“Butdidthey start with love? Or was it merely something else masquerading as love?”
“Such as?”
“Infatuation, perhaps. I . . . Well, I was going to say akin to what I’ve observed in Olive, but perhaps that isn’t correct. A day ago I would have said that Olive was fickle, bestowing and withdrawing her affections at whim, and that all of those affections were shallow. But now?” She shrugged. “Now I have to wonder if I know my sister at all.”
And Archie had to wonder if he knew Effie at all. “I take your point. Perhaps my parents mistook infatuation, or passion, or some other transitory sentiment, for love, and when that sentiment faded, there was nothing left.”
“We’ll never know, I suppose, but I do know that your mother loved you. It was plain as day on her face.”
“Do you remember a game we used to play in the garden, where we would process around chairs and compete to sit on them when prompted? There was always one fewer chair than the number of players, so one person always lost out?”
“I do! That is a prime example of what I mean when I say it was obvious your mother loved you. She was always organizing games like that. She would take such delight in them, but mostly inyouenjoying them. She would embrace you and tease you no matter if you won or lost.”
He had always thought so, but, again, recent months had been testing his certainty. It was profoundly relieving to hear Clementine’s assessment of the situation.
“And my mother loved me,” Clementine went on. “Even if she didn’t understand me, she loved me. I do not doubt that. Which is why I have to believe that if she were alive, she would see how miserable London, and the Marriage Mart, is making me and would allow me to retreat to the country.”
“But what about your wish to have children?”
“It isn’t a wish so much as something that would be . . . nice. A compensation of sorts, as I said, that might help cushion the blow of an unwanted marriage. But in truth, such an outcome wouldn’t be fair to the children. I would make a perfectly terrible mother.”
He disagreed. Clem was curious, warm, and profoundly nonjudgmental—a rare combination of qualities any child would be fortunate to have in a mother. “I don’t know. I seem to recall you nursing more than one abandoned baby bird back to health. And are you forgetting that time you rescued those tadpoles from a puddle and raised them in a soup tureen in the garden?”
“Oh, I remember that. It was one of the worst months of my life.”
“Whatever makes you say that? I would have thought you’d be in your element, saving defenseless animals, if one can even consider tadpoles animals.”
“You are forgetting that I had to mince earthworms to feed those tadpoles.”
“Oh, I am, aren’t I?” It was coming back. The knife she’d nicked from the kitchen at Hill House. She’d had him sharpen it for her halfway through the month, as it turned out hacking earthworms to bits with a paring knife blunted it faster than one might think.
“Yes. It was excruciating. I felt as if I were plunging the knife into my own flesh. I used to cry after each feeding, but only after you’d left because I didn’t want you to see me.”
He was taken aback. “Why did you do it then, if it pained you so?”
“A tadpole canonlyeat earthworms. It can’t eat, say, a leaf—believe me, I tried that. I am not immune to your arguments, you know, about the natural order of things. It’s just that I don’t believeweneed to eat animals. We can exist perfectly well without them on our plates. You probably don’t see the distinction.”
“I do see it.” He just thought she was taking it too far. “Is it possible that neither of us is purely wrong, or purely right?”
She looked as though she was going to agree, but then her eyes glinted mischievously, and he was glad the mood had shifted. “No. I am right. I always am.”
His laughter echoed across the forest.
* * *
Clementine forgot they were out for the purpose of hunting.Forgot.
She’d been simultaneously excited for and dreading this outing. She’d been so looking forward to a long ramble. Trees and fresh air and . . . Archie. He was sointeresting. He always had been, but he seemed even more so now than when they were younger. And with his long limbs and his gentle ways, he had a kind of ease about him. A freedom.
But on the other hand: hunting.
Whyhad she agreed to this?
But on the other hand—the third hand?—was there any “this” involved? Though Archie had his weapon slung over his shoulder, he had given no indication he planned to use it—and he was carrying a picnic basket, so she wasn’t even sure he could if he wantedto.
They’d been walking, just walking, for an hour, and talking. About weighty topics sometimes, like mothers and marriage, but at other times about silly things like whether the common stinkhorn would taste worse or better than it smelled and whether the senses of taste and smell were dependent on one another.
And sometimes they didn’t talk at all, which was one of the best things about Archie. With Archie, one didn’t have totalkall the time. One could stop and listen to the staccato percussion of woodpeckers in the distance without having to remark on it. He never hurried her and was just generally soaccommodating. Her mind could meander the way it did when she was alone. But when it was done meandering, there he was, having stood sentry but happy to hear from her again.
