Chapter 6
Kitchen Garden
Acklan Castle
The kitchen garden at Acklan was walled on three sides and open to the moors on the fourth.
Just after dawn, it was rather a wonderful place to explore.
The vegetables grew in tidy rows in the greyish morning light.
The espaliered fruit trees along the south wall went about their business with quiet determination.
Somewhere amongst the apple trees, one blackbird was making its views known to the world while a second blackbird disagreed most vehemently.
It was, Cori thought, a very good garden.
The kind that got on perfectly well without anyone paying attention to it.
Upon her arrival at Acklan, she’d discovered the garden by following the smell of damp earth and herbs, and she’d visited it more than once since that time. She was, after all, unable to remain inside when there was so much to experience out of doors.
The air in Yorkshire had a freshness to it that Cori had come to associate with the moors, something clean and cold that felt, after so much time in London, like breathing properly for the first time.
This morning, however, she was hoping for a bit of clarity after she’d spent the night with her mind whirring on the previous day’s events.
Linthorpe’s invitation to walk the north boundary.
The way Mrs. Fairleigh had watched her and whatever it was she’d said to her brother.
The fact that Cait knew something she wasn’t telling Cori.
Her mind was once again focused on these matters as she went through the motions of exploring the herb beds along the east wall.
That’s when she heard it…
A very small sound, coming from beneath the low wooden planting frame at the base of the wall.
Cori crouched to see what had caused the sound, and wedged between the wooden frame and the stone wall, in a gap that was slightly too small for it was a chubby hedgehog.
The little fellow was not, upon closer inspection, in any immediate danger.
He was simply stuck. The poor thing had apparently investigated the gap with great gusto but discovered that confidence and geometry were not necessarily the same thing.
He was expressing his displeasure in a series of urgent huffing sounds as he tried to free himself.
"There now," Cori said, in the calm matter-of-fact voice she used for anxious creatures. "Hold still."
The hedgehog did not hold still.
He attempted, with considerable energy, to go further into the gap, which was not a direction that was going to help him. So, Cori got her hands underneath the little fellow and cupped him gently, which resulted in him expressing some rather strong opinions.
"I know. I know," she said soothingly. "I’m aware. But you’re going to have to trust me. Not long, just for thirty seconds."
Hedgehogs, however, did not speak English and so her promises fell on deaf ears.
Still, Cori worked carefully anyway, easing him back from the gap with patient deliberateness. Haste, after all, would only make everything worse.
The hedgehog huffed in indignation. Cori shifted her grip a bit and got her hand properly underneath the little fellow, supporting his small and frightened frame. Finally, with a last beleaguered huff, he stopped fighting her.
"Good," she said. "There we are."
She drew the hedgehog free and sat back on her heels in the dirt, the little thing cupped in both of her hands. He was regarding her with small dark eyes, suggesting he might’ve revised his opinion of her, after all.
"You’re welcome," she told the little creature with a smile.
"Is this," said a deep, familiar voice behind her left shoulder, "a habit of yours or a talent?"
The duke!
Goodness!
Cori cringed at the thought of what she must look like, once again, to Linthorpe. There she was, crouching in his kitchen garden, just after dawn with dirt on her skirts and a hedgehog in her hands.
She braced herself, then she turned to face him.
The duke was standing at the garden gate in his shirtsleeves and a dark coat that had been put on with no particular attention to elegance. Amusement danced in his blueish grey eyes. Goodness, he was handsome and nearly stole her breath.
"Both, I think, Your Grace," she said, and hoped she sounded more composed than she felt. "Though I didn’t go looking for it this morning."
"No," he agreed. "It found you, it seems."
He came through the gate and crossed the garden to where she was crouching, and looked at the hedgehog with the same focused attention he brought to everything.
"The little fellow was wedged under the planting frame," she told him. "He went in headfirst and couldn’t reverse."
“Certain he’s a he, are you?”
Cori shrugged just slightly. “A female would never be so foolhardy.”
At that, the duke tipped back his head and laughed. The sound richer, more unbridled than anything she’d heard from him before. That Cori had caused such a reaction in him filled her with quite a bit of joy.
"I did not realize—” his gaze warmed her through her walking dress “—that it’s the male of the species who are quite so ridiculous.” Then he shifted his attention slightly to her hands. "You know how to hold them."
"My father taught me when I was young," Cori said. "Papa always said that if I was going to help a creature, I needed to learn how to do it without frightening them half to death in the process."
His eyes met hers and held for just a moment, steady and direct, before he looked back at the hedgehog. "He sounds like a man worth knowing."
"He was," Cori said. "The best I’ve known."
Linthorpe said nothing for a moment. They were both crouching in the kitchen garden dirt while the blackbirds continued their disagreement in the apple trees and the hedgehog was reconsidering his situation.
"Where will you put him?" the duke asked.
"The far end of the garden," Cori said. "Away from the planting frames."
"And with a firm word about getting into situations from which he cannot extricate himself?" he suggested.
"That too.” She grinned at him as she carried the hedgehog to the far end of the garden and set it down in the long grass at the base of the wall.
The little creature sat for a moment, seemingly reassessing his morning, and then he disappeared into the grass with a rustle that suggested he had already moved on to other things.
"Right," she said in the direction of where the hedgehog was headed. "Off you go."
Then she straightened and turned back to the duke.
He was still there, standing amongst the herb beds with his hands in his coat pockets, watching her with his bluish-grey gaze. The sun was slowly rising, illuminating the horizon, and it fell across his face, making him appear less guarded than he usually did.
Cori walked back toward him.
"Are you always up so early?” he asked.
“A habit, I’m afraid, Your Grace.” She shrugged as she explained, "At home, the harbor is alive before dawn and there’s always much to do. I’ve never really adhered to Town hours.”
"And we aren’t in Town now,” he said warmly.
"Indeed,” she agreed. “Here the moors are alive before dawn. In a different way, of course. Quieter than the harbor, but alive just the same." Cori glanced toward where the garden wall opened to the view beyond. "But just as insistent."
"Yes," he said, with a soft rumble that washed over her and settled somewhere warm in her chest. "They are."
A silence settled between them, the kind that had been developing since her arrival at Acklan, the kind that did not require filling.
Cori looked at her hands. Dirt on both palms. A small scratch across the back of her left hand from when she’d freed the hedgehog. She was a veritable mess. "I should go in, Your Grace."
"Yes," he agreed.
But neither of them moved.
It was nothing, really. Both of them were just standing in the garden, neither of them leaving when there was no reason for them to stay. Nothing dramatic, nothing declared. But the kind of nothing that was not nothing at all. Feeling the weight of remaining in her spot, Cori started to move.
"Miss Corinna," he said, stopping her.
Cori met his gaze.
"We are nearly family," he said, "given the circumstances. Daniel and your sister. It seems somewhat too formal for you to continue calling me ‘Your Grace’." The duke paused. When he spoke again his voice was quieter. "That is, please call me James."
Cori’s throat suddenly went dry. She swallowed in response.
"James.”
It came out more quietly than she intended. Just his name, in the quiet of a cool Yorkshire morning in the walled garden with the blackbirds and the moors beyond.
Something moved in his face that she could not quite name. Then it was gone, just as quickly.
"Cori,” she told him. “My family calls me Cori.”
His lips slanted upward, almost into a smile. “Well, Cori, I will see you after breakfast."
"Yes, after breakfast," she agreed.
James nodded once and turned toward the gate. "By the way, Cori, there is something in your hair," he said, without looking back over his shoulder.
Something in her hair? Cori put her hand to her head and encountered, with only a touch of mortification, a cabbage moth.
Of all the…
Cori closed her eyes as though to block out the embarrassment of her current state of dishabille. "Thank you," she said, to his retreating back.
An instant later, Cori found herself alone in the Acklan kitchen garden in the grey Yorkshire dawn with dirt on her skirts, a scratch across her left hand, and sporting a cabbage moth like a hairpin.
She released a sigh, wondering if this was better or worse than when he discovered her sitting on the floor in the middle of his corridor.
Margaret Hythe had always found the breakfast room the most informative room in any house.