“How unusual in a man,” Agatha said dryly.
John’s eyes flew open and he laughed. “Spoken like an experienced widow.”
“Not that experienced,” Agatha countered. “Many a wife feels the same, whether her husband is living or not.”
Mr. Flood’s mouth quirked at one corner. “You’ll forgive the irony, but I don’t actually have a lot of experience with wives.”
“Of course you don’t,” Agatha said with a snort. “You sail off for years on end, stabbing hapless fish with long pointy sticks for money—but your very existence creates strictures people hold Penelope to account for, even if you don’t. You have that wooden kingdom where the laws favor you: she has no such escape.”
“Neither wives nor whales are as hapless as you’re implying, Mrs. Griffin.” Mr. Flood was frowning now, lightly, as if a stone had gotten into his shoe and he couldn’t shake it out again. He paused in the lane and turned to face her square. “Let’s be frank with one another. I’m sure Penelope has told you the truth about why she and I wed. Are you saying I should spend more time putting a polite gloss on our farce of a marriage?”
Agatha’s temper roared up like a bonfire. “I am saying that she did you an immense kindness, and you ought to show that you are conscious of the debt!”
Ahead, Sydney and Eliza whirled round, blinking at the anger in Agatha’s voice.
She clamped her lips shut, ground her teeth together, and marched on silently, head down.
Mr. Flood turned and followed, keeping pace with her. His hands slid out of his pockets and clasped behind his back. His head tilted up, squinting at the sky, which promised more snow in the evening to come.
Agatha watched him warily, afraid she’d gone too far in her friend’s defense.
When Mr. Flood looked back at her, his eyes were clear, and frank, and shrewd as he said: “We always worry about the people we love.”
And then he walked on, whistling, as though he hadn’t just scoured every last bit of wax off Agatha’s soul to reveal the true picture graven on the metal beneath.
Ofcoursewhat she felt for Penelope Flood was not precisely friendship. It was longing, and protectiveness, and pride, and joy, all tangled up together. A good bit of wholesome lust as well, Agatha knew—and she’d focused on that because it was the most visible, and the most inexcusable.
But that was only the shading, not the scene itself. She knew what name to put to the entirety of her feelings, when she looked at the whole and not just each individual part.
Love, in a word. She ought to have realized sooner.
Shecertainlyought to have realized it before Penelope’s husband did.
Merry Christmas, everyone, Agatha thought bitterly, and trudged unhappily toward the Hall.
Chapter Twenty
Once home from church the party ate, and drank, and exchanged gifts as though their lives depended on it.
Flood had embroidered two new seabags for her brother and husband: sturdy canvas things, dotted with small bright bees and green leaves and a painstakingly stitched miniature Fern Hall. “Which was so reassuringly square and regular,” she explained, “that even my haphazard embroidery skills could attempt it.”
Mr. Flood looked immensely gratified.
Captain Stanhope went into paroxysms of delighted laughter on account of one particularly poorly embroidered bee. “The eyes!” he choked, shoulders shaking. “Look at theeyes! I can’t stand it!”
Flood blazed red. “I can pick it out and try to fix—”
“Don’t you dare,” her brother protested, wrapping one arm around her and pulling her into an embrace. “I adore him. I’m calling him Clarence.”
“Most bees are female,” Flood reminded him, even as she blushed and ducked her head.
“I’m callingherClarence, then.”
Agatha had given Flood a new volume of poetry—one of the sonnets was about queen bees—and had received in return a very small, very beautiful pot of green glass. When she raised the lid and sniffed experimentally, she inhaled the scent of lemons and honey and just a hint of warm bread. It was sharp and sweet and strong and Agatha had to fight the urge to scoop it into her mouth and devour it like a sweet-toothed child snatching frosting from an untended cake.
Flood was watching her, smiling shyly. “It’s one of Miss Coningsby’s balm recipes,” she said. “Do you like it?”
Agatha dabbed her fingers in and spread the balm onto the rough spots of her hand and the warm skin of her wrist; it sank in at once as that luscious scent swirled around her. “I love it,” she responded softly. Her own pulse beat rather unsteadily beneath her scent-drenched fingertips.
