“Who?”
“Darius and Stephen.” He pointed over toward the mews. “Our falconers.”
“They’re your falconers; you don’t have to hide.”
But I did. Henry joined me in the gorse, putting a finger to his lips and raising his eyebrows. It was easy for him to make a game of these things; it was not his honor that might be called into question. Crouching in the dirt next to me, he whispered: “Perchance we’ll apprehend them relieving themselves.”
Fear of being caught aside, it was a delight to talk in such a way. I laughed. “Or picking their noses.”
We quieted, waiting.
Kneeling next to Henry, I grew ever so aware of my body. Hip to hip, we were closer than we had ever been, our heads leaning toward one another. He smelled of mint, which he had a habit of chewing. My stomach twisted in a way entirely unfamiliar.
“Look,” he whispered, because the two men had paused in the center of the mews, right in front of us, thirty feet away. I was sure that, if they glanced over, they would see us, heads bobbing above the waxy gorse leaf. The men were talking, quietly, and we could not hear the words. “They’re arguing,” I said, feeling, intrinsically, that we shouldn’t be there. That they would see us.
“No, I think—”
But he stopped talking. One of the falconers had reached out and cupped the other man’s cheek in the palm of his hand, a tenderhearted gesture, recognizable and familiar in its sentiment. It echoed what those who denuded daisies wished for, what I imagined my parents had had, a frisson of what I felt crouched in the mud beside Henry; it echoed love.
We both stilled and stopped breathing. Quietly, quietly, we crawled backward, on our hands, like two crabs, until we were far enough away to stand, and Henry took my hand and pulled me up, and then we were running, crashing through the pine needles, pebbles flying, shocked and breathless.
When we finally stopped, we were both panting. We locked eyes and said nothing. It was implicit: We agreed to tell no one, not for what it might mean for Darius and Stephen, not for the trill of power and control it might have provided, not now, not ever. We realized we were still holding hands and let go, abruptly.
I wish I had understood it better then: The whole world was filled with people keeping secrets.
CHAPTER FIVE
After the messenger left, the entryway deflated around us, then inflated, and then deflated, the tapestries on the walls moving ever so slightly. The house was breathing. Or it was us, heartbeats in our throats. All the girls and I, posed on the staircase, gray and yellow and brown. And there, at the top, was Elin.
“Did you hear?” I looked her over. I had thought my daughters had presented appropriately, but Elin had hooked and secured herself into a chaste dress of the softest pink, each loop of lace in place, every tiny button carefully nestled through its fastening. Tow-colored hair curled and styled. Waist cinched tight. The picture of composure. In her hands, she held a small, worn booklet.
She nodded. “A ball.” Looking at the door as if it might swing open again, she added, in wonder: “And they invited me.”
“I don’t care what the messenger said.” I turned back to my daughters. “There was a mistake.”
“Mama—” Mathilde began, emphasizing the second syllable, but I held up a finger, insisting she stop.
“Let me think.”
Rosamund cried into her hands. “Why would she be invited and not the two of us? Mathilde has more years to her name.”
“All three of you are of genteel birth,” I agreed. “And not one of you is yet introduced to society.”
“Perhaps,” Elin ventured, allowing herself a modest smile, “it’s because the girls weren’t born in the house and don’t share my last name.” She, who had never encountered a merit she did not like to expatiate on, held up the thin volume in her hands—a book on female virtue that rarely left her side. “If there were a mistake, let us take some solace, for mistakes can be stepping stones to wisdom.”
We ignored her. “It has to be an accident,” Rosamund cried.
“Perhaps a clerical error—” Mathilde continued.
“Or they do not have proper records,” Rosamund interrupted.
“Which is whatclerical errormeans.”
“An error is different than not having the records in the first place,” Rosamund countered.
“Let me think,” I repeated.
“You could write a letter,” Elin suggested. “One penned with grace and care—”
