“All right,” Archie said carefully. “I see that perhaps the informality of life at Quintrell Castle, the high emotion associated with our rescue of the ladies, and a history of friendship with Miss Morgan going back to childhood have perhaps combined to create a kind of familiarity that is ripe for misinterpretation. So I thank you for the warning.” He made eye contact with each of them in turn and gave a little nod. “For if the two of you misinterpreted it, so might those who know us less well.”
“We misinterpreted it, did we?” Simon asked mildly.
“Yes,” Archie said, “you did.”
He turned to check on Hermes. He was gone. Wandered off while Archie wasn’t paying attention. Archiehopedhe’d wandered off. Dear God, what if he’d been preyed upon, plucked off the ground by a stealthy goshawk?
What was he going to tell Clementine?
It turned out he didn’t have to tell her anything. Something was wrong with Clementine when she and Olive turned up. She didn’t ask about Hermes, and the smiling, victorious countenance of before was gone.
She held her sister’s hand all the way back to the horses, and the pair of them rode side by side at the head of the pack all the way back to the castle.
“I think,” Archie said, once they’d dismounted, “we ought all to dine together again. It is our last night, after all. We will join you ladies for your meal.” The boys murmured their agreement.
“Oh, you can’t,” Olive said. “Mrs. MacPuddle told me this morning that the cook was hard at work on a final feast for you gentlemen. You can hardly put all that food—and all her efforts—to waste.”
“Right.” They could not. Could they? He wanted to.
“We should be delighted to join you after we dine, though, shouldn’t we, Clemmie?”
Clementine concurred with a smile, but something still was not right with her. He could hardly ask what it was, though, especially given the warning he had just received from his friends.
Clementine and Olive took their leave and retreated. They were still holding hands.
Archie wanted, more than anything, to fix whatever was wrong. He didn’t know how to.
And by next week at this time, he wouldn’t even be around to make such observations.
He got out his beads and wondered where Hermes was.
* * *
“You know my book of days?” Olive asked, crossing over to her bedside table.
“Of course.” The worn, leather-covered volume Olive pulled from a drawer was familiar to Clementine. She had seen it just last week, when Olive had extracted her list from it.
Olive sat on the edge of her bed. “Ralph gave it to me.”
Of course he had. Everything made sense now. Clementine sat on the other side of the bed.
“He gave it to me the day before he left. It was meant to count down the days until we could be together.” Olive rubbed her fingertips over the cover in a pattern Clementine suddenly recognized as a habit. “I told him not to write to me, because I didn’t want Father finding out about us.” She stopped rubbing abruptly and dropped the book on the counterpane. “I told him not to write to me, Clemmie! If I hadn’t done that, at least I’d have letters from him! But I never thought he would die! He went to a place called Fort Henry in Upper Canada, not off to Waterloo!”
“How did he die?” Clementine asked gently.
“I don’t know. I haven’t been able to find out. I only know he’s dead to begin with because I overheard someone talking about it in a shop in Chiddington. The garrison there was supposed to help prevent another American invasion of Canada. There was no active fighting!” Her voice rose as she said, again, “I told him not to write to me!”
Clementine clambered across the bed and put her own hand on the book. She wanted to touch it, to show her sister that she understood now what she hadn’t before. “Olive, you were a child. A girl. You were overwhelmed.”
“I told him that while he was gone, I’d think of a way for us to marry. What was I going to do?” Olive’s voice took on a brittle, almost sneering tone. “Suddenly grow brave and tell Father when I’d spent yearsnotdoing that? Ralph went to serve our country, and I couldn’t tell a simple truth.”
“But itwasn’ta simple truth,” Clementine said quietly, searching her sister’s face. Olive wasn’t looking at her; she only had eyes for her book. “It never is, for women. It may not have been life-and-death. I’m not making an analogy to joining a military campaign. But itwasn’tsimple. I think you ought to acknowledge that.”
“I want to show you something else.”
Clementine wasn’t sure if her heart could take anymore, but she murmured her agreement.
Olive opened the next drawer down in the bedside table and pulled out the embroidery hoop she had taken pains to hide before. It depicted a gravestone. A large one, imposing gray against a late autumn forest.
