Harriet turned to see an older woman regarding her with endless suspicion—as though Harriet had offered her a cup of tea sweetened with arsenic. “It does,” Harriet confirmed.
The woman shook her head, setting feathers bobbing. Harriet had the sudden wild horror that those feathers had been plucked from past champion chickens. “Bickerton Greys don’t exist anymore,” she said staunchly. “Not for this past decade, at least.”
“Not in the village, Mrs. Outerbridge, you’re right about that,” Lydia said. She stood at Harriet’s other elbow, smiling in a pointed, too-bright kind of way. “We found these birds in the woods—you know as well as I do that there’s always been rumored sightings, a few birds thought to have survived in the wild.”
“Hmph.” The older woman sniffed. “And I suppose you think they’re a shoo-in for the top prizes.”
Lydia’s smile broadened, and she waved her hand toward Boudicca and Minerva. “See for yourself.”
Mrs. Outerbridge bent to peer into the cages. The hens bristled back at her with nearly identical expressions of displeasure.
Harriet bit her lip to keep from laughing.
“Have you met Mrs. Boyne yet?” Lydia said, smooth as butter. “She’s one of the new owners of Thornycroft Hall.”
Mrs. Outerbridge straightened. “Charmed,” she said, and shook hands in a perfunctory sort of way.
Harriet got the impression her attention was still mostly on the chickens, even if she weren’t looking that way at the moment. “And what birds will you be showing tomorrow, Mrs. Outerbridge?”
“Gold-laced bantams,” she said, as if Harriet ought to have known.
“I wish you the best of luck,” Harriet replied.
“And you,” Mrs. Outerbridge said—too distinctly. As if it were secretly a curse.
Harriet shook her head after the older woman went away. “The good folk of Bickerton are certainly known for their hospitality.”
Lydia snorted and opened her mouth for what Harriet assumed would be a tart reply—but was interrupted by the arrival of a very short man in a very tall hat. “Miss Wraxhall! What’s this I hear about you telling everyone you’ve found the lost Bickerton breed?” he demanded, his mustaches quivering with jollity.
“Good morning, Mr. Brome,” Lydia said. She had on that too-bright smile again; Harriet was beginning to think of it as a weapon. The doctor’s daughter waved her hand at her birds, a showman lifting the curtain. “The rumors are true.”
“Silver-laced—going up against my champions, I see.” He laughed, a shade too loudly, and his eyes were as sharp and bright as Lydia’s smile. “You sly girl, just how long have you been keeping this secret for?”
“Hardly a secret, now that I’m here.”
“Are there more?” He bent closer, his grin turning positively avaricious beneath the broom of his mustache. “Have you any chicks for sale? The Greys are notoriously true breeders, if memory serves.”
“Mr. Brome, surely you’re not asking me to set a price before the judging’s even started?” Lydia had explained to Harriet how prize birds and eggs from the same were often sold off to help breed the next year’s champions. A winning bird naturally brought in more money than one that failed to place.
Mr. Brome laughed again: “Ho ho, of course not! Wouldn’t dream of trying to steal a march on you, Miss Wraxhall.”
Harriet could all but hear Lydia’s teeth grinding. “Glad to hear it, Mr. Brome.”
And so it went, all the rest of the morning: Harriet was introduced to Mrs. Campbell-Cole, rival to Mr. Finglass (whom Harriet at least had met before), to the tall, stern Miss Inch (whom Harriet peered at very closely indeed, remembering that this was one of the women in Lydia’s past), to Miss Rushcliff (a beauty who ignored Miss Inch with such vicious intensity that it was like a violin-string stretched humming between the two of them). Mrs. Outerbridge kept strolling by to glare at the Greys, and everyone was wielding polite phrases as though they were dueling swords and everyone’s honor was being impugned.
By the time Mr. Finglass started arguing with the workmen about the best way to support the tent—the workmen wanted several towers of strength inside the structure, while Mr. Finglass thought they spoiled the aesthetics of the show and was demanding gye ropes and support poles on the tent’s exterior—Harriet had had quite enough.
It felt, she realized, like the same fearful, brash hostility you got before a battle—the same eager, angry buzz in the air, the same thirst for blood and quickness to do harm. She could almost hear the cannons, smell the smoke again. Except Harriet kept looking around and: it was chickens. That’s all. A lot of very pretty, very tasty birds. Not land, not politics, not any kind of a cause.
Harriet hated war, but she thought she might learn to hate this too, given time. She felt all those broken places in her heart creak, the surface of a frozen pond just about to give way and plunge her into deadly cold.
The worst part: Lydia seemed just as affected as everyone else. The sunny spirits Harriet had—oh, dear—that Harriet had fallen in love with were bubbling in the tent like acid in some chemist’s laboratory. “Did your brother ever compete?”
Lydia’s mouth softened at the mention of Peter. “He was in the army and across the world before the hen fever really took hold in the village—I kept him apprised of all my successes, though. Like the first year I entered, when I swept the cup for best collection out from under Mr. Finglass’s nose. Or the year after that, when the top three Cochins were all my birds.” She smirked, her satisfaction still potent after who knew how long. “Mrs. Outerbridge still holds a grudge about that one.”
Harriet had met Mrs. Outerbridge, and did not care for Mrs. Outerbridge—but it made her uneasy to think of Lydia holding onto dislike with both hands for so many years. Lydia was supposed to be warm and welcoming; it was Harriet who was cold and standoffish.
Lydia waved cheerfully at Mrs. Outerbridge, whose narrowed eyes said she found the gesture suspicious. As she should: Lydia certainly didn’t mean it.
