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“We are game to try it tomorrow,” Olive said. “Will you accompany us, Miss Brown? Be our guide?”

Miss Brown began to demur, but Clementine intervened. “I shan’t be going in, and the dowager and I are overdue for a catch-up. So that leaves the rest of you ladies to meet your icy fates together.”

Miss Brown didn’t agree, but she didn’t disagree, which was enough for Olive to pronounce the matter settled. “Shall we say three o’clock?”

The other ladies concurred, and after some pleasant conversation, Miss Brown announced that she meant to retire for the evening. Simon checked his timepiece. It wasn’t terribly late, even by his standards, but he felt the urge to do the same.

He was, suddenly, yearning for the solitude of the gentlemen’s cave. Or perhaps it was more properly called the gentleman’s cave, singular, for despite Archie and Effie’s plan to leave the house to the ladies, in practice, neither could bear to be departed from his wife once she was present. This meant Simon had been alone in the outbuilding yesterday night, as he assumed he would be for the rest of the holiday.

He took it as a sign that he had been correct in his assessment that Earls Trip had to evolve with the times. That marriage and responsibilities must necessarily change the shape of the tradition.

“I shall also take my leave,” he said, waving off the good-natured jeers from his friends over his early-to-bed habit. “Allow me to escort you out, Miss Brown. Or perhaps it is you who will escort me, as I clearly need rescuing from this lot.”

He had only to escort her, or she him, out the door and to the base of the staircase. It took all of ten seconds.

He wanted to say so much more. He wanted to know more about her experience of the pool. He wanted to know what novels she had read on her holidays two summers ago. He wanted to know what was etched on her sister’s gravestone.

He wanted to know everything.

Knowing he could have none of what he wanted, at least not now, he settled for bowing and saying, “Good night, Miss Brown.”

“Good night, my lord.”

A kind of melancholy settled as he crossed the garden to the gentlemen’s cave. Mere minutes ago, he had been looking forward to being alone, but as he made himself ready for bed, he found his solitude had somehow become a burden. He was missing company.

And he had to admit that it wasn’t Archie and Effie’s company he was missing.

11

A Slow Turning

September 17, 1823

Earls Trip, day 10

Diantha began the next day as she had the previous, in the breakfast room with Lady Harcourt and Lord Marsden.

She was glad to see Lord Marsden, and she wasted no time, once she had settled the dowager with her plate, in opening the book he’d returned to her last night and slipping out a piece of paper.

A piece of paper he’d written on—that must have been what that unusual pen had been for. She hadn’t been able to miss it, as it had been protruding almost an inch from the book.

“My lord, are you mocking me?”

He looked as if he were trying not to laugh as he removed his spectacles and set down his book. “I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You seem to have adopted my habit of copying down bits of prose.” She waved the scrap of paper and read aloud from it. “‘Ducks and geese are foolish things, and must be looked after, but girls can take care of themselves.’”

His smile broke through his feigned seriousness. “It’s from ‘The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.’ Did you read it yet? I meant it to amuse you! I thought you would take it as a compliment!”

“Girls can take care of themselves, I find,” Lady Harcourt interjected.

“Indeed,” Diantha agreed, her heart light.

There was no reason for it to be. She had, as she’d assured Lord Marsden, solved her matrimonial problem, but a solution was not the same thing as a happy outcome. Lord Marsden had suggested, yesterday, that Diantha wasn’t truly on holiday. His criterion seemed to be that she wasn’t able to set aside her responsibilities, namely, Lady Harcourt. But what she had set aside since she arrived at Gurglewood were thoughts of Mr. Baldwin and what lay ahead. She was surprised sometimes to find that hours had passed without her having thought about it whatsoever.

“Should we say grace?” Lady Harcourt asked.

“Oh,” Diantha, startled, said. “We don’t generally at breakfast, but certainly we shall, if you like.”