Chapter 3 #2
The housekeeper had come out to receive them. Hannah had materialized from the direction of the stables with a piece of straw in her hair and an impish expression on her face. She crossed the drive with purpose the moment she spotted Cori.
"You are here!" the child announced.
“Indeed, we are!” Lord Daniel scooped his niece up into his arms and she squealed with utter delight before finally begging to be returned to feet.
Once on the ground, Hannah smoothed her hands back over her frock and tried to appear more dignified. “Goodness, Uncle Daniel,” she admonished with a dignity beyond her years. “I’m supposed to be a lady.”
“Of course,” Lord Daniel agreed with a tight nod. “My apologies, Lady Hannah.”
The little girl beamed at that. Then she turned her attention to Cori. “You have to come see our new foals,” she began. “Bread has a very expressive face.” This appeared to be the most important piece of information she had assembled since their arrival. "I will show you after tea."
"I’ll look forward to it very much," Cori said.
"After tea," came a voice from above.
Cori looked up.
Linthorpe stood at the top of the steps in the doorway of his own home, in buckskin breeches and a dark coat that suggested he’d been working rather than prepared to receive guests but had come out anyway.
The Yorkshire light caught his fair hair and the grey of his eyes in a way the London drawing rooms hadn’t done.
He looked, she thought, very much himself in a way that he had not quite managed in London, as though Acklan agreed with him in some fundamental way that life in Town did not.
Their eyes met.
Cori’s belly flipped.
And it flipped again when he inclined his head. "Welcome to Acklan.” Though Linthorpe addressed the group, Cori felt like he was speaking only to her.
Lord Daniel ushered Cait up the steps and the rest followed. The warm noise of arrival took over, and through all of it Hannah's voice carried, explaining the expressive face of Bread, the new foal, to anyone within listening range.
Cori quietly followed the group inside.
Acklan smelled of cold stone and woodsmoke and something older than either, something she did not have a word for but recognized immediately as the smell of a house that had been loved for a very long time and by people who had not always found it easy.
The castle was, in a word, lovely.
After settling into her chambers, Cori was anxious to explore the castle.
She couldn’t help herself. After all, Acklan’s north turret had called to her ever since she’d first spotted it through the trees and she couldn’t wait to see it for herself.
She climbed the winding steps and found a door at the top that opened onto a small stone platform.
The view she found was her reward.
It was the most extraordinary thing Cori had seen since leaving Bermuda.
At some point along the journey, she'd heard Lord Daniel mention the view from the turret, somewhere between his third and fourth account of Acklan's various excellencies, and Cori had not forgotten his words.
She rested her hands against the low stone parapet and gazed out at the Yorkshire landscape that stretched out before her.
The moors.
She’d read about them. Lord Daniel had described them at some length and with a faraway expression. But nothing had quite prepared Cori for the reality of standing above them in the grey, August evening light and understanding, in her bones why one might love this place with a fierceness.
The moors were vast and austere. They were every shade of brown and gold and purple that Cori did not have names for. A wind came off them cool and clean and smelling of heather.
Bermuda was warm and saturated with color, a beauty that announced itself loudly and all at once. But this was something different. This was a beauty that asked you to stand still and pay attention and then rewarded you for having done so.
After some time, she spotted the two foals Hannah had described in the north paddock below. Small and leggy, standing close to their mothers in the cooling evening. She smiled at the sight.
Then she heard the door behind her, and she turned.
The Duke of Linthorpe stood in the doorway, a look of surprise on his face. It was rather clear he had not expected to find anyone else there.
"I beg your pardon," he said. "I didn’t realize..."
"Please don't go," Cori said, before she thought the better of it.
He stopped.
"I only meant," she said, with slightly more composure, "that the view is remarkable enough for two people. If you don't mind the company."
He considered this for a moment. Then he stepped out onto the platform and came to stand beside her at the parapet, not close, but close enough, and looked out at the moors.
She was aware of him the way she was aware of the wind, just by feeling the shift in the air beside her.
Neither of them said anything for a while. The wind moved through the heather and somewhere on the far edge of the estate a lapwing called, that tumbling cry she had come to associate with Yorkshire in just one day.
"Lord Daniel didn’t do it justice," Cori whispered. “The view from here.”
"I’m glad you approve," His Grace said, his voice low in his throat and made shivers race through her at the sound.
She wanted to say something clever, something that would capture the moment perfectly. Instead, she said, "The foals are in the north paddock."
The duke looked down at the horses. "Bread and Butter,” he said. "Hannah’s named them both. I wasn’t consulted, but I’ve been told that Bread has a very expressive face."
Cori laughed, she couldn't help it. From beside her came something quieter, not quite a laugh, but very close to it. He’d found it funny but hadn’t let himself show it fully.
They stood a little while longer, looking at the moors and the foals and the wide, grey sky.
The wind came off the heather cool and clean.
And Cori let herself be there, absorbing it all, in the last of the evening light, at the top of a turret she had heard so much about, beside a man she had thought about nearly every day since she’d first spotted him across a crowded ballroom.
Dining Hall
Acklan Castle
James couldn’t remember the last time the dining room at Acklan had sounded so full of life.
Six people was not, by any standard, a large dinner.
But six people who were genuinely glad to be in the same room, in a home that had been quiet for too long, made a different kind of noise than six people performing the obligations of a formal evening.
The candles were lit along the length of the table and the fire had been built up against the unseasonable chill, and the whole room had the particular warmth of a place that had remembered what it was for.
From his spot at the head of the table, James watched his brother hold court and found, somewhat to his own surprise, that he didn’t want to be anywhere else.
"The point," Daniel began, and not for the first time by the sound of it, "is not the quality of the juggling.
The point is the conviction with which the juggling is performed.
A man who juggles three things with absolute certainty is considerably more entertaining than a man who juggles six things while looking anxious about it. "
"That is the most extraordinary position I have ever heard taken on juggling," Hythe said, amusement in voice.
"I have strong feelings on the subject,” Daniel said.
"You have strong feelings about everything," Miss Beckett said, beside him.
"That is also true," Daniel agreed cheerfully.
Then he looked at his intended the way he had been looking at her all evening, the way that James had been noticing for some time now.
Though he was genuinely glad for his brother, he found the sheer volume of Daniel's devotion to be slightly exhausting.
"What do you think of Acklan, Miss Beckett?" James asked his soon-to-be sister-in-law.
"It is everything Daniel said it was." Miss Beckett beamed in Daniel’s direction. "And a good deal more. There’s something about the way Acklan sits in the valley. As though it belongs here in a way that was not designed but simply true."
Daniel looked at auburn-haired beauty he intended to wed as though she had just said the most remarkable thing he had ever heard. Of course, Daniel looked at the girl the very same way approximately forty times a day. Even so, the whole thing had not yet become less affecting to witness.
"Yes," James said, because Miss Beckett was right in this, and it deserved acknowledging. "That’s exactly it."
Hythe set down his wine and glanced in James’ direction. "I understand your north field has been giving you some trouble."
“I mentioned it in passing,” Daniel told James.
"The flooding last spring?” Hythe asked. “The lower drainage not clearing the way it should."
"We have dug it out twice," James said with a nod. "It fills again within a fortnight."
"The field sits too low," Hythe said. "You won’t solve it by clearing. You’ll need to redirect entire thing. There’s a rather good drainage engineer in York.
Pemberton, I think his name is, who did something similar for Carlisle on his eastern fields three years ago.
The solution was counterintuitive. He ran the channel north rather than south, away from the natural fall of the land, and it worked because—"
"Because the blockage was not in the channel," Miss Corinna said, from further down the table.
Everyone looked at her.
She seemed mildly surprised to find she’d spoken aloud. "I beg your pardon," she said, composedly. "I didn’t mean to interrupt."
"No, go on," James said, before he thought about whether he meant to say it.
She glanced at him once, quickly, and then at Hythe.
Then said, with a directness he found rather endearing, "The blockage is never in the channel when the channel keeps filling. The channel is doing exactly what it should. The problem is where the water’s coming from in the first place.
" She shrugged one shoulder. "We had something similar with the eastern salt pans on the Turks a few years ago. The rakers kept clearing the drainage but it kept backing up. Everyone assumed the channel was the problem, but it was the land above it. There was a section where the gradient had shifted, not much. It was barely perceptible, but enough to redirect the natural flow of the water. Once we found the problem, we didn’t need to touch the channel at all. "
The room was quiet for a moment. Miss Beckett smiled at her younger sister, warmth evident in her expression.
Hythe set down his wine and looked at the girl. Something in his face had shifted. "How did you find it?" he asked.
"We walked the land after a heavy rain," she explained. "We watched where the water actually went rather than where the maps said it should go."
James looked at her.
She wasn’t making a point of her knowledge or angling for his notice.
She was merely answering a question that interested her with the information she had, in the same matter-of-fact way she’d answered every question all evening.
It was, he realized, exactly who she was.
The corridor. The turret. Now this. Just herself, saying whatever was true.
He wasn't sure what he'd assumed she was. Something pleasant and warm and uncomplicated, he supposed, without having thought about her consciously. A girl who loved animals and laughed easily and had her sisters' charm without their particular weight of purpose.
He hadn't been wrong about that, not exactly. He had simply been incomplete in his estimate.
The candlelight caught the red in her light hair as she turned back to Hythe, and he noticed, almost against his will, that her eyes were very blue. She was lovely. More than lovely, if he was honest.
"The north boundary," he said, finding his voice. "There’s a section above the field where the land has always been uneven. I’ve never thought to look at it after a rain."
"It may be worth looking into," Miss Corinna suggested shrugging slightly once more." It might not be the same problem we had at all. But if it is, you’ll know the moment you see it."
"Brilliant," he said.
"Pemberton may still be worth consulting," Hythe put in. "But perhaps after you’ve walked the north boundary."
"Perhaps after that," James agreed.
Daniel, who had been watching all of this from across the table with avid interest, picked up his wine and said nothing, which was, in James’ experience, considerably more pointed than anything he might have said aloud.
James returned his attention to the pheasant, but he found he was thinking about the north boundary and certain clever girl with very blue eyes from Bermuda.