“I drew you once,” Daniel continued. The more he spoke to it, the more soothed he felt. He knew not why. “Whatever are you doing here?”
The bird blinked at him again. It made a little sideways hop across the trellis. There it preened itself before locking eyes with him once more.
Daniel supposed shrikes were not quite enough like parrots to speak for themselves. He tipped his hat, smiling at his own folly as he did so. “Well—good evening to you, sir.”
And to his astonishment, the bird bowed as if in reply.
Daniel hardly had time to do more than widen his eyes before it flicked out its wings and took flight, veering off to vanish in the evening’s shadows. He stood staring after it for some time before he went into the house. Sukie met him in the front hall.
“Do you recall seeing shrikes in England?” he asked her after he’d kissed her.
She blinked at him in a manner not unlike the bird. “Not particularly. I saw plenty of finches, swallows, and sparrows.”
Daniel supposed these were all good birds in their own way. “Have you seen any by the house here?”
“Oh, yes,” said Sukie. “Since Mr Lofthouse pointed them out it seems I see them every day. There must be a flock roosting nearby.”
“You see more than one at a time, then?”
Sukie furrowed her brow in thought. “No… Now that you mention it, there’s only ever just the one.”
Daniel knew not how he ought to feel about that.
“Do you mislike it?” Sukie asked, studying his face.
“I don’t think so,” Daniel replied.
That was good enough for Sukie, who smiled and entwined her arm with his to bring him into the kitchen for dinner.
The shrike sightings did not abate throughout the fortnight.
“Is Mr Butcher married?” Daniel wondered aloud to his wife on a Saturday afternoon.
She blinked at him. “You’d stand a better chance of knowing than I.”
They stood together in the kitchen. Daniel peeled and chopped vegetable matter whilst Sukie beat a dough into submission. He couldn’t blame her confusion at his bringing the matter up now. It’d been more than a fortnight since anyone had seen the gentleman. And yet, whenever Daniel wasn’t thinking of Sukie or the novels they read together or figures in a ledger or shrikes, he found his mind wandering again and again down the familiar path of what the deuce Butcher and Lofthouse got up to.
From what little Daniel had observed of him, Lofthouse seemed very much inclined toward the company of his fellow bachelors. He had begun in the employment of Mr Grigsby—who’d never married, despite being a nice enough fellow, and of a rather advanced age—and had moved on to Butcher, an eccentric. Though perhaps Butcher had married after all. It would account for him bringing his steward along on his travels instead of leaving him behind to manage the estate. Perhaps Butcher had left matters in his wife’s hands instead. Daniel still thought that a rather backwards way of doing business. He said all this aloud to Sukie, who listened with increasingly raised brows.
“Why does it trouble you so?” Sukie asked.
“He knows all my own history,” said Daniel. “Yet I know nothing of his.”
“Not all, surely.”
“Well, no. But more than most gentlemen.” Daniel furrowed his brow down at the pile of potato peelings he’d produced whilst making his argument. “And I think he may likewise live an unconventional existence.”
He continued to explain his reasoning. If there existed such a thing as a lady who preferred the companionship of another lady over any gentleman—as Daniel felt assured there must, from the whirlwind romances he’d witnessed between his fellow pupils at the academy—then he supposed there must exist after all a sort of gentleman who preferred the companionship of another gentleman over any lady.
Sukie didn’t look nearly so shocked at this train of thought as Daniel might have otherwise supposed.
“And I think,” Daniel concluded, “that Lofthouse may be one such gentleman, and Butcher another.”
“Of course,” said Sukie.
Daniel glanced up sharp from his half-chopped onion. “Of course?”
“They do remind me a great deal of my uncles,” Sukie said, mild as anything.
