“I can’t say whom we robbed, since we don’t know,” admitted Emmie. “But enough of our parcels have gone missing that we felt it was really more of a trade than anything else. I had no idea you were a peer of the realm.”
“I’m not. My father is. And he hardly counts.” Captain DeWitt cast a wary glance behind him. “It’s a bit stifling—do you mind if we step out for a moment?”
It was all of fifty degrees inside, but something about the press of bodies made it seem warmer than it was. Maud was fighting with Alice over the choice of music for the phonograph, and the goat was trying to eat someone’s uniform.
“Yes, let’s,” said Emmie, and quelled the thought that Kate probably wouldn’t approve. Kate was deep in conversation with Captain DeWitt’s commanding officer, the one with the bushy mustache. “I can’t promise the air will be much clearer out here, but at least it will be quieter.”
She led Captain DeWitt out of the Orangerie, to a makeshift bench overlooking the green water of the moat, with its well-worn placard reading “Bonne à Boire.”
They sat down on the bench, the air crisp on Emmie’s flushed cheeks, the bare trees rustling around them.
She’d sat out dances before, in ballrooms in New York, decked in satin and gauze, pearls at her neck and ears, hothouse flowers blooming. She’d sat with any number of eligible bachelors, Yale men and Harvard men, old money and somewhat less old money; she’d sat on narrow gold benches in dresses that bared her neck and shoulders, her legs clad in whisper-thin silk stockings and heeled slippers instead of heavy lisle and hobnail boots.
And yet she’d never felt so bare, so aware of the wind finding the naked spaces between her collar and her chignon, the backs of her ears, the nape of her neck. She could feel the plank bend as Captain DeWitt sat next to her, painfully aware of every movement, every creak of the wood, as the plank dipped, tilting them closer. She could smell soap and wool—this must be his best uniform, the one that got saved, that didn’t get drenched in trench mud.
Emmie remembered, uncomfortably, that her own uniform had been rather spottily laundered and was badly patched in several places, and that those brave touches of French blue were now a rather dirty gray.
“How is one partly a peer?” Emmie asked, just to have something to say. “I thought you either were or weren’t.”
“That depends on who you ask,” said Captain DeWitt. He turned slightly toward her, his eyes green and brown like the moat. “My father is what they call a soap-and-pickle peer—still with the stink of the shop about him.”
“What’s wrong with soap and pickles?”
Captain DeWitt looked at her quizzically, as if trying to figure out if she really meant it. “They’re common. Trade. When I was at Harrow, it was considered a great joke to try to brand me with a burning biscuit.”
Emmie sat up straight, making the bench bounce. “That’s ridiculous! Think of the joy you’ve brought to people with your biscuits. What have any of them ever done for anyone?”
Captain DeWitt smiled wryly. “Bunk with William the Conqueror? Affright the French at Agincourt?”
“You’re allies with the French now, so that’s not much use, is it? Affrighting the French, I mean. I’d far rather have tea biscuits.” Struck by a sudden thought, she tilted her head up at him, studying his face. “Is that why you were masquerading as the Scarlet Pimpernel? I thought you wouldn’t tell me your name because it was something awful—like Algernon.”
“There’s that too. And no,” he added, with the hint of a smile, like sunlight on the moat, “it’s not Algernon.”
“It can’t be more awful than mine. Imagine going through your life named Emmaline. I tried to get my governess to call me Lily, but my mother found out and put a stop to it.”
“Why Lily?” He rested the flat of his hand against the seat of the bench, his arm brushing the back of Emmie’s jacket.
“Well, you know, flowers and all that.” Emmie hunched her shoulders, looking away, feeling all the old awkwardness descend on her. She had thought it sounded delicate and feminine, the name of someone who floated rather than clomped and didn’t wear dancing slippers the size of boats. But she didn’t want to admit to any of that.
“The lilies of the field that toil not?” offered Captain DeWitt.
“Oh, do we toil,” said Emmie with feeling, trying to make a joke of it. “I’ve spent the week in the freezing cellar stringing gifts on bits of fishing line for the children.”