That was Archie. He had missed.
He had missed!
She didn’t know much about hunting, but she had the vague idea that gentlemen usually traveled with servants to carry and pass along additional weapons when the first was spent. He would have to reload.
She would leave while he did so. She would simply turn and run. It wouldn’t change anything, she understood. It was an impulse rather like that of a child covering her eyes and assuming that meant no one could see her. But the fist had struck, and Clementine had bruises to tend.
Bang!
Somehow, the gun discharged again. She turned abject eyes to the sky, and the creature plummeted straight down to earth, all its majesty and wildness snuffed out in an instant. That fall, so fast and vertical and undeviating, felt to her a desecration, a final indignity visited upon one of God’s creatures—visited upon this whole forest, it felt like—by a force more brutishly powerful yet so very, very much weaker than it.
And, just like Olive, Clementine burst into tears, which surprised her as much as Archie, for she’d thought it a scream, not a sob, that had been queuing in her throat.
Archie wasn’t merely surprised; he was panicked. He whirled, dropped the gun, and began interrogating her. What was wrong? Had she been injured? Where did it hurt? When all she could do was shake her head and weep, he began examining her body, holding out one arm at a time to inspect it, then running his hands up and down both arms as if trying to warm her. He then clasped her shoulders, held her at arm’s length, and searched her face. Apparently finding no answers there, his hands landed on her throat, his long fingers sliding around to pluck at the skin on the nape of her neck.
She kept shaking her head. He would not find what he was looking for, which was a visible wound—blood or a bruise on the surface of her skin. It was all inside. Her tears were abating. She whispered, “I am well.”
Archie returned to holding her shoulders. He searched her face. “You’ll forgive me for saying so, but you don’t look well.”
“I believe I am . . . having hysterics.” She felt as though she might faint. How lowering. Last week she had informed Archie she wasn’t the kind of person who swooned. Apparently shewasthe kind of person who swooned. “I . . . wasn’t expecting that second shot,” which was true but also not at all an adequate explanation for what had happened. “I thought you would have to stop and reload,” she finished weakly.
Archie looked at the ground behind him, where he’d dropped his gun, then back at her with an expression that was part worry, part puzzlement. “It is a double-barreled rifle. Two barrels; two triggers. It lets you get off two shots before you have to reload. It’s . . . good for hunting that way.”
He leaned in, putting his face close to hers, as if he were examining an unfamiliar specimen under a looking glass. He was so near, she could feel the warmth of his breath on her skin. “But it’s bad for you, I think? This whole business is bad for you, isn’t it?”
* * *
Archie was trying to listen to what Clementine was saying. He had, after all, asked her a question. Generally, when you asked a person a question, you listened to the answer. The problem was, she was saying things like, “I know you think me a very sensible girl. Stoic even. Ruled by my intellect . . .” He wastryingto listen—hewantedto listen—but the voice inside his head was louder. It was sayingWhat the bloody hell were you doing taking Clementine Morgan hunting? Clementine Morgan! Hunting!
The voice was right. He had been so focused on making her understand, making her see what hunting did for him, that he’d completely disregarded what it didtoher. He had proposed a swap: a hunting outing for a day of eating vegetables, as if these two things were symmetrical. For him, they were. For her, they were not. He should haveseenthat. What a bloody idiot he was.
There would be time for self-reproach later. He forced himself to attend to what Clementine was saying. “I’m sorry, Archie. I’ve ruined the day. I’ll tell the cook—”
“No.”
He had spoken more harshly than he’d intended, although the vehemence of the single syllablewasproportional to the level of alarm he was feeling. He didn’t want this, a Clem who called him “Archie” instead of “Arch” and was all brusqueness and efficiency as she papered over what had occurred and began making plans to release him from their agreement.
He wanted her to talk to him. As she had on the roof. He didn’t want a speech on how she had ruined his holiday; he wanted to know what was in her heart.
“Come with me,” he interrupted, turning back for the forest. He’d seen a tree not too far in that would do nicely. When after a few steps he realized she wasn’t following, he doubled back, grabbed her hand, and said, firmly, “Come along.”
When they reached the tree, which was a gnarled oak with a large, long bough that met the trunk six or so feet from the ground and then sloped gently upward, he dropped her hand. He laced his fingers together, turned up his palms, and held them out at the level of her knees. “Up you go.”
He expected her to object, and he was prepared to override those objections. She did not protest, though, merely raised her eyebrows, stared at him in wonderment for several moments—moments that seemed like hours, for he felt as if he were being judged by God himself—and, as if having come to some sort of silent conclusion, nodded. She set her foot in his hand and said, “I should like to say that I don’t need help, but alas, I probablydo.”
“You probably don’t, but take it anyway.”
She was slightly less nimble than she’d been as a girl, but she was still strong, and her arms did more work than his as she hauled herself into the tree.
He followed. He’d thought they would sit side by side on the wide, welcoming limb, swinging their legs and talking, but by the time he reached it, she’d begun climbing higher. He craned his neck and watched her ascent. When she stopped, presumably because she had found a perch that met with her approval, she settled herself, smoothing her skirts over her legs. She leaned forward, met his eye, and cracked a grin.
That grin was like the scotch they’d been drinking in the evenings—sharp but soothing. It told him that things were right between them, or at least that they could be made so. That his error of judgment had not been fatal. That he had not lost his friend, his . . . Clem.
A thought arose, one he’d been having more and more lately for reasons that escaped him: contrary to her self-assessment on the matter, she would make a wonderful mother. He could see it, her tromping through the wilds with her children. Their father lifting them over stiles as she ran on ahead to exclaim over the beauty of a stream or to aid an injured animal. Or perhaps it was nighttime—she would let her children stay up scandalously late over their summer holidays—and she was laughingly telling them the stories of the stars, of the ineffectual hunter who spent centuries not catching the bear. Their father would carry the sleepy youngest back to Hill House, and the entire family would go to bed smelling of pine resin and damp earth.
He found himself irritated at Sir Albert for not seeing this vision. For pushing Clem toward Theodore Bull, who not only would not join the family stargazing outings, but whose only interest in Hill House was to own it, to possess it. Worse than that even, Bull had aimed to possessClem, a wild woman to whom domestication would be a fate worse than death.
When he swung himself up to Clementine’s branch with a grunt—he had not retained the same degree of grace she had in matters of tree climbing—she started apologizing again.
