The man in his imaginings was him.
Or it could be. Those children could be his.
Could he . . . have that?
He fell into his chair with a thud.
“Archie,” Clementine said, a low urgency apparent in her tone. “What’s the matter?”
What’s the matter is that I’m in love with you.
He couldn’t speak. He was looking at Clem, dear Clem whomhe loved, but she was growing fuzzy around the edges. She was not the kind of lady who swooned, she’d said, but apparently he was the sort of gentleman who did.
Thiswas why he had been so intent on taking her hunting with him, on getting her to understand what it meant to him. He had wanted her to love the thing he loved because he lovedher.
And conversely, this was why it had been so easy, in the end, for him to give up hunting, for him to give up the eating of meat—both of which he realized were already done.
He loved her. He laughed out loud.
Whyhad he not realized it? All he could come up with was that he hadn’t allowed the possibility to penetrate his mind, given how continually and vociferously she went around objecting to marriage.
“Are you all right?” Clem pressed.
“I’m fine,” he managed, shaking his head to clear it. The edges of her face sharpened. “In fact, I am excellent. I am—”
No. That wasn’t right. He wasn’t excellent. He’d had a revelation, but he had been wrong about what it meant. The image he had, of what his life could be, was lovely. It was exquisite, almost painful, in its perfection. But the fact remained that Clementine did not want to wed. Shedidcontinually and vociferously object to the institution of marriage.
He needed to talk to the boys. He stood again, the astonished faces of all assembled telling him that he was behaving very erratically indeed. “I just remembered.” He looked daggers at Simon, willing him to understand. “We were meant to be at that parliamentary. . . thing this evening.”
“That parliamentarything?” Simon echoed, bewildered.
“Yes, of course,” Effie said. “That committee or what have you. You talked about it all morning.”
“Yes.” Archie turned to their host and deliberately did not look at Clem. He couldn’t. He needed to sort himself out first. “Sir Albert, I was so pleased to be invited to join you this evening that I quite forgot my responsibilities.”
Simon jumped in to embellish the clumsy lie, and they managed to extricate themselves. Inelegantly, but it hardly mattered. As Sir Albert had said many times today, he was in their debt. Clementine and Olive would rightly sniff out “parliamentary responsibilities” as the lie it was, but Archie couldn’t care right now.
“I’m not sure when we’ll see you again, my boy,” Sir Albert said, and Archie wished Sir Albert wouldn’t call him that. It reminded him of the way Father sometimes used to affect a kind of exaggerated jocularity that made Archie feel bad for reasons he couldn’t articulate. “You’ll return to Mollybrook, and we’re here in Town for the foreseeable future.”
Archie wanted to say that he would postpone his return to Mollybrook if need be. As much as he hated London, it was where Clementine—whom he loved—was stuck, therefore he felt he ought to endure the incarceration with her. But . . . how would he go about doing that? Would she even want him to? And what about Mother?
He needed to talk to the boys. That was what he kept coming back to. That was step one, and they’d help him sort the rest.
“I believe I am in love with Clementine,” he blurted once the three of them were back in his carriage.
“Of course you are,” Effie said.
Simon, for his part, merely laughed.
“Well, thank you very much,” Archie said.
“I’m sorry. We are being too glib,” Effie said, trying, Archie thought, to be soothing, but mucking it up by joining in Simon’s laughter.
“What am I going to do?” Archie all but wailed.
“Archie,” said Effie with sudden seriousness. “Do you remember our recent discussion when you came to us musing about taking your parliamentary role more seriously?”
“Well, it was less a discussion and more a monologue,” Simon, still snickering, interjected before Archie could answer.
