“If you’re worried about soiling all of your fine clothes on a picnic, I could lend you something,” Hazel said from the doorway to the room Lenore was staying in, startling Lenore half out of her wits.
“It’s not that,” Lenore laughed, pretending her tension was nothing more than being surprised. “I don’t mind a bit of dirt on my clothes. You should have seen the messes I made back home in Haskell.” She put down the skirt she’d been contemplating and picked up the flat document box she hadn’t dared to leave in London from the bed and tucked it as discreetly as she could into her suitcase.
“What was that?” Hazel asked, nodding to Lenore’s suitcase. She reached her left arm across her chest to grasp the bit that remained of her right arm, making Lenore feel as though she were crossing her arms and demanding answers.
“It’s, er, my important documents,” she said, deciding the truth was better than some sort of fabrication. “You can never be too careful as a foreigner traveling in a strange land.”
Hazel laughed. “Yorkshire is certainly strange. But after the stories you told this afternoon, I believe your Wyoming would give it a run for its money.”
“Haskell is colorful, that’s for certain,” Lenore said, leaving her things on the bed and walking out of the room. Hazel followed her, which was its own form of relief. “I think I’ll just wear this for the picnic. It’s not as though it’s a social occasion that requires high fashion.”
Hazel arched her unsinged eyebrow at Lenore and followed her down the stairs with a mysterious grin. Butterflies coalesced in Lenore’s gut. Phin was planning something with this picnic. She had guessed as much from the start, particularly given the look in his eyes when he’d asked her. Hazel’s mysterious expression only confirmed that thought.
“Are you ready to go trudging over the moors, like a heroine in a tragic story?” Phin asked when they reached the kitchen. He had changed into trousers and a shirt that were much better suited to their rural environment, but managed to look somehow more fashionable and put together than when he wore a suit straight out of the fashion magazines.
“I am more than ready,” Lenore answered with a bright smile.
“Then come along, Princess Lenore. The wilds await.”
He offered his arm, and Lenore took it, sending an excited smile to Gladys and Amaryllis, who sat at the kitchen table, devouring their supper with all the gusto of farm hands who had spent all day working. They waved at her and wished her and Phin goodbye with their mouths full and their eyes shining.
“Yorkshire truly is lovely,” Lenore said with a sigh as they made their way across the lawn to a footpath that ran between fields of wild grass and flowers that smelled as divine as they looked. Shades of orange and red blended with sage and darker greens in all directions. “It’s very different from Wyoming, but it has the same sort of homey feel to it.”
“I’m glad that you feel at home here,” Phin said with a grin that held far more excitement than a simple picnic near his home should have.
She sent him a flat look, pretending to be circumspect, even as her heart raced and her head spun. “You aren’t planning anything nefarious for this evening, are you?” she asked. The question was pointless, because of course he was.
“Now, what would make you say that?” He put on a baffled look that was as charming as it was false. His glasses only made him look more devilish somehow, and the warm light of the sun as it sank toward the horizon bathed him in rich hues of gold.
“I know you well enough to know you aren’t the sort to blithely jaunt off through the moors with a picnic basket over one arm,” she said, wondering if she wanted to wheedle a confession out of him and get him to stop his games or not.
“You’ve only seen me in London,” he said with a shrug. “You have no idea what I’m like when I’m in the country.”
“Oh, I have a feeling I do,” she murmured, sending him a wry grin.
They walked on for a bit, climbing a hill to where a small stand of trees in a remote clearing surrounded by tall grass could conceal while still giving them a beautiful view of the purples and greens of the surrounding moors. Their conversation turned to the antics of the girls, and Lenore shared a few stories of her younger siblings and the trouble they’d gotten into back home. For a few, glorious moments, it was as if nothing else existed in the world, as if Bart were a fiction and the troubles she’d gotten herself into had never happened. She wanted to embrace that moment for all it was worth.
“Hazel has truly outdone herself with this feast,” Phin commented once they were settled into their meal of cold meats and bread still warm from the oven. They ate while lounging on a thick blanket Phin had spread across the surprisingly springy grass near a scrubby tree. “I’m always amazed at what she can get up to, even with her limitations.”
“Yes, it’s amazing what a little determination and a mind as clever as I’ve seen Hazel’s is can accomplish,” Lenore said, washing down her last bite of bread with the locally-made mead Phin had brought with them. It was as good as any
