“Now, now,” Effie said soothingly. “If anything, it was my fault. Archie could never have expected me to appear in the woods. Simon sometimes hunts with him, but I never do. And I never rise from bed that early. But that day I’d had the most extraordinary dream, and I’d gone in search of Archie to tell him about it.” He paused. “And then I found him, and he almost shot me. It was all terribly exciting.”
Archie did not remember that day as “terribly exciting.” He’d felt awful—he still did—though Effie ought to have known better. Archie had accepted his hunting ban the next year with good cheer. As much as he loved hunting, had he to choose, he would much rather be the kind of person Effie sought out to discuss his dreams than be a huntsman. But last year—and this—the uproar having faded somewhat from memory, he smuggled a firearm along on their holiday.
Olive, who had been watching the conversation silently but with great apparent interest, said, “I wish I had friends like you gentlemen.”
“You do,” Effie said. “We are your friends, are we not?”
Olive smiled, widely at first, but it turned wistful. “That is not precisely what I mean.”
“What do you mean, then?” Archie asked, thankful for the redirection.
“Oh, I don’t know.” Olive shook her head and picked up her embroidery. “I’m speaking nonsense.”
Archie thought he knew what she meant even if she didn’t. It was the whole salt-and-strawberries business. Olive had a loving family, though, even if that love was sometimes frayed by the pressure exerted on it. Still, what she was talking about was the unconditional support—if leavened with good-humored insults—and camaraderie that came with having long-standing friends one trusted and could rely on absolutely. Found family, Simon had called it.
The conversation moved on, but something had been lost. Archie thought about that first evening Olive and Clementine had joined them. They had all laughed so uproariously, what with the dressing-gown business. But after the laughter had faded, a kind of understanding had flowed between Clementine and Archie as they stared at each other. A recognition. It had felt as if they were alone, though they most definitely had not been. And there had been flashes of that silent understanding from time to time since. A joke someone made that hit them both the same way and caused them to look at each other. A memory recounted that turned out to be shared.
That feeling, that sense of being seen, was gone. Archie still felt Clementine’s attention from time to time, knew when she was glancing at him. He always met her gaze. But there was none of that previous sense that they were alone together in a crowd, allied somehow. He almost had the sense that she was disappointed in him.
Why was that? Was it just about the hunting? Or was it more . . . elemental?
He was being ridiculous. She wasn’t disappointed in him. And even if she was, what did he care?
* * *
He cared.
For some damn reason, Archie couldn’t bear the thought of Clem thinking ill of him. It had to be the hunting.
Because if it wasn’t the hunting, it was him.
And if itwasthe hunting, she was misunderstanding. Hunting wasn’t murder. It was the natural way of things. He didn’t do it to satisfy a bloodlust. The only bloodlust he could recall having felt in recent memory had been aimed at Theodore Bull. Hunting was altogether different. It put Archie into a meditative state. Calmed his mind the way nothing else did. Other pursuits worked a little bit. Boxing, riding, his beads.
Just not as much as hunting did.
Restless, he rolled over and punched the lumpen mass that passed for a pillow in Quintrell Castle.
Hunting took Archie’s oft-fragmented attention and honed it into a perfect, smooth tunnel where he was at one end and his prey at the other. One got to the edge of that tunnel by paying close attention to the forest and the trees and the air, by sensing the minute currents that moved through them. Clementine sensed those currents, too, he just knew it. He hadseenher doing so.
He would admit, though, that in addition to being calming and clarifying, hunting was also bloody. But so was life.
He threw back his covers and padded to his window to peer out through the misty night, though he knew he wouldn’t see her. There had been no sign of her yesterday, leaving him to conclude that, having given her stargazing lesson the previous night, she was done with nocturnal roof-sitting. Even if she hadn’t been, it was wet out there. She was still awake, though: her room glowed dimly.
He should go back to bed.
He should apologize.
The two sentiments were at odds with each other. And since he didn’t even know what he should be apologizing for, “go back to bed” was the more sensible option.
Which was why he could not explain why he dressed, hurried along silent corridors, entered the room next to Clementine’s, heaved himself out the window onto the roof, inched over wet, slippery slate to her window, and tapped on the glass. He held his breath as if he were a Montague about to be beset upon by a band of hostile Capulets.
It only took a moment for her to appear, holding a candle. He watched surprise make way for recognition on her face. Her hair was down. He wanted to put his fingers in it. She unlatched the window. “Archie?”
“I wanted to speak with you.” He paused, realizing how odd that sounded. She was probably wondering why he couldn’t speak with her tomorrow like a normal, reasonable person. “It’s urgent.” Or it had felt so. He hadn’t been able to sleep fretting that things were not right between them.
“Why did you not just come to my door?”
That . . . was a good question. He didn’t have a good answer for it. “It seemed a little improper?” He considered the exceedingly relaxed evenings the group had passed together. While Effie had refrained from wearing his dressing gown beyond that first night, no one was clinging to any pretense of formality. In fact, when the group had disbanded for the evening a few hours ago, Effie had taken Olive to the guardhouse to show her the ravens, and no one had had anything to say about that except Archie’s warning them to be careful on the widow’s walk in the dark and Clementine’s instruction that her sister should not oversleep breakfast, as the cook was planning an experimental porridge that included locally foraged ingredients Clementine had collected herself.
