“A little improper,” Clementine echoed.
He ignored the incredulity in her tone. “I’ve a proposition for you.”
“All right. Shall I come out?” She pushed the window open wider.
“No, no. It’s slippery out here. It’s raining more than I’d realized. I’ll come in.”
She lifted her candle, illuminating a skeptical face—she was doing that signature nose-scrunch of hers. “Through the door?”
“Just back up and make room, Clem.”
He proceeded to make a very ungraceful entrance through her window, landing on the carpet with a thud and shedding water droplets like one of Olive’s spaniels. He looked around as Clementine used the candle she’d been holding to light two more. He’d been in this room before, of course, that first night, but it hadn’t beenhersat that point. Now, with the bed mussed and an open book on the bedside table, the space felt occupied. Intimate. As if he were seeing something he shouldn’t.
He turned from the tableau, but that put Clementine herself in his sights. She was wearing a white cotton shift and a shawl. She was covered from neck to toe, but seeing her attired thusly added to the sense of transgressive intimacy.
She pointed at the only chair in the room, climbed onto her bed, and reclined against the ornate, carved headboard.
Clementine in bed: the wild, forest girl of his youth all cozily tucked in. The contrast was . . . something. She’d set her candle on the bedside table, so she was barely illuminated, but he could still see the contrast between her dark hair and pale skin. Dark hair and pale skin: Effie would be disappointed by such meager descriptive efforts. Raven hair and alabaster skin? That wasn’t much better.
“Well?” she said impatiently, puncturing his pathetic poetic admiration.
Right. “You and I ought to enter into an agreement akin to the one you and Olive had.”
“How do you mean?”
“We’ve been arguing about hunting, about the eating of meat, et cetera. So I propose that I spend a day your way, and you spend a day my way.”
“You’re going to need to be more specific.”
“I abstain from eating animal flesh for an entire day, and—”
“I venture out into the woods and kill animals? No, thank you.”
“No. You venture out into the woods with me whileIkill animals.”
“You make it sound so appealing.”
“I’ll be doing it anyway, so your presence or absence won’t have any bearing on the death toll.”
“You’re macabre.”
“Think of it as a day spent in your beloved outdoors, but with a purpose.” He truly believed her imagination was running away from her, and that if she accompanied him on a hunt, she would gain a better understanding. This was the same woman who’d been expounding on the natural way of things when it came to the mating of grasshoppers, for Heaven’s sake. Surely she could be made to see that birth and death were part of this same rhythm of life. And perhaps he could show her what hunting meant to him in a way he hadn’t heretofore managed.
She was silent a while. Just when he was about to admit this had been a daft idea and heave himself back out the window, she said, “All right.”
“Really?”
“But we do your day first. I want time to prepare the cook before I feed you.”
“Who is this cook, by the way? She looms large in the mythology of this trip. I know from experience that she’s very good at what she does, at least on the gentlemen’s side of the table, but reportedly she is also capable of delivering such atrocities as tomato aspic.”
“Her name is Susannah, and she’s wonderful. Her mother is the cook at Winslow House, which is just this side of Doveborough. She is possessed of quite the culinary imagination, and as I’m sure your Lord Featherfinch knows, the first drafts of artistic endeavors do not always enter the world exactly the way one had perhaps imagined.”
“Point taken.”
“I wish to consult with her, to make sure there is nothing like the aforementioned aspic—which I will admit was rather unfortunate—on the menu. Will the other gentlemen be joining you?”
“I should think not, but let’s discuss it tomorrow at breakfast. Perhaps we can make a swap for Olive in the manner jestingly suggested by Simon.”
