The carriage pulled out of Cambon, and the well-paved road lasted only as far as the edge of town before giving way to packed dirt. The cart began to sway.
Eloise glanced back at everything loaded behind them.
The carriage was considerably more laden than when they'd arrived—so much so that she briefly entertained the thought of a cargo wagon before dismissing it. Her mother would not have survived the suggestion. As it was, whenever Eloise took the servants' cart through Feltham, Mrs. Severton would appear with an expression of barely contained anguish and beg her, in increasingly emotional terms, to let Emily do it instead.
And if they had passed Lady Greenwood today on a freight wagon—
Eloise shuddered.
*How long must I endure this woman's contempt for you?* her mother had said, once, after a particularly trying Cambon visit. *You could walk into any drawing room in the capital and be welcomed. Don't let a woman who plays queen in a small village make you feel otherwise.*
The memory prompted a small, fond sigh—and at that moment Ryan spoke, displeasure evident in his voice.
"How could you simply leave like that?"
"We weren't going to endure it together, were we?" Eloise replied, quite reasonably. "What would I have done in there, besides take up space? It was clearly going to run for hours, so it made far more sense for me to see to my own business."
Every word was true. Ryan said nothing.
It was true. He knew it was true. And yet, for reasons he chose not to examine, it felt rather like being abandoned.
"Besides," Eloise continued, "most of those girls will be at the banquet. They don't usually come to the summer festival itself—though this year, Sergeant, I suspect they'll all find reasons to attend. Because of you."
She explained the distinction: the summer festival, organized by Baron Stanford for the people of Feltham and Cambon both, was an open, boisterous, genuinely democratic affair—children underfoot, farmers and fine families sharing the same lawn, the kind of event that certain segments of Cambon society found quietly excruciating but could not object to openly, given that the Baron himself set the tone. So Baron Stanford, understanding their position with the tact of a man who had managed people for decades, organized a separate banquet two days prior—a smaller, more formal occasion, attended by the Cambon families, the Severtons, the Harrisons, the Ogilvys, and those few from Feltham with the relevant social footing.
The girls today would be there.
"I'll ask, just in case," Eloise said. "Was there anyone among them you'd like seated across from you at the banquet?"
"No," Ryan said, without deliberation.
"I thought not. I only asked to be thorough."
She regarded him for a moment, noting that he was still faintly disgruntled—over her exit from the shop, presumably, which she found somewhat bewildering—and then asked:
"Is there someone in the capital, perhaps? Someone you've given your heart to, or have feelings for?"
Ryan paused and looked at her. His expression communicated, with remarkable economy, that he considered this question not worth dignifying.
"I'm sorry, I shouldn't have assumed. Then perhaps—you're a confirmed bachelor? I've heard there are more and more of them in the capital. Men who've simply decided marriage isn't for them."
*All he had to do was say yes.*
He had no intention of marrying. That had been settled in his own mind for a long time, and he saw no reason it would change. The word *yes* was right there, simple and accurate.
It would not come out.
Eloise apparently read his silence as confirmation. She nodded, with the air of someone filing information away for practical use.
"It's a pity you're not a woman, Sergeant. Otherwise you'd be welcome in our club."
"Club?"
"A club for those who've withdrawn from the marriage market, more or less. Though it's only two of us at present—myself and Abigail."
She extended her hand toward him with a smile, indicating she'd take the reins. Ryan handed them over. Eloise gave them the practiced flick she always used, the horses responded with their usual willing acceleration, and the cart lurched forward over the uneven road.
The shaking was considerable. However good the cart by Feltham standards, a dirt road on this kind of gradient made jolting inevitable. Their hands met several times—not quite by accident, not quite intentional, simply the natural consequence of sitting close together on a cart going faster than strictly necessary over an imperfect surface.
Ryan noticed each time. Eloise appeared not to notice at all, her expression composed and her attention on the road.
He said nothing. He was not, he noted, uncomfortable.
"Our situation is a little different, actually," Eloise continued, as the horses settled into their new pace. "Abigail and I were more or less shown the door, while you walked out of your own accord."
"Abigail?"
The name had come up before—more than once. He'd registered it each time without asking.
"My closest friend. Abigail Ogilvy. Julia's sister."
"Ah—Miss Julia Ogilvy's sister."
"I'll tell you now: they are very different people. Abigail won't pester you, I can promise that much. Though you will meet her at the banquet." Eloise paused, as though something had just occurred to her. "Sergeant—do you happen to be one of those men who think less of people with physical disabilities?"
Ryan's response was immediate and without softness.
"I'm a soldier. Do you think I haven't known men whose bodies the war marked permanently?"
He had. Comrades who'd lost limbs, eyes, hearing—men who'd given parts of themselves for something larger and come home to navigate a world that didn't always know how to look at them. The capital, with its substantial military population, was full of such people. Their scars were not flaws. They were a record of what they'd endured, and what they'd chosen.
Anyone who considered that inferiority would have found Ryan's opinion of *them* considerably less generous—expressed, where no one was watching, in terms that required no words at all.
Eloise's face broke into a genuine smile at whatever she'd heard in his voice.
"I'm relieved. The girl who first said it to me is never getting an invitation to Blissbury. If you'd agreed with her, I'd have spent the rest of the summer working out how to get you removed."
She explained then: herself and Abigail, the slight distance they kept from the village's matrimonial social machinery, and the reasons for it. Both carried what the marriage market, with its particular vocabulary, termed a *flaw*. Both had independent means sufficient to make the point moot, if they chose to make it. And both had developed, over years of practice, an efficient method for discouraging the men who arrived looking less for a wife than for an income.
"Do you know the fastest way to get rid of them?" she asked.
"Tell me."
"Say things they won't enjoy hearing. That I find men under six feet one inch difficult to take seriously. That I don't care for smoking. That I expect his time with his friends kept within reason. That I'd want us to go out together at least once a week after marriage. That I intend to spend no less than five pounds a month on books." She paused. "And that I don't appreciate being interrupted."
Ryan listened to this inventory with a still expression.
*I appear,* he thought, *to meet every one of those criteria.*
He said nothing, and looked at the road ahead.