“She will recover,” Joanna said airily. “Mrs. Pendleton will manage her.”
“Very well. Welcome to Langton, Lady Alice.”
“Your Grace.”
Cassian took Alice’s gloved hand and bowed over it. He did not, on this occasion, kiss it. He had said, four days ago in Mrs. Hatcher’s paneled back room, that he would not press her this week, and Alice realized with a leap of her heart that he meant to keep his word at every public bow as much as at every private one.
He let her hand go and turned to the meadow. “Lady Alice. Lady Daphne. Before you have a bow shoved into your hands, here are the rules of the game: there are no targets. There are no targets because Joanna has informed me that targets are for the unimaginative.”
“They are for the unimaginative,” Joanna affirmed.
“Each of you will shoot one arrow into the meadow. As far as you can. The farther the better. When all have shot, you will, on a signal from Lord Greencliff, run to retrieve your arrow and then run back. The first to return wins.”
“That is—” Alice began.
“That is, yes.”
“That is somewhat undignified, Your Grace.”
“It is entirely undignified, Lady Alice. It was my sister’s idea. I take no responsibility for it.”
“Lord Greencliff?”
“My Lady,” said the Viscount, who had come up to Cassian’s elbow. “I am the impartial judge. I take no sides. I will, however, observe that the lady who looks most ready to laugh at the whole affair shall perform best.”
“That is not boxing advice, Lord Greencliff.”
“No, My Lady. It is, however, advice.”
Alice looked at him.
He had only one good eye. The other was a small dark socket under a soft black patch he had tied at the back of his head with a length of cord. He was perhaps sixty years old and was leaning slightly on a black cane. Wrinkles of long use lined the corners of his mouth and his good eye.
Evidently, he had been amused by a great many things in life and had found the amusement worth keeping. He was watching her with an assessing look like someone who had been told a great deal about a pupil and was deciding whether the teller had been right.
She decided, in the next breath, that she liked him very much.
“My Lord.”
“My Lady.”
“I will do my best.”
“That is all any of us will do, My Lady.”
A bow was put into her hands. It was not a very heavy bow. It had been chosen, she suspected, for the wrists of the ladies present, for it had a light pull and a small arrow. Alice lifted it to her shoulder with a bright readiness. She had decided that she was, for the next forty minutes, going to do an undignified thing well.
She looked at Cassian.
He was watching her. He was watching her with the careful neutrality he had kept up all morning. But at the corner of his mouth, there was the small upward tilt that meant he was trying very hard not to smile.
“Your Grace.”
“Lady Alice.”
“How far is far?”
“Far is over the small fence.”