Chapter 3
Linthorpe travelling carriage,
near Acklan Castle
North Riding, Yorkshire
James Westham rarely visited Acklan Castle since Alice died three years ago.
When he did have to visit, the trips only lasted as long as they needed to and not a moment longer.
He had developed a thorough system for managing Acklan from London, for ensuring the estate ran efficiently in his absence, for trusting Turlow with matters requiring decisions and writing detailed instructions for those that did not.
It was, by any reasonable measure, an adequate arrangement.
Of course, Daniel thought it was a damned shame to stay away and said so at every available opportunity.
James pulled back the carriage curtain as they turned through the gates and looked out at the long drive.
He had prepared himself thoroughly for this.
He had been thorough, and organized, and sensible about it all the way from London.
It was only now, with Acklan actually in front of him, that he discovered thorough preparation and actually being ready were not quite the same thing.
Summer had refused to arrive that year. The moors looked less purple than pewter, and the sky above Acklan pressed down low, flat and white.
It should have looked bleak, but it didn’t.
The castle sat in its shallow valley the way it always had, solid and unhurried, the north turret catching what thin light there was, and the long windows of the west wing reflecting the pale sky back at him.
The grounds were immaculate. Turlow had seen to that.
Beside him, Hannah had her nose pressed to the glass.
"There it is," she announced as though she was personally responsible for the castle's continued existence.
"There it is," James agreed.
Across the carriage, Miss Roseberry looked up from the basket in her lap with the expression of a woman approaching the outer edge of her patience.
Biscuit had not taken to carriage travel and had been making her feelings about the situation known, rather loudly.
Marmalade, for his part, had quietly escaped the basket four times under the cover of his littermate’s raucous complaints.
Both kittens had been Hannah's very persuasive idea, and James had acquiesced. He’d been regretting it since approximately Islington.
Luckily, the other two kittens had made the journey with the luggage or Miss Roseberry might have jumped from the carriage some time ago.
As it was, the governess would probably ask for a raise in her wages before they reached Acklan and James wouldn’t blame her one bit.
The carriage drew up to the front steps and the housekeeper, Mrs. Fenwick, appeared at the door before James had finished descending. He helped Hannah down, and she immediately squirmed free, bolting in the direction of the stables. He let her go because some things did not change.
"Your Grace." Mrs. Fenwick curtseyed. "Welcome home."
Home.
He said nothing, simply nodded his thanks and went inside.
James stood in the entrance hall for a moment after the door closed behind him.
The same stone flags. The same carved staircase.
The same north light through the tall windows at the end of the passage.
The house smelled of beeswax and cold stone and something older than either, something that was solely Acklan and had no other name.
Alice had loved it here.
He went to the study to find that Turlow had left a stack of correspondence on the desk for his attention. James promptly sat down and lost himself in the things that needed to be done. It was easier, after all, than letting old memories take up residence in his consciousness.
The next day…
The Duke of Hythe's travelling carriage
Somewhere in Lincolnshire
Cori had been on longer journeys than the trek from London to Yorkshire.
She had, after all, crossed the Atlantic more than once.
However, none of her Atlantic crossings had ever quite managed this particular quality of sustained intensity.
Then again, none of those voyages had contained the Duchess of Hythe with her warm, knowing eyes, Lord Daniel who was too perceptive by half, and the Duke of Hythe who appeared to be reading his gazette but almost certainly was not.
Cait, for her part, had said nothing and was therefore the most alarming of all of them.
The Atlantic had not known what she was thinking.
These people, she suspected, knew exactly what she was thinking. Or at least some of them did. But even one was too many.
"Are you warm enough, my dear?" the duchess asked, for the second time in an hour.
"Perfectly, thank you," Cori replied.
"You seem a little flushed," Lord Daniel said, from the opposite seat where he had Cait tucked against his side.
"The carriage is warm,” Cori said, which was a ridiculous thing to say because it was rather cold and dreary outside. But if anyone disagreed with her, they did not say so.
Cait tilted her head toward the window. "How far are we?"
"Less than an hour," the Duke of Hythe said, without looking up from his gazette, which settled the question of whether he was actually reading it or not.
"Less than an hour," Lord Daniel agreed with great satisfaction. He looked at Cait. "You will love it."
"You have said so," Cait replied. “Repeatedly.”
"And I will keep saying so until you confirm that I was right."
"Which she will eventually," Cori said, because agreeing with Daniel kept him from turning his attention back to her, where it had been doing inconvenient things for the better part of the journey.
He turned his attention back to her anyway.
"You seem in good spirits," Daniel said, glancing away from the window.
"It is a very fine day," Cori said pleasantly.
"It is not a fine day at all," Daniel replied. "It is grey and cold and the road through Lincolnshire is in a deplorable state. You’ve barely noticed any of it."
"I’m an optimistic traveler," Cori said.
"Mm." He did not appear convinced. "Hythe, has Miss Corinna struck you as a particularly optimistic traveler up to this point?"
The Duke of Hythe lowered his gazette by precisely one inch. "I think Miss Corinna is enjoying the journey," he said, very mildly, "in her own way."
Which was unhelpful but kind, and Cori liked him enormously for it.
"Leave her alone, Daniel," the duchess said with a slight lift of her brow.
"I’m simply making conversation."
"You are never simply making conversation," Cait said, closing her eyes against the swaying of the coach.
Daniel looked at her with such open warmth that Cori had to look away. "That," he said, "is one of the things I love most about you. You never let me get away with anything."
"I know," Cait replied, the tips of her lips curving upward just so.
Cori smiled at the window. They were adorable. She was genuinely happy for her sister. If she could find even half of that happiness one day.
An image of the Duke of Linthorpe popped in her mind and Cori tried her best to push it away.
She was nervous enough as it was. The last time Linthorpe had seen her, she had been sitting on the floor of his corridor with his daughter and a kitten and approximately none of the composure she had spent the previous fortnight constructing.
He had been, if she was honest, rather kind about the whole thing.
But kind was not the same as forgetting, and she was fairly certain he had not forgotten the image of her on his floor.
And that was not the impression she’d wanted to leave him with. Her cheeks stung anew.
A fortnight at Acklan.
She was going to be perfectly composed and sensible for every moment of it. Perfectly composed and sensible, she thought, and sat back, and was very nearly both for the remainder of the journey.
The hour passed in the way the last hour of a long journey always did, both quickly and not quickly enough. And then the carriage slowed, and the wheels crunched on a different surface, and Daniel sat forward.
"There," he said suddenly. "There, through that gap in the trees. Can you see it?"
Cori leaned forward and looked.
The top of the north turret, just visible above a stand of ash trees, pale stone against the pale sky.
Oh.
Her heart did something completely uncooperative.
Perfectly composed and sensible, she thought, and sat back, and was very nearly both for the remainder of the journey.
After the carriage finally reached its destination and rolled to a stop, Cori allowed Lord Daniel to help her from the conveyance. Then she stood there for a moment, soaking in the atmosphere of the place, letting it swirl around her like a dream.
Acklan Castle rose out of its valley with the confidence of something that had been there for a very long time and expected to be there for considerably longer.
It was not grand in the way that London houses were grand.
There was nothing polished about it, nothing that asked to be admired.
Instead, it was grand in the way of things that had earned it, stone by stone over centuries, the north turret standing against the pale sky with a solidity that made the flat white clouds seem temporary by comparison.
The grounds spread away on either side, formal near the house and then less formal and then growing more wild before fading into moorland that stretched to the horizon and beyond.
Well?" Daniel appeared at Cait's elbow, practically vibrating, having clearly been waiting a very long time for exactly this moment.
Cait looked at the castle for a long moment. "You were right," she said.
The smile on his face was one of the better ones Cori had seen on her sister's betrothed, which was saying something as Lord Daniel had a considerable range as far as smiles went.