"Oh..."
The question landed somewhere it shouldn't have, and Abigail needed a moment before she could speak.
Not because she didn't have an answer. Because of the way he had knelt.
In Feltham, in Cambon, among the polished manners of people who prided themselves on good breeding, there was a particular quality of consideration that Abigail had learned to recognize and quietly endure: the sympathy directed at her whenever she entered a room. Faces softened. Voices gentled. The careful, practiced kindness of people performing their own compassion. She understood that it was well-meant. It had never once made her feel less like an object to be pitied.
This man had knelt to return her crutch, and his eyes had held nothing except apology for having startled her.
She had no idea what to do with that.
"My hand is dirty—I've muddied your crutch. I'm sorry."
He thought she'd hesitated because of the dirt.
Abigail came back to herself, shook her head, and took the crutch from him.
"No, it isn't that." She found her footing and stood. "I'm Abigail Ogilvy. I live here in Feltham." She looked at the two of them—the mud, the weary horses, the western road behind them—and her caution reasserted itself. "You said you were going to Blissbury. If you don't mind my asking, what brings you there today?"
Today being, specifically, the day of the banquet. These two had not been on any invitation list she'd seen, and she knew that list well.
The second man—Richard—laughed and offered an explanation involving Sergeant Thornton, a detour toward Dorset, poor navigation, and a swamp.
Philip looked pained by most of the explanation.
Abigail listened to it and thought: these were either exactly what they appeared to be, or they were catastrophically bad at being anything else.
Philip gave her the condensed version. They needed the road to Blissbury, and they'd gotten themselves thoroughly lost.
"Blissbury is along the eastern road—straight on, no turnings. About an hour's ride, usually." She paused, looking at the state of them. The horses were tired and still muddy to the shoulder. The men weren't much better. "If you don't mind stopping first—you're welcome to come in and clean up before you go."
---
By eight o'clock, Blissbury had grown loud.
The guests had come early—earlier than any previous year—and they had not stopped coming. The wine in the hall and the drawing room had been replenished twice already. Mr. Palmer was directing servants with the particular frantic efficiency of a man who had prepared for one kind of evening and received another.
In the capital, banquets were adult affairs. Here, the summer celebration was significant enough that children arrived in arms or clinging to skirts, presented to Blissbury as though the house itself were something worth showing them. The noise was considerable.
Eloise barely heard it. She was moving constantly, tracking twenty things, catching problems before they became visible to guests.
She was also watching Ryan.
She hadn't meant to. It had simply happened—her attention kept finding him across rooms, the way it found things that were slightly wrong or slightly remarkable.
He was remarkable. She could admit that much, privately, without it meaning anything. He had been at Blissbury for a matter of months, and he stood among people who had known each other for twenty years and looked as though he had always been there. Easy and unhurried, attentive without being watchful, finding the register of every conversation without appearing to search for it.
*Who would have thought he only came this year.*
"Eloise!"
A group of her Cambon friends materialized at her elbow and drew her into a corner with the decisive grip of women who had been waiting to do exactly this.
"What? What's happened?"
"Who is sitting opposite Sergeant Thornton at dinner?"
"We decided it was Patricia—"
"No, Julia, I said Julia—"
"Lady Greenwood's been positioning Patricia for weeks—"
Eloise looked at them.
"This is why you pulled me into a corner?"
"Yes! Obviously! Didn't you hear what he said?"
She had been receiving guests. She had not been listening to his conversations.
"Lady Greenwood asked him whether he was considering marriage and settling here," one of her friends said, barely containing herself, "and he said it was a very tempting offer. And then she asked whether he had anyone in mind, and he thought about it—actually thought about it, didn't brush it off—and said that he did."
They all looked at Eloise as though expecting something to detonate.
"So now everyone wants to know who's sitting across from him, because when you showed him the seating plan—"
"He reviewed it. As host. That's ordinary."
"He reviewed it and didn't say a word. Which means he was satisfied. Which means—Eloise, which one is it? Julia or Patricia?"
Eloise checked the time on her watch. Ten minutes before they moved to the dining room. She could say it now; it would resolve nothing because there was nothing to resolve, but they would stop looking at her like that.
"Both of them are seated opposite him."
"I knew it—"
"Wait, *both*? Which one does he actually—Eloise, which one do you think he likes?"
The room was warm. It had been warm all evening—entirely explainable, given the number of people and the season.
Eloise kept her expression pleasant and her voice level.
"I really couldn't say."