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She wasn’t sure. And it seemed a dangerous line of questioning. She took learning seriously, and to understand fully she would need a demonstration. And where was the line between demonstrating, for educational purposes, and simply doing?

Doing because she wanted to. Because the long grasses on the riverbank looked deeply green and inviting, and threaded between the grasses, buttercups glowed like the softest gold.

Georgie’s narrow gaze was traveling over her.

“Does Lord Phillip hope to find a girl with whom to elope in the village?” She blurted a different question, resuming her hurried walk.

“I doubt that’s on his mind at present.” Georgie fell into step with her. “He was too taken with Charles Peach.”

“It should be easy, though. He’s a lord.” More trees closed in around the bank, and finally, the air was cooling her. “Can’t he elope with almost anyone?”

“Not anyone he’d actually want to marry” was Georgie’s dry response.

It made her blush. Of course.

“He wants to marry a man,” she said. Did Georgie want to marry a woman? She kept her eyes on the ground, necessary given all the tree roots.

“Maybe I shouldn’t have generalized.” Georgie sighed. “Everyone feels so much pressure to perform according to expectations, who can even imagine what they’d want? What they’d really want, if it were up to them alone? Given that Phipps must marry, and can’t marry a man, I do know that he wants to marry someone who, like him, wants a marriage in name only. And it’s nothing easy to negotiate such a thing.”

“Doesn’t he require an heir?” She avoided a clump of nettles. “And doesn’t the production of heirs require…”

A memory of rabbits in the garden transitioned into a mental image from The Canterbury Tales, a young woman meeting her lover in a pear tree. The bit she’d found most interesting concluded thus: He pulled up her smock, and in he thrust.

“Consummation,” provided Georgie. “Indeed. But Phipps has a younger brother liable to spawn. That’s good enough, so long as Phipps can appear to play his part.”

“But you won’t play a part beside him.” She gave them a sidelong look. Shadows sifted over their face as a breeze tossed the leaves on the treetops.

They returned her look, more shadows pooling in their eyes. “I agreed to the betrothal impulsively. Harry wouldn’t let me live alone in London. I had to share the town house with my cousin, Mrs. Morris. She tried to make me drink vinegar at breakfast to improve my complexion and swore she’d see me married to a duke. I was at my wit’s end. She stopped with the vinegar—and the dukes—when I got engaged. It was a blessed relief. Marriage to Phipps seemed like the shortest road to the broadest freedom. But he’s under his father’s thumb, and I realized I would have been too. That I was hazarding my whole life for want of patience.”

Elfreda bit her lip. Georgie would inherit this estate at five and twenty. She had no such guarantee. A vague sense that Papa would never send her away, that she’d live on at Marsden Hall after he was truly gone, and discover then how much, or how little, money remained—that was her security. He did mutter darkly on occasions that he would donate the house and the collections to the nation, so it could all be preserved as a museum dedicated to his legacy. But he muttered all sorts of things.

Was she hazarding her whole life, and her sisters’, by refusing Lord Phillip’s proposal? Had he even been serious? His father didn’t sound as though he’d approve of a woman archaeologist.

“So.” Georgie shrugged. “I broke things off.”

“And then there was a duel.” She blinked against the sun as the trees thinned. The river was meandering through meadows again, and the banks were low and well grazed. Several cows stood knee-deep in the river. One was drinking. Elfreda watched her flick away flies with her tail.

“A duel,” she repeated, although it was hard to imagine anything so dramatic in such placid environs. “A curricle crash.”

“Anne Chatterbox Poskitt.” Georgie sounded amused. “I suppose you heard the whole story.”

“None of the details. And we’ve at least a mile to go.”

It was an invitation, and they took it.

“Where to start?” They looked at the blue sky, theatrically. “All right. To set the scene. I break the engagement. Phipps is miffed. Hartcliffe is murderous. Harry comes heroically home, to shake some sense into me. One maudlin night, I try to patch the situation. I was sleepless, sitting up in my bedchamber, feeling I’d really thrown a rub in Phipps’s way, and he didn’t deserve it. I had the idea to atone with a gift, something he’d coveted: my father’s gold snuff box, with Apollo and Adonis on the lid. I couldn’t rest—my brain wouldn’t stop spinning. I changed into trousers, put the snuff box in my pocket, and went out the window. I had to wear trousers—Phipps resides at the Albany. Bachelors only. I hailed a hackney in my bachelor garb, and I was off. So far, so good. But unbeknownst to me, Harry was on the street, and he’d caught sight of my exit, or rather, an unknown bachelor’s exit. Of course, he gave chase. When I arrived at the Albany, I went around to the Rope Walk, because Phipps’s set is in the back. Harry mustn’t have arrived in time to note my exact route. He marched in the front door, and Phipps happened to be in the entrance hall. Which rather confirmed Harry’s suspicion. By the time I heard the shouting and doubled back, the entrance hall was packed with onlookers. Harry was storming off, and Phipps was shouting after him, and pistols at dawn was on everyone’s lips.”

Elfreda’s mouth had dropped open.

“Your brother thought Phipps had been leaving your bedchamber, but it was you leaving your bedchamber?”

“That’s it, yes.”

“Why didn’t Phipps deny it? Or say he’d marry you? Isn’t marrying you what he wanted?”

“Phipps didn’t grasp the charge. Harry isn’t very articulate when his blood is up, and Phipps was taken by surprise and more than a bit bosky. Everything he shouted was terrifically slurred, although I could make out very clearly the phrase backbiting hyena as applied to myself. I think he wanted to shoot Harry as a proxy for me. And Harry wanted to shoot him also as a proxy for me, but in a different sense. It was like a farce, but with the very real threat of bloodshed. Not anyone’s finest hour.”

“You didn’t try to explain?”