Chapter 5
After the excitement of the morning, Acklan had settled back into its usual routine by afternoon.
Lord and Lady Darling had arrived with Captain Gates before noon, and the house had absorbed the additions as if they were always meant to be there.
Hannah, restored to the nursery and entirely unaware of the chaos she had caused, had declared the morning a great success and gone to sleep after luncheon without argument, much to Miss Roseberry’s relief.
James worked at his desk for most of the afternoon, going through correspondence that had accumulated during his journey from London, and he’d been doing it with an ease that surprised him.
The study at Acklan had always been the room he found hardest to sit in for long.
Too many mornings with his father at this desk.
Too many evenings with Alice in the chair by the window, reading while he worked, a quiet domestic life that had seemed permanent but hadn’t been.
He had developed, over the last three years, a habit of conducting estate business in London rather than at Acklan, which Turlow managed with professional patience and James knew was not ideal.
This afternoon, however, the study was simply a room with good light and a desk, and he’d sat there without difficulty, which he noticed without examining the novelty too closely.
When he heard the sound of an approaching carriage on the gravel road, he set down his pen and went to the window.
His sister had arrived. He felt the warmth of it settle into him, quiet and certain, the way Laura's presence always had.
He was at the front door before Mills had finished opening it.
The air was cool and grey and carried the smell of heather from the moors in the distance. James stood at the top of the steps and watched the carriage come to a full stop and felt something in his chest expand.
The Reverend Mr. Thomas Fairleigh alighted first from the conveyance, lean and dark-haired, quietly dignified in a way that had nothing to do with his collar and everything to do simply who he simply was.
Fairleigh turned to offer his hand to Laura, steady and unhurried about it in the way he was steady and unhurried about most things.
Laura stepped onto the drive in a dark travelling dress and looked up at the castle.
When her eyes found James at the steps, she smiled.
James went down to meet her. Laura was fair and slight. She had their mother's eyes, a particular shade of blue that had always seen to reassure him in ways words could not.
She took both of his hands in hers, the way she always had, since he was small enough for it to mean something different. Then she looked at him, the way Laura always looked at him. Carefully. Thoroughly. She had known his face since he’d been born and she missed nothing in her assessment.
"James," she said.
"Laura." He squeezed her hands. "You look well." And she did, and he was always happy that she did.
"I am well," she said. "The journey was easy. Thomas slept through Northallerton."
"I did not sleep," Fairleigh said, from behind her as he leaned forward to shake James’ hand. "I was resting my eyes."
"For forty minutes," Laura said with a slight smile tipping her lips.
"A productive forty minutes," her husband returned merrily, which was apparently a conversation they had conducted before and found no less satisfying for the repetition.
James smiled. He’d liked Thomas Fairleigh the first time he met him, but he saw the reverend too infrequently. In fact, he had decided some time ago that this was something he intended to rectify. He just hadn’t done so yet.
Laura was still looking at James.
Not searching for something wrong, just looking at him the way she always had. Quiet and thorough. James had never once managed to conceal anything from her.
He saw the moment she saw it.
Nothing crossed her face. Her expression did not change at all, which with Laura meant everything. She held his gaze a moment longer than necessary and then turned toward the castle.
"All is well since your arrival?" she asked.
"Hannah took ten years off my life this morning, but all is well now.” James offered her his arm and then directed her toward the entrance.
His sister blinked up at him. “What did she do?”
He heaved a sigh. "She’d arranged herself in the hay in the stables behind one of the mares sometime in the night. A grand search was made of the entire castle and the grounds, but she was perfectly safe and completely unaware of the chaos she caused."
"In the stables?" Laura shook her head in mild amusement as they reached the threshold. “The little imp. She’s more like Daniel than you, isn’t she?”
Truer words, James supposed. And it did not miss his notice that Daniel had muttered almost those exact same words about Hannah. “And I have both of them to contend with on a daily basis.”
“Which you love,” Laura said as they crossed the threshold into the entrance hall. "What will you do when Daniel is married and out of your hair?”
Miss him terribly, not that James would say those words aloud, even if Laura could read them on his countenance. “Be happy for him.”
“Indeed!” His sister beamed. “I cannot wait to meet Caitrin properly. Daniel's letters have been rather effusive."
"Discount half of whatever he’s said on general principle," James told her.
Laura tilted her head in slight surprise, her brow lifted just so.
"What I mean to say,” James continued, “is that Miss Beckett is genuinely remarkable. Nothing like what I expected."
"What did you expect?"
"Someone more like Daniel, I suppose," he said. "God help us all if that had been the case."
Laura laughed, a real laugh, and James felt the lightness of the morning return in a rush.
"She has a sister," Laura said. “Aunt Harriet mentioned her in a letter.”
Of course she had. Aunt Harriet had, after all, positioned Miss Corinna next to James at that dinner some weeks ago. James shook the thought of his meddlesome aunt away. “She has two sisters. The eldest recently married the Earl of Darling.”
“And the youngest?”
“Miss Corinna,” he said.
“Yes, that is the one,” Laura agreed with the deceptively mild tone she used when she was paying close attention to something but pretending she wasn’t. "Is she in residence as well?"
"She is," James said with a nod. "In fact, she’s the one who found Hannah this morning."
"Was she, indeed?" Laura returned her ever-knowing gaze to James’ face.
He glanced back toward the threshold and wished Fairleigh would quicken his step and distract Laura from whatever she was noticing on his face at the moment. After all, he wasn’t prepared to—
Luckily, a sound on the staircase saved him.
Hannah appeared at the top of the stairs in a state that suggested she had just woken from her nap, her hair escaping its plait and her frock in disarray after an afternoon of determined sleeping.
Hannah blinked down at the entrance hall, and then her gaze landed on Laura. A genuine smile spread across her face.
"Aunt Laura!" She came down the stairs at a pace that made Miss Roseberry, appearing behind her, close her eyes briefly as though to stave off a headache.
Laura crouched to receive Hannah’s welcome and held her close. "There she is," she said. "Our famous adventurer."
"I was not adventuring," Hannah said, into Laura's shoulder. "I was visiting the foals."
"At three o'clock in the morning," James grumbled.
"They didn’t mind the hour," Hannah said, with great dignity, which was entirely inarguable.
Laura looked at James over the top of Hannah's head, and James felt the last of the morning's weight go out of him.
"After you shake off your travel dust," he said, "why don't you join everyone in the drawing room? You can make your own assessment of the assembled company."
"That sounds lovely," Laura replied. She rose, took Hannah's hand, and allowed herself to be led upstairs by her five-year-old niece.
Fairleigh sidled up beside James and watched the pair ascend the stairs. “She has missed this," he said quietly. "More than she says."
James cast a sidelong glance at his brother-in-law. "As have we all.”
Satisfied that Laura and Thomas were properly settled, James returned to his study.
The Greaves tenancy needed sorting out and he’d been working through the details since lunch.
The family had farmed the east quarter for three generations, and the question of whether the son was ready to take on the lease after his father's passing was not a simple one.
James was midway through his third reading of the Greaves letter when a knock came at his door.
"Come in," he said, without looking up.
The door opened and soft footsteps crossed the floor. James finished the sentence he was reading, made a note in the margin, and looked up to find his sister sitting in the chair directly across from his desk, her hands folded demurely in her lap.
Damn it all.
Laura’s ever-knowing gaze met his and James swallowed.
He set down his quill and wondered how he'd ever imagined he could avoid this interview indefinitely. He should have known better. He did, after all, know his sister rather well. Just as well as she knew him, to be precise.
"Daniel's letters," she began without preamble, "have been odd for weeks."
"Daniel's odd. It would stand to reason that his letters would reflect this."
Blast it. He'd known perfectly well this was coming, and there was no evading Laura when she'd made up her mind.
She did not take his bait. "He says you're well and then he says something that makes me certain you're not, and then he says you're well again." She kept her gaze trained on him. "Something is wrong."
Something James tried hard not to think about. "Daniel worries," he hedged. “But there’s nothing—”
"James Westham," she said with the same no-nonsense tone she’d used when he was nine and had hidden a harmless snake in Daniel’s wardrobe.