"If this keeps up, they'll be commissioning a war memorial by the end of the week."
Eloise looked from face to face in disbelief.
"Foreign spies? Mountains of corpses? Where is any of this coming from?"
The village girls conferred among themselves, retracing the chain.
"Well, I heard it from William, who heard it from a man whose friend is a constable in Cambon..."
"Mr. Asher told me—he had it from someone at the mill—"
"My mother said Mr. Owen's cousin was there and saw the whole thing..."
Eloise pressed her hand to her forehead.
A friend's neighbor's cousin. No origin anyone could actually point to—just the rumor propagating itself, growing more elaborate with every telling.
*By tomorrow they'll be saying enemies fell at a single glance from Ra—from Sergeant Thornton.*
She caught herself just in time.
But her friends were already nodding at each other with cautious enthusiasm.
"Isn't it true, though? We heard the sergeant fixed the enemy with an icy stare and told them that if they repented at once and knelt, he would petition Her Majesty for clemency—and they simply fell prostrate—"
"No. There were no spies. There was one deserter."
She told them the whole story. Truthfully, concisely, with no embellishments. When she finished, the disappointment on their faces was so uniform it was almost touching.
She understood it, she really did.
Feltham was, by any measure, an extremely quiet village. The most dramatic event in living memory was the death of the last wolf in the forest ten years ago—an elderly animal, brought down by shepherds with pitchforks after it made an attempt on a sheep. The body had lain in the square for a full week. People came from neighboring villages to see it. Ten years on, the people of Feltham still recalled it with the same vivid animation they might give to something that had happened last Tuesday.
In such a village, last night's events were of genuinely staggering proportions. Had Eloise not intervened now, there would have been a subscription opened within the fortnight for a bronze monument at the edge of Blissbury road, and travelers would be stopping to read the plaque for the next half century.
The disappointment didn't linger. Having received the accurate version, the girls immediately felt the civic duty to carry it to those who hadn't heard yet. Several of the more impatient ones said hasty goodbyes and set off at once.
Eloise looked over the ones who remained and noticed an absence.
"Where's Abigail? Has she gone to Cambon?"
Abigail would have been first in line for news like this, under ordinary circumstances. Mrs. Ogilvy made a point of taking her daughter to Cambon once a month—tea parties, social calls, the usual obligations—and Abigail always came home and went directly to Eloise's door to detail exactly how trying the entire experience had been.
"No, she's at home. She hasn't been going out much lately. You know how she gets in the summer sometimes."
"That's true..."
It was true. Unlike Eloise, who tended to suffer in the cold months, Abigail's quiet spells fell in summer and autumn, when everyone else was most active. There was nothing unusual in it. And yet something made Eloise glance toward the Ogilvy house.
Abigail's room was on the second floor, last window at the end. As children they had spent whole afternoons signaling to each other across the gap with small mirrors and candles, having read too many adventure novels. There was always a jar of wildflowers on the sill when Abigail was well, curtains open to the light.
Now the curtains were drawn tight. Not a sliver of brightness showed through.
*I should go and see her before we leave.*
Mrs. Severton's voice called from inside the house, and the thought slipped away. Eloise hurried in.
A moment after she disappeared through the door, the curtains in Abigail's window shifted.
Ryan, standing by the cart, looked over. A slight figure stood in the gap—thin, still, watching. The moment their eyes met across the distance, the curtains snapped shut.
He stood looking at the window for another moment.
When Eloise came back out, he took her bag from her hands as a matter of course.
"Eloise—whose house is that?"
"That one? The Oglvys'."
"And the room at the far end of the second floor—whose is that?"
"Abigail's room—why? Is something the matter?"
Ryan paused, then shook his head.
"No. Only curious."
Had this been any other day, Eloise would have pulled at that thread until it unraveled. Today she was already being called back inside by her mother, and the thought didn't catch.
After she went in again, Ryan looked once more at Abigail's window. The curtains didn't move.
*Why?*
He turned the look over in his mind. The moment their eyes had met—brief, accidental—there had been nothing ambiguous about what he'd seen. Not shyness, not simple surprise.
Hostility. Clear and deliberate.
He thought of what Eloise had told him, in those early weeks at Blissbury when she'd been tense and nearly wordless with him directly, but would talk at length the moment he asked her about Feltham. Stories about the village had come from her easily, naturally, and Abigail Ogilvy had appeared in them constantly—woven through years' worth of memory with the particular density that only a very old friendship produces.
And yet Abigail had looked at Eloise through those curtains with something he could only call coldness.
*Why would she look at her friend that way?*
He checked the banquet list in his memory. The Ogilvy family had attended every year without exception. They would be there this summer.
*Then we'll see.*
If what he suspected had any substance to it, he would think about what to do. Until then, he would watch and say nothing.
He turned back to the cart and finished loading.
---
Despite everything, preparations for the Blissbury celebration resumed without serious interruption.
"I'm so glad you've both come." Mrs. Parker welcomed Mrs. Severton and Emily with visible relief. "Now I feel as though things are actually in hand."
Ryan had tried his best to be useful, working through Eloise's instructions as carefully as he could, but there were domains where no amount of goodwill compensated for inexperience—and the kitchen, entirely Mrs. Parker's territory, was the clearest example.
"My lower back has been troubling me these past weeks. Standing for any length of time is harder than it used to be." She said it without complaint, simply as fact, and her gaze drifted to Emily with something warmer than regret.
"You should come to Blissbury more often. There's so much I want to show you, and the summer festival never leaves enough time." Emily's face lit up at once—and then the light faded just as quickly.
"I can't simply come anymore. Not now."
She looked down, turning something over in her fingers, her voice trailing off in a way that didn't need finishing.
Mrs. Parker understood. She was old enough to have seen the shape of things before they declared themselves openly.
Emily had real ability—the kind that, with the right training and the right household, could carry a woman to the position of head housekeeper in a proper estate. It was the sort of talent that owners, when they recognized it, often quietly suppressed, keeping a skilled servant close rather than letting her rise.
Mrs. Severton had never done that. She'd seen what Emily was, and she'd brought her to Blissbury every year to learn.
But this year everything had shifted. A new manager. Mr. Severton away in the capital. The steady rhythm of it broken for the first time.
Everyone in the room understood without saying it aloud.
What had seemed permanent had simply been arrangement—comfortable, long-standing arrangement, but arrangement all the same.
And now, for the first time, the future required an actual decision rather than just continuation.