Hugo remained at the window. The morning light warmed his face, and the grounds of Thornwaite Hall stretched out before him, beautiful, vast, and empty.
He thought about Lily walking through his gallery, looking at portraits of his ancestors, standing in the house where he had grown up and been broken and had rebuilt himself piece by piece into the man he was now.
He thought about what Edward had said. That terror was a more promising foundation than oak trees. That she had kissed him and run not because she felt nothing but because she felt too much.
He thought about telling her the truth.
Then he straightened, adjusted his cravat, and went to play the gracious host.
The truth could wait. The house party could not.
CHAPTER 18
“Gentlemen, take your positions.” Hugo stood at the head of the archery range with his sleeves rolled to his elbows and a longbow resting against his shoulder.
The morning sun sat high over Thornwaite Hall. The field beyond the south lawn had been transformed overnight into a competition ground with straw targets at increasing distances along the tree line and a row of chairs positioned beneath a canvas awning for the ladies.
The gentlemen assembled with the predictable mixture of bravado and nerves that accompanied any activity involving skill and an audience.
Sir Philip Hale hefted his bow with the enthusiasm of a man who had not held one since school and was choosing to regard this as irrelevant. Mr. Dunfarrow assessed his string with careful, quiet focus. Lord Pemberton examined his quiver as though the arrows might contain instructions he had overlooked.
Edward took his position beside Hugo and said nothing, because Edward had been a better archer than Hugo since they were twelve and saw no reason to announce it.
Wilfrey selected his bow from the rack with the methodical precision Hugo expected from a man who approached everything, including sport, as though it were a scientific expedition requiring documentation. He evaluated the draw weight, examined the fletching on each arrow, and made a small notation in his ever-present leather notebook before tucking it back into his coat.
Hugo resisted the urge to ask whether he was recording the wind speed.
Across the field, the ladies settled beneath the awning. Footmen circulated with glasses of lemonade and small plates of sandwiches. Lady Hale fanned herself and remarked to Mrs. Thorne that she found archery terribly exciting, which Hugo suspected meant she found the prospect of watching men compete for her attention terribly exciting, regardless of the activity.
Lady Stapleton occupied the chair nearest the edge of the awning; her posture arranged with the elegant precision of a woman who understood that being seen was as important as seeing. Miss Stapleton sat beside her in white muslin with her hands folded in her lap and her attention directed toward the archery range with an expression of mild, decorative interest that revealed nothing of what she was actually thinking.
Hugo’s gaze found Lily before he could stop it.
She stood at the edge of the awning beside Sophia and Lady Oldbarrow, a glass of lemonade untouched in her hand, her eyes fixed on the row of longbows with an expression he recognized.
It was the same look she wore when she encountered a book she wanted to read, or a conversation she wanted to join, or a world she wanted to enter but had been told was not meant for her.
Longing, carefully concealed.
She wanted to shoot.
The realization landed with a weight that surprised him. She stood there in the plum silk gown with her honey-gold curls loose at her temples and her shoulders straight and her chin lifted, and she was not watching the men.
She was watching the bows. The arrows. The targets. She was calculating distance and drawing weight with those sharp green eyes, and the only thing stopping her from stepping onto the range and putting every one of these preening fools to shame was the invisible wall of propriety that penned her in like a fence around a wild horse.
He filed it away. He would come back to it.
Lily tore her gaze from the bows and redirected it toward the field where the gentlemen were arranging themselves along the shooting line with varying degrees of competence.
She did not look at Hugo. She looked at the targets, at the straw bales with their painted rings, and she thought about the summer she had spent with Aunt Margaret in Tuscany, where a retired soldier named Giovanni had taught her to shoot a short bow in a sunbaked field behind his farmhouse.
She had been good at it. Better than good. Giovanni had told her she had a natural eye, and she had spent three weeks putting arrows into targets while Margaret drank wine on the terrace and made pointed observations about the limitations of English girlhood.
That had been four years ago. She had not held a bow since.
She sipped her lemonade and pretended to be interested in the sandwiches.
Across the field, Lady Stapleton and her daughter rose from their chairs and crossed to the shooting line. Lady Stapleton placed her hand on Lord Wilfrey’s arm and leaned close, her voice pitched warm and conspiratorial, rehearsed to perfection.
