“I told you the poultry fair was competitive,” Lydia said, when Harriet ventured to say that perhaps Miss Rushcliff didn’t mean anything nefarious by it when she said Minerva was a very lovely hen.
“This isn’t competition,” Harriet grumbled. “It’s combat.”
“So you should feel right at home,” Lydia said with a laugh.
Harriet’s head snapped back with the shock. Her hands went numb.
Lydia didn’t notice; she was too busy eyeing the Pinwheel Bantams Miss Inch was brushing out two tables away.
Harriet felt a flash of sudden anger. “I thought you were better than this,” she said.
It was a mistake, she knew it as soon as she heard the words come out. She knew it twice over when Lydia’s cheeks flushed and her mouth went thin with hurt. “You sound like my parents.” Harriet made a noise to object to this, but Lydia wasn’t finished. “I know you have been everywhere and seen everything, Mrs. Boyne, but this is a quiet town. The Poultry Fair is the most important event in the village year. What you do here—how you place, what prizes you win—it matters. This competition is the only thing that keeps me from feeling utterly invisible.” She rested a hand on Walter’s cage, and the rooster made soft, soothing sounds at her. “If you find the Fair so unpalatable, then you needn’t show in it.”
Harriet rocked back as if she’d been slapped. “Very well,” she said at length. “You have your Bickerton Greys, all six of them, and clearly you have no need of me. I wish you every prize.” It came out sounding more bitter than she meant it to; Lydia’s eyes flashed with pain, and Harriet had to turn away. “I think I’ll take the cart back to the Hall,” she said. When will I see you again? was right there on the tip of her tongue.
She let the question die unasked.
Lydia simpered and smirked at her fellow competitors. She said nice things just to irritate Mrs. Outerbridge. She said more nice things to puzzle Miss Inch, and added an opinion or two to the argument Mr. Finglass was—still!—having with the workmen about the tent. She brushed Minerva and Walter until their plumes gleamed, even though she knew she’d only have to do it again tomorrow. She kept her hands moving and her smile fixed even though, inside, her heart ached and flowered like a bruise.
Peter would have been ashamed of her. It’s combat, Harriet had said, but Lydia had heard, It’s a game. They weren’t at all the same. People died in war. Harriet had seen battle first-hand—and for Lydia to treat that as a reason she ought to be comfortable, instead of a deeply painful reminder of a tragedy that still haunted her…
Well. She’d be lucky if Harriet ever spoke to her again.
It had been thoughtlessness, born of anticipation and distraction, but that was no excuse. Behind her sunny façade Lydia’s mind went in circles the entire day, trying to find some way of righting things while she prepared and then overprepared for tomorrow’s judging. And then she turned her steps homeward, but she couldn’t make herself pass through the gate and into the house.
She had no idea how to mend this. But she had to try.
She stopped by the Cock and Apple, bought a pie—an apology pie? A late supper? Who knew?—and began the walk to Thornycroft Hall.
The sky was low and the light was strange. Lydia was glad of it: she couldn’t have handled velvet black or peaceful stars. The hunkered clouds suited her; she felt sympathy with the way they curled and twisted back on themselves.
She was no stranger to a lover’s quarrel. Usually it meant the end of an affair, some terrible piece of punctuation that marked the turn away from bliss and into something more final. She hoped this one was different.
She hadn’t even told Harriet she loved her.
The words had been there for weeks now, just waiting to be said. But Lydia had been afraid—what good was the love of a village spinster whose only achievements were poultry-related? What could she possibly offer? Harriet had a home and a fortune and friends who loved her, and who had seen her through much harder trials than Lydia had ever faced. They’d journeyed half the world with her, while Lydia had cowered in Bickerton, the narrow movements forming her mind and heart to match.
A snowflake tumbled out of the sky and onto Lydia’s cheek. She let a tear fall and wash it away.
A hen in a coop, she was—falling in love with a lark.
She’d been so wrapped up in the strife, she hadn’t been able to see the truth of what Harriet observed. Lydia had mistaken the rivalry for the real substance of the competition. After all, if her birds were good enough to win prizes, they’d win them without Lydia making sidelong remarks to Miss Rushcliff, or tormenting Mrs. Outerbridge, or needling Mr. Brome. None of that was necessary. None of it made anyone’s life better.
Calling it a battle had been an excuse to justify a long habit of unkindness, and now Lydia was ashamed. Perhaps that had been part of the attraction all along: the Poultry Fair was the one time where nobody expected Lydia to be nice. Every other day of the year she held her tongue, did her duty, followed all the proper rules. Anger, self-interest, stubbornness—these she’d saved up to flourish like a rapier on Fair days.
Harriet had said it best: Lydia was better than that.
The Thornycroft Hall ballroom was dark, so Lydia went the long way around to the back of the house. Mrs. Crangle wasn’t at all surprised to see her. “Boyne’s in the parlor,” she said, and eyed the pie with an expert’s evaluatory gleam. “Is that for me?”
“Who else?” Lydia said, with the first real smile she’d enjoyed all day.
It didn’t last long, though. She went out of the kitchen and into the front parlor, and there was Harriet, and still Lydia had no idea what she was going to say.
Harriet looked up from her book. Surprise, then relief, then regret chased across her face, swift as clouds scudding across a stormy sky.
And suddenly it was easy. “I came to apologize—” Lydia said.
“I am so sorry—” Harriet began, at precisely the same moment.
