Page 51 of Henhouse
“Sometimes I just need to be certain they’re there before I can see them,” Effie explained. She began ringing herself up, applying her employee discount to her purchases. “Also, that is a very pretty, very expensive ribbon. We should be putting it at eye level, not buried at the bottom. All the high-end materials should be at eye level.”
Basil shrugged. “Then make it happen.”
Effie wasn’t sure she wanted to do that. It didn’t feel like hers to decide, but her boss had always appreciated her initiative. Maybe she could improve the store in little ways. Be confident in that. Effie let the thought wither and turned to Basil. “Did you find a date yet?” Basil’s sigh could have extinguished a campfire.
“Romance is apparently dead,” he said brusquely.
“Oh, don’t say that. That’s not you.” Effie tutted. “It’s not dead, it’s . . . it takes a keen eye maybe. An openness that’s hard for people, but it’s still there.”
“So, you’re to blame,” Basil said with a laugh. “My romantic side has waned to allow yours to flourish. Balance and all that.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” But Effie wondered if there was some cosmic scale that kept track. She thought probably not. Theo insisted the universe was a flow of well-being, you either joined it or resisted it. Effie thought it a wonderfully elegant and simplistic belief. It was one she adopted almost immediately and it felt wonderful doing so. Basil might be in a period of resisting. “It will pass,” Effie said sweetly.
“What will?”
“Your doubts. You’ll be swooning again soon. Unless you’re not Basil anymore. In which case I demand the pod person that’s invaded your body to evacuate immediately.”
Effie grinned at Basil who shook his head in amused frustration. “You’re so weird,” he teased. “But you’re also probably right.”
Effie finished piling her goodies into a bag with a prideful smile. Maybe she was becoming more of a romantic. At least a less closeted one. She didn’t want to see Basil’s eagerness to find love extinguished, especially since she had no doubts that he had helped her get excited about finding Theo.Thatshe would always be grateful for.
“Louisa, where is all the furniture?” Ellen barked, laptop in one hand, a steaming cup of coffee in the other.
“I needed to clear it out for dancing. We’ve been over this.” Louisa returned her attention to her clipboard and Hope stifled a giggle at the rage she saw in Ellen’s gaze.
“Louisa,” Ellen huffed through gritted teeth. “The ball is still like six weeks away.”
“What’s your point?” Louisa asked and Hope was tickled that she truly didn’t see it as an issue, though Hope had to admit she was nearlyas irate as Ellen when she came downstairs to read in the great room after a particularly grueling outlining session for her next series. But Louisa put her to work instead.
Hope held the smart end of a tape measurer across the room. “Thirty-five feet,” she read off, and Louisa noted it on her clipboard. Ellen growled her frustration.
“Just go work in your private wing of the house,” Louisa suggested with a dismissive wave of her hand. “Or at the breakfast table.”
“I can’t, you’ve littered it with swatches and sheet music and font samples.”
“Well, dump it all in the box I left there.”
“Louisa, you’re being even more obtuse than usual about this.”
Hope tensed at the accusation. Things had been a bit off-kilter between the sisters since their father had visited. “I’m not trying to be obtuse; I’m trying to make this great.”
“It’s great every year,” Hope encouraged. This was Louisa’s fantasy, and she wanted to best it year after year. Hope couldn’t fault her for that, even if she wasn’t entirely certain how emptying the space weeks ahead of time would help. Louisa always needed visual aids, so maybe it had more to do with requiring a blank canvas than anything else.
Hope understood the urge to keep getting better. It’s how she felt each time she sat down to write. She never wanted to slip backward, to write less than how she had in a previous work.
Growth was life.
Louisa turned her attention to Hope, walking the end of the tape back into its reel. She held the clipboard out so Hope could see.
“Should we put the musicians in that corner blocking the doors onthe right side of the fireplace, or should we go fullBridgertonand set them up in a circle in the center of the room?”
“Do you think the space is big enough for that?”
“Wait,” Ellen said from the breakfast table where she’d shoved aside the mess. “You’re going to have them play inside? They’re usually on the back patio.”
“Really, Ellen. Keep up. This room is going to be full ballroom this year.”
“But there’s more space outside. It will be too loud.”
