stirred up. But there was a note in the tenor of his confession that gave her serious pause. It said, rather too plainly, that a lot of that trouble had been done to him, not by him. And that his mother hadn’t cared.
“Perhaps some people don’t worry enough, because the rest of us worry too much. We’ve used it all up,” she said instead. She breathed in a lungful of bracing winter air. “What’s the real reason you don’t want Captain Stanhope to take your ship south to hunt for whales?”
Mr. Flood grimaced. “Too many answers to that. It’s an extremely strenuous life, and neither of us is as young as we used to be. My joints are constantly stiff and sore, and I don’t do half the work he does on deck, in all that cold.” He jammed his hands into his coat pockets, and Agatha flexed her gloved hands in echo. Mr. Flood stared down at the road beneath his feet. “I’d rather see him retire than work himself into an injury, or worse—but he believes we can only be happy and safe as long as we stay on board ship.”
“Captains do have a great deal more power at sea than on land,” Agatha countered.
“Little kings of a wooden kingdom,” John muttered, with a nod. “I think it goes to Harry’s head sometimes.”
“How unusual in a man,” Agatha said dryly.
John’s eyes flew open and he laughed. “Spoken like an experienced widow.”
“Not that experienced,” Agatha countered. “Many a wife feels the same, whether her husband is living or not.”
Mr. Flood’s mouth quirked at one corner. “You’ll forgive the irony, but I don’t actually have a lot of experience with wives.”
“Of course you don’t,” Agatha said with a snort. “You sail off for years on end, stabbing hapless fish with long pointy sticks for money—but your very existence creates strictures people hold Penelope to account for, even if you don’t. You have that wooden kingdom where the laws favor you: she has no such escape.”
“Neither wives nor whales are as hapless as you’re implying, Mrs. Griffin.” Mr. Flood was frowning now, lightly, as if a stone had gotten into his shoe and he couldn’t shake it out again. He paused in the lane and turned to face her square. “Let’s be frank with one another. I’m sure Penelope has told you the truth about why she and I wed. Are you saying I should spend more time putting a polite gloss on our farce of a marriage?”
Agatha’s temper roared up like a bonfire. “I am saying that she did you an immense kindness, and you ought to show that you are conscious of the debt!”
Ahead, Sydney and Eliza whirled round, blinking at the anger in Agatha’s voice.
She clamped her lips shut, ground her teeth together, and marched on silently, head down.
Mr. Flood turned and followed, keeping pace with her. His hands slid out of his pockets and clasped behind his back. His head tilted up, squinting at the sky, which promised more snow in the evening to come.
Agatha watched him warily, afraid she’d gone too far in her friend’s defense.
When Mr. Flood looked back at her, his eyes were clear, and frank, and shrewd as he said: “We always worry about the people we love.”
And then he walked on, whistling, as though he hadn’t just scoured every last bit of wax off Agatha’s soul to reveal the true picture graven on the metal beneath.
Of course what she felt for Penelope Flood was not precisely friendship. It was longing, and protectiveness, and pride, and joy, all tangled up together. A good bit of wholesome lust as well, Agatha knew—and she’d focused on that because it was the most visible, and the most inexcusable.
But that was only the shading, not the scene itself. She knew what name to put to the entirety of her feelings, when she looked at the whole and not just each individual part.
Love, in a word. She ought to have realized sooner.
She certainly ought to have realized it before Penelope’s husband did.
Merry Christmas, everyone, Agatha thought bitterly, and trudged unhappily toward the Hall.
Chapter Twenty
Once home from church the party ate, and drank, and exchanged gifts as though their lives depended on it.
Flood had embroidered two new seabags for her brother and husband: sturdy canvas things, dotted with small bright bees and green leaves and a painstakingly stitched miniature Fern Hall. “Which was so reassuringly square and regular,” she explained, “that even my haphazard embroidery skills could attempt it.”
Mr.