"Eloise!"
His voice—the one that had cut through the darkness of the forest road, the one she had run toward without thinking—still sounded clearly in her memory. She had never in her life been so grateful to hear a human voice. She wasn't sure she ever would be again.
The problem was that ever since that night, every time she heard it her heart did something inconvenient and entirely beyond her control.
So when Ryan came close, she put on her sternest expression and held herself very still and waited for him to say something provoking. He always did. And the moment she snapped back at him, the warmth in her face had somewhere useful to go, and her voice had a reason to be unsteady, and he couldn't tell the difference.
*I have completely lost my mind.*
She got up and went to the mirror in the corner.
The reflection was not encouraging. Several late nights had done their work—dull skin, shadows under her eyes deep enough to be concerning. Her hair, though tied back, had the look of someone who had given up halfway through. Ink on both hands. A sauce stain on the hem of her dress from the kitchen that afternoon that she had entirely forgotten about until this moment.
She studied herself for a moment with the detached honesty she applied to estate accounts.
Twenty-six. In Albion, well past the age when these things resolved themselves naturally. Seasonal illnesses that had plagued her since childhood. And then the thing she usually avoided thinking about directly—the doctor's verdict, delivered when she was still small enough that the adults around her had forgotten she was listening, and then repeated in Cambon over someone's wine, and from there carried everywhere that gossip went, which was everywhere.
She could not have children. Or likely could not. The doctor had said *likely*, but in Feltham, *likely* had become *certainly* within the span of a single afternoon.
Ten years on and it was simply part of the landscape. No proposals. No particular prospects. The local pastor had once told her to accept this as a trial of faith, in a tone suggesting she had brought it on herself, and she had kicked him in the shin, which she did not regret.
She knew what she was. She had always known. She was not in the habit of pretending otherwise.
Ryan, when he chose to find a wife—and he would, eventually—would choose from among the young women who didn't come with complications. Julia. Patricia. Any number of others. This was simply logic.
Eloise pulled both cheeks outward in the mirror, surveyed the result, and returned to the table.
She placed Julia's card opposite Ryan's name. Then Patricia's, beside Julia's. One from Feltham, one from Cambon. Balanced. Reasonable. Nobody could call it preference.
"There."
She looked at the finished arrangement.
Her soul was not at ease in the slightest.
---
The last Monday of July arrived with the particular quality of days that have been anticipated too long.
The banquet—nominally the beginning of the summer festival, two days before Wednesday's main celebration—was expected to fill slowly. The first guests rarely appeared before six, and the real arrivals came after nine. Everyone in Blissbury had counted on this.
At five o'clock, Lady Greenwood's carriage came up the drive.
She stepped out looking entirely unrepentant about the hour, explained that her conversation with Sergeant Thornton in Cambon had been so enjoyable and so frustratingly brief that she had simply decided to leave early and have a proper one, and was shown into the sitting room.
She was not alone for long. The Cambon girls arrived in her wake, one after another, each with a reason and none of them convincing. The sitting room filled with particular efficiency.
Ryan came downstairs still adjusting his collar, did the arithmetic immediately, and went to perform his duties as host.
He had barely concluded that the Cambon contingent was unusually purposeful today when he heard a familiar voice from the entrance.
"Eloise!"
He turned to find Julia Ogilvy, who had already come through the door.
"You're here so early?"
"So are you." Eloise glanced toward the sitting room. A burst of laughter from inside answered her question. Julia's expression froze briefly as she recognized the sound of Cambon.
Before either of them could say anything, the rest of the Ogilvy family came through behind her, and a small projectile separated itself from the group.
"Sister Eloise!"
"Andrew!"
She caught him, absorbed the impact, and kissed his cheek firmly. He squirmed with the satisfaction of someone who had accomplished exactly what he intended.
Eloise looked over his head at the rest of the family and did a quick count.
"Andrew—where's Abigail?"
"Sister Abigail isn't coming. She said she didn't feel well."
"Still?"
"Yes! Oh—Mrs. Parker!" He was out of Eloise's arms and across the room before she could respond, making directly for Mrs. Parker and her tray of biscuits with the focused intent of someone who had been planning this for weeks.
Eloise made her way to Mrs. Ogilvy, who was shaking her head at her son's retreating back.
"Oh, Eloise." Mrs. Ogilvy touched her cheek warmly. "Are you managing? Without Mr. Severton here this year, it must have been so much harder."
"We've managed well. Ra—Sergeant Thornton has worked very hard." The correction was almost seamless. Almost.
She had decided today. With Feltham and Cambon both under this roof, she would go back to Sergeant Thornton. No more slipping. It was the sensible thing.
She drew her attention back to Mrs. Ogilvy.
"Is Abigail truly unwell?"
"She doesn't seem ill, exactly. But she's been so irritable lately that even Julia is careful around her. Something is troubling her—I can see it—but you know she won't say a word to anyone but you. Would you come and see us after the party?"
"Of course. I was planning to go home directly after the clearing up anyway."
She had been planning exactly this. Other years she might have stayed a few extra days in the peace of Blissbury, but this year she would leave as soon as she decently could.
Because if she stayed, she was going to make a mistake. She could feel it the way you could feel weather coming.
The Ogilvy family moved through to the sitting room, and Eloise stepped out onto the porch alone.
Abigail never missed this. Not once, in all the years Eloise could remember—not even when her knees ached so badly from the carriage that she had to be helped inside. She had always come.
Eloise looked toward Feltham in the fading afternoon light.
*Please let nothing be wrong.*
---
Abigail sat in her room and looked at the dress on the wall.
She had been working on it since winter. Money had gone elsewhere—toward Julia's prospects, toward the usual quiet accountings of a household that was always slightly more expensive than it appeared—and so she had taken one of Julia's older summer dresses, the one Julia had worn twice and pronounced outdated, and had remade it. Several months of careful work. New trimming, adjusted seams, different sleeves.
It had turned out well. She had been genuinely pleased with it.
She had been looking at it on its hook since January, thinking of the summer party, counting the weeks.
She did not go.
She was not sick.