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Responsibility. Georgie had always tried to evade it.

Circumstance had doled them far fewer small responsibilities than was the norm.

They didn’t have to build their own fire, or sweep their own ashes, launder their own linens, or boil their own eggs.

But the big responsibilities—every class had its version, and for all classes, so far as Georgie could tell, the responsibilities were starkly divided.

Masculine. Feminine.

You were a man, and so you perpetuated the family name, and added to its glory through your endeavors in the public sphere. You were a woman, and so you created sweet order within the household your husband ruled, and tended to the children whose moral development was your special charge.

That division—the circumscribed choices implied—made Georgie feel queasy, viscerally unwell.

Man or woman. Husband or wife. Father or mother.

They felt well, felt full , when they imagined themself between and beyond.

But in practice, those options didn’t exist. Not wanting to choose required a constant dance, a light-footed way of living premised on constant escapes from assumption, convention, obligation.

And responsibility, which was composed of all of these.

The morning after St. Alcmund’s, they drank their coffee in the breakfast room, looking out the window at the garden.

Phipps hadn’t come down. They were completely alone.

Once, their father would have sat to their right and dawdled smilingly over a plate of kippered herring, their mother across from him, talking horses.

Harry would have sat to their left, dripping egg on whatever chapbook he was reading, inevitably one that recounted the exploits of a highwayman.

And they would have been bouncing in their chair, interrupting everyone with cheerful prattle.

Showing off. Earning chuckles from their father, ripostes from their mother, eye rolls from Harry.

A united family, and a jolly one. A family that, behind closed doors, flouted society’s rules.

And maybe, when it came to their mother, even its own rules.

Which rules would they break in their life, and which would they follow? Being responsible to the people they loved, to the principle of love more broadly—they didn’t balk at that. But what would it entail?

Maybe they’d taken evasion too far.

Maybe it was time to think.

Thinking, they finished their coffee. Still thinking, they walked to the steward’s house to pay an unannounced visit to Mr. Fletcher.

Mr. Fletcher wasn’t at home.

Elf was.

The rest of the day unspooled in a treasure hunt that looked indistinguishable from kissing on a slow stroll through the woods.

During the week that followed, the routine was thus:

Georgie woke, breakfasted while paging through Arthur Young’s Course of Experimental Agriculture , then met Elf at Holywell Rock to commence the slow kissing and slower strolling.

When the pretense of progress toward the hoard couldn’t be maintained a minute longer, Elf went off to Marsden Hall.

Georgie walked or rode around the estate, talking to tenants, whose complaints turned over and over afterward in their head, like milk in a churn.

Sometimes Phipps accompanied them, because Charles Peach had only so much daylight to spare for illicit rendezvous.

In the evenings, they drove the gig to Marsden Hall, usually with cheesecakes, and passed an hour in the library with Elf, and Agnes, Hilda, Matilda, and Grendel, until Elf sent everyone to bed, which only rarely succeeded without her having to transport twins and dog bodily to the nursery.

On this particular night, Agnes floated up to bed early to finish a letter to Beatrice, and the twins fell asleep in front of the fire.

“I finally spoke with the steward, Fletcher,” reported Georgie, wedged with Elf in Mr. Marsden’s throne-like reading chair. “Caught him as he was going out his front door.”

“And?” Elf sat sideways, mostly on top of them, legs tucked beneath her. The position of her shoulder made it difficult to breathe, or their swollen heart was to blame, bigger by the day.

“He’s a Kentishman. He’s got this chin , this memorable chin.” Georgie thrust theirs out. “I remembered it.”

“You’d met him before?”

“Once before,” they said. “In Kent. My father had a dear friend, Mr. Owlett.” They paused.

Darling of my heart was what their father had called Mr. Owlett in private, but it didn’t seem right to share an eavesdropped endearment.

“Mr. Owlett had a nephew,” they continued, “a scapegrace. He was studying to be a solicitor but got sent down. He went to live with Mr. Owlett, and it came to light that he’d fled from enormous gaming debts.

Mr. Owlett settled them. He started playing cards again, with much greater luck.

Suspicious luck. Someone went so far as to call him a cheat, and then no one in Higham would receive him.

Mr. Owlett brought him to see my father—that’s when we met—and afterward, I stopped hearing about him. ”

Elf stirred. “Because your father made him steward here .”

“A favor for Mr. Owlett.” They sighed. “Father was an optimist. Probably he told himself young Fletcher just needed the right opportunity. Probably he intended to keep a close eye on the accounts and records. None of us expected…It was sudden, you know. I wasn’t there.

But Mr. Owlett, he told me one moment my father was standing on the lawn, and the next, he was on the ground.

And it was over. He didn’t suffer. That was the same week as Waterloo. ”

As the pause drew out, Elf’s fingers threaded through theirs.

They lifted their intertwined hands and brushed them against their lips.

“Harry can’t keep a close eye on anything he’s not trying to shoot.

He’s a soldier, a sportsman, a hero . No interest in humdrum details.

And he’s been away from England so long.

I’m sure he doesn’t ask questions, especially given that the news is always good.

For us. Fletcher assured me that the income from the land is increasing.

But I have been asking questions, of the farmers, and their lives are only getting harder. ”

If anything, the picture Robert Peach had painted was too rosy. Fletcher demanded that tenants bear the entire cost of repairs, labor and materials. And invested nothing in improvements. He raised rents whenever possible. He’d discontinued their father’s drainage project.

During his brief conversation with Georgie, he’d spoken in a soft, servile voice and humbly deflected every query. It was less a conversation than an exercise in trying to pin down a cloud.

Begging your pardon , he’d murmured after only a few minutes, looking sadly at his watch. As much as I sincerely wish it were otherwise, I must be off.

“What are you going to do?” Elf twisted to look at them.

Slowly, they lifted their gaze to the ceiling. Write to Harry, already at his wit’s end with them? Write to Mr. Owlett, well rid of his charge?

“I don’t know yet.” They started as a vise closed around their ankle. “What in the…?” It was only Matilda.

“Is there more cheesecake?” she asked.

After the twins had finished the cheesecake, and been deposited in the nursery, right before Georgie turned at the base of the stairs to depart for the night, Elf shook her head, as though she’d arrived at a hard reckoning.

“What?” they asked.

“The hoard,” she said, with palpable reluctance. “We’re wasting our time.”

A sinking feeling threatened to pull Georgie’s stomach down into their feet.

“We’ve been a bit remiss.” They couldn’t help but look at her lips.

“That’s not the main issue.” Her cheeks were turning pink. “There’s too much guesswork. Conjecture nested within conjecture. We might as well search for a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. I had to try. But now I have to remember my priorities.”

They frowned in confusion.

“The bluff. I’m going to start digging on the bluff again.” She reached for their hand and squeezed it, apologetically. “I received a response from Papa. The only workman he’ll sanction in the blue room is the original workman.”

“Who is…?” Their brows went up.

“Dead,” she said, wryly. “This is a medieval hall.”

“Right.”

She released their hand and gripped her own elbows. “And he’s extending the tour another week. I know the Northmen camped on the bluff. I found one artifact. Perhaps I’ll find another while he’s still with the Barrow Prince. If I dig.”

The glance she gave them was apprehensive. “I’m sorry. I understand if—”

“I’ll dig too,” they interrupted, grinning with relief. She didn’t want to stop spending time with them. She wanted to shift her efforts from the hoard to the camp. “I’m a dab at shoveling. Remember?”

“There’s nothing in it for you,” she protested. Her eyes, though, had begun to shine. “If we’re lucky, we’ll find some nails or buckles.”

We. She’d said we . It was decided.

They drew her toward them and kissed her mouth. “Wonderful. Nails and buckles.”

And this. More of this.

They could feel her smile, and a thrill curved their lips in answer as they pulled her nearer still. She wanted this as much as they did, at least as much as she wanted those nails and buckles, and that knowledge flooded them with a triumph so intense it felt perilously close to surrender.

—

The next morning, The Derby Mercury was on the table.

“The fourth of June?” They snatched it up. “How is it the fourth of June?”

Bagshaw was just leaving the breakfast room and paused at the door. “It is the fifth of June. The paper arrived yesterday afternoon.”

They sat down hard. “It is my birthday.”

“Many happy returns,” said Bagshaw.

“Do I have any letters?” they asked.

“No,” said Bagshaw.

“Will you tell Cook I’m having two guests for dinner?”

“Including Lord Phillip?” asked Bagshaw.