“Perhaps you should secret him home and have the cook make him into turtle soup,” Simon said. “I had some at the last Lord Mayor’s Day banquet, and it was surprisingly delicious.”
“Dear God!” Archie cried, hugging Hermes’s box tight to his chest. “What a monstrous thing to say!” He gathered from Simon’s raised brows and Effie’s guffaw that he was being mocked, but honestly, he couldn’t find the humor in any of this.
He wanted Hermes to be . . . what? Free?
Yes, but he also didn’t want to say goodbye.
He had to, though, didn’t he?
Captivity, no matter how comfortable, is still captivity.
He shook his head. How had Archie gotten to the point where he was seeing meaning—metaphors—in a turtle? Itwasjust a turtle! An uncommonly swift one, but still. And he took Effie’s earlier point: he didn’t want to leave the Morgan sisters waiting. It was one thing for them to take a quick stroll unchaperoned, another for them to loiter in the village green without a maid.
So he squatted at the edge of the water and gently upended Hermes’s box. The creature crawled out but didn’t go any farther than that. Archie sat back on his heels and regarded the little turtle. The little turtle regarded him back.
“Well, go on, then.” Archie made a shooing motion, but Hermes stayed put. “You’re free, you daft reptile. Go!”
Why wasn’t he going?
“Ahem.” Simon cleared his throat, and Archie stood. He spoke to the boys behind him but kept his attention on Hermes. “You know Miss Morgan will require a thorough accounting of Hermes’s release, and I can hardly tell her that he refused to go.”
“Perhaps if you walk away first?” Effie suggested.
It might work. He just . . . didn’t want to.
A turtle, he reminded himself.Hermes is a turtle.
So he turned and trudged back up the embankment, gesturing for the boys to follow him to the bridge. He leaned his elbows on it, and Simon and Effie did likewise, one on each side. “I just want to make sure he goes,” Archie said.
He took their silence for agreement, and they stood there for a few minutes watching Hermes watch them.
“Tonight’s our last night,” Simon said. “Back to Town tomorrow.”
“The fortnight’s gone so quickly,” Effie said. “Though I suppose it always does.”
“I need to remind you, Archie,” Simon said quietly, all jesting excised from his tone, “that when we’re back to civilization, you can’t act the way you’ve been acting with Miss Morgan.”
That was enough to jolt Archie from his herpetological vigil. He straightened. “I know that, you dolt.”
“Do you?”
Archie bristled at the question. He might not be clever, and he might dislike London, but he did know how to comport himself when he had to. “Do you think I’m going to swan around in green silk calling her by her Christian name?”
“No, but I think you are unaware of the little familiarities that pass between the two of you.”
“What do you mean?” Surely Simon was being his usual overcautious self. He turned to Effie. “What does he mean?”
“The way you embraced after the turtle races, for one,” Effie said.
“I know enough not to embrace Clementine in company. Give me a little credit.”
“Not the embrace itself, or not only that,” Simon said. “It was more the way each of you immediately turned to the other. You were, for a moment, transported to a place the rest of us were not welcome.”
“That’s—”
True. It was very possibly true.
Damn it all to hell.
