t permit an immediate retreat to Hill House. I shall outlast him, and when I’m finally allowed to be the spinster I was born to be, I shall retire to the country, and I shall be glad to have you there for a friend.”
She’d been trying for more levity, to gently mock her own situation, but her voice had come out strong and resolute, as if she were making a vow.
