“I don’t, either.”
Clementine thought her heart might break. To have gained a sister, then lost her.
But then Olive slid her hand across the bed, the knotted cotton of the counterpane making for a bumpy journey. She grabbed Clementine’s hand. “But we still have tonight.”
“Yes!” Clementine leapt at the consolatory notion like it was an eligible bachelor and she a scheming miss.
“Clemmie, will you sleep with me tonight?” Olive pulled Clementine’s hand to her mouth and kissed it. Clementine was a little startled by the request but also flattered. “After our time with the gentlemen, we can come back here and whisper into the night.”
Clementine pulled their joined hands to her mouth and kissed Olive’s knuckles. “Yes, I will sleep with you tonight.” She would come back here with Olive and hold hands across the bed and whisper late into the night, even though that would mean giving up her last chance to be with Archie.
Gentlemen would come and go. Sisters were forever.
Now that she had Olive back, Lord help the mister who came between her and her sister.
Even if the mister was Archie.
* * *
Archie told himself he wasn’t taking any of the lamb the cook had prepared for their final meal because he wanted to honor Hermes.
But then when he tried to actually articulate—in his mind; he would never have tried to do so out loud—the connection between Hermes and the dead lamb at the center of the table, he lost the plot.
Turtle freed . . . dead lamb . . . and then there was that bacon from the other day. Why had he not just spit it out rather than swallowed it in such a hurry?
And Clem in a tree.
And Clem shattering under his mouth.
He shook his head. It was all so confusing.
He spent the first few minutes of the meal doing as he had done last night, trying to hide from the boys that he wasn’t eating any meat, trying to arrange things on his plate so they wouldn’t notice, trying to take enough of the accompanying dishes to fill his belly. Trying, trying, trying. All in the name of subterfuge.
Bollocks!he thought.
And then he said it: “Bollocks!”
There was no reason to be hiding this from Simon and Effie. When you loved people, you told them the truth, or at least as much of the truth as was yours to tell.
“Are you quite all right?” Simon inquired in a maddeningly mild tone.
“I amnotall right! I can’t eat any lamb!”
Effie threw his head back and cackled.
“What are you laughing at?” Archie was affronted. You told the people you loved the truth, and theylaughedat you? It wasn’t as if he deluded himself into thinking the world was a just place, but wasn’t the whole point of found families, of salt and strawberries and all that nonsense, that those people took youseriously?
“Iamlaughing at you,” Effie said merrily. “I am laughing at how it is possible for someone to be so utterly un-self-aware. Were we not just talking, mere days ago, about how attuned you are to the emotional undercurrents of any situation?”
This coming from the man who’d been writing a sonnet and sitting in a house he’d had outfitted in mourningfor his parrotwhile he had entirely forgotten Earls Trip 1821.
Archie huffed.
“Perhaps,” Simon said placatingly, “you have been persuaded by Miss Morgan’s arguments.” He pursed his lips as if he too were laughing, but on the inside. “Or by Mr. Bull’s, but for the sake of your reputation, let’s just say you have been persuaded by Miss Morgan.”
Archie nodded.Yes. Let’s just say.
“So you cannot eat the lamb,” Simon went on. “On the one hand, that is unfortunate, for the lamb”—he took a bite—“is delectable. But on the other, it is not the end of the world, is it? So you have joined Miss Morgan in her renunciation of meat.”
