Hold up. “You’ve met Hermes, too?”
“Yes,” Simon said mildly. “Miss Morgan has been training him early in the mornings, and I have to agree that his speed is startling. If I were a betting man, I would put my money on Hermes.”
“Ididput mine on Hermes,” Lord Featherfinch said. “While I was at the modiste today, I learned there is a bookmaker running odds on the races. I visited him while you and your sister were in the bookshop.”
“Youdid?” Clementine exclaimed. “How lovely of you.” She beamed.
“Well, one does like to support one’s friends.”
“I wonder if I ought to bet on Hermes myself,” Clementine said thoughtfully. “I’d been focused on the quid of prize money, but think, if I won andalsowagered on myself, I’d be positively flush!”
Archie opened his mouth, then closed it. He had so many questions. Where had Clementine found Hermes? Where was Hermes now? When were the races? Was he invited to watch them?
Why was he obsessed with a turtle whose existence he had only learned about moments ago?
But he realized that to ask any of these questions would suggest a degree of investment in the matter that would not reflect flatteringly on him.
He had one more question: Was Clementine going to be on the roof tonight?
That last question he actually got answered, a little later when they all parted ways for the evening. Clementine slipped a note into his hand as they made their good nights. His pulse kicked up in a mixture of thrill that she wanted to secretly communicate with him and anticipation over what the content of that communication would be.
I’ve invited Olive to join me stargazing this evening, so if you were of a mind to join me on the roof, I hope you won’t mind making other plans. I suppose this is a disinvitation! How gauche of me. But we are friends, and I know you will understand.
Well. So much for that. He pulled out his time piece. Eleven o’clock. Even if the ladies joined them immediately after dinner tomorrow, it would be at least another twenty hours until he met Clementine again.
11
A Proposition (Not That Kind)
And so it went for the next two days. In the evenings, Clementine and Olive joined Archie and Effie and Simon after dinner. It was great fun. The five of them had wide-ranging conversations, often uproarious, sometimes serious. It was akin to being with Simon and Effie alone, yet not. Which was a completely daft thing to say, Archie supposed—it either was or it wasn’t. He only meant that the addition of the Morgan sisters did not change the tenor of their evenings, even if it did change the content of them. As an example of the latter, Effie was learning to embroider. He and Olive would sit together on the settee with their heads together, half participating in the group conversation, half in their own world.
Archie’s two sets of friends were becoming one. It was very satisfactory.
Yet he was simultaneouslydissatisfied. Clementine hadn’t been back on the roof. He had steered clear the one night as per her instructions. But the next, when he’d stuck his head out the window of the bedchamber next to hers, she hadn’t been there.
Seeing Clementine only in the group setting meant there were so many things he wanted to ask her but could not. How had the stargazing gone, for one?
He began to wonder if the three nights they’d spent on the roof had actually happened.
“What did you have for dinner?” Effie asked the sisters, once they’d all assembled that evening.
“A tomato aspic followed by stewed brussels sprouts,” Clementine said primly, inching her chair to one side to remove herself from beneath a leak in the ceiling.
“Tomato aspic!” Effie, incapable as ever of masking his true emotions, made a face of dismay as he placed a bucket under the leak—an afternoon storm had seen the buckets pressed back into service.
“What didyouhave?” Olive asked.
“Roast guinea fowl,” Effie said, “dressed with parsley and mushrooms and bacon.”
Olive sighed plaintively.
“Miss Olive,” Archie said, “do I sense that your devotion to your sister’s diet is faltering?”
“No!” she said, a touch too vehemently.
“Olive,” said Clementine, “you know you needn’t dine withme.”
“Oh, but I want to.”
