“I said that too. I said it was a rotten thing to do, breaking off a love affair to marry for money, and he said very nicely that he hadn’t just wanted to marry me for my money, with all sorts of complimentary things. It made me remember why I thought I could marry him in the first place. He said he’d had every intention of falling in love with me and that if it wasn’t for this other person he thought we’d have been very happy, and he wished he could have been the man for me— You’d better hope the wind doesn’t change, pulling a face like that.”

“I’ve never heard anything so sick-making in my life. He’s behaved thoroughly badly, and I hope the other girl gives him what-for if he has the nerve to go back to her.”

“Oh, so do I,” Fen assured her. “I hope she kicks him. But I didn’t say so. I stayed on the moral high ground, you know, looking wronged and letting him say nice things to me, and it was such a relief, Pat. To know that he wasn’t simply tired of me, that it wasn’t about me at all. And to have a really good excuse this time, because Jimmy has said he’ll take all the blame for not fulfilling his obligations. But also, to be honest, it’s an absolute joy to be unengaged again.”

“Is it?” Pat asked, with a little flutter in her chest.

“Oh, yes.” Fen attempted to twist round a bit more, hampered by her skirts. Pat shifted instead, bringing them closer. “I don’t want to go from my father’s household to a husband. I want to find out more about what I can do, which is more than who I can persuade to marry me. I want—I don’t know if you realise what you look like when you shoot, Pat. Utterly focused, and confident, and your whole body and face and everything caught up in it, and you radiate knowing what you’re doing. That’s what I want. To find that balance that you have, that certainty. Everyone says a woman has to get married to settle down—to have someone else possess her—but you’re self-possessed. That’s what I want.”

“But I’m not balanced or certain most of the time,” Pat said. “I’m awfully awkward.”

“You aren’t, you know. You might feel it, but you don’t look it, and honestly, I think everyone feels terribly awkward inside. It’s the human condition. But do you see? That I want to have ideas of my own, and believe them myself, and—and have a leg to stand on?”