Chapter 6 #2
Dinner was performance. Drawing rooms were negotiation.
But breakfast, taken before anyone had quite assembled their defenses for the day, was where you learned things.
The quality of a silence. The direction of a glance.
Who sat where and without being told spoke volumes if one knew how to listen.
And Margaret had always prided herself on knowing how to listen.
The breakfast room at Acklan told her a great deal that morning.
Linthorpe, at the head of the table, had been there when Margaret arrived, early enough that he must have been there for some time.
He looked as though he’d already been outside that morning, and something in the set of his shoulders made him appear fractionally more at ease than he had the previous evening.
In front of him, a note sat open beside his plate, which Margaret suspected was from his estate agent and had something to do with the north field.
Linthorpe read it with the focused attention he brought to everything and then folded the slip of foolscap and set it aside.
When Corinna had arrived at the table approximately ten minutes later, Margaret noted that the girl had a small smudge - had she been gardening at dawn?
- on her left cuff. With a bit of pink in her cheeks, she took a seat three places from Linthorpe, careful, it seemed, not to look at him when she sat down.
Then the room began to fill with guests and the burst of energy that came with them.
First, Lucien and Mr. Atherton made their entrance, arguing good-naturedly about a thoroughbred who’d raced in the Goodwood Cup a sennight earlier.
Viscount Hadleigh and his daughter Miss Atherton were not far behind them.
Miss Atherton settled herself near Lucien, but not too near as to be remarked upon.
The girl was playing the same game with Lucien that Corinna was playing with Linthorpe.
While the duke seemed open to playing along, Lucien appeared oblivious to everything around him.
Margaret was going to have to do something about him once she got Corinna settled.
How she’d ended up with a hopeless grandson, she had no idea.
Hythe arrived not long after, his trusty gazette in hand. He sat at Margaret's left, read as he always did at breakfast, and offered the occasional commentary at the most inopportune times.
"My father was absolutely certain Cormorant would win," Archibald Atherton told Corinna, as though he was confiding a delicious on dit. "He told me so at least four times before we left for Goodwood. He said there was no question whatsoever. He said any fool could see it."
"Cormorant finished fourth," Lucien said, without looking up from his plate.
"Fourth," Mr. Atherton confirmed with a wink for Corinna.
"I maintain," said Viscount Hadleigh, from further down the table, as though he’d been waiting for this conversation and had prepared himself for it, "that the going was soft."
"The going," his son began pleasantly, "was exactly as soft as it was for the horse that won."
Corinna laughed.
"The boy has a point," Hythe said, from behind his gazette.
Viscount Hadleigh accepted this with good grace. Miss Atherton pressed her lips together. Lucien looked briefly satisfied.
Margaret watched without appearing to watch as Linthorpe looked up from his coffee.
He glanced at Corinna.
Then at Mr. Atherton.
Then he returned his attention to his coffee, very deliberately, as though the cup required his full attention.
Margaret reached for the marmalade.
With a burst of energy that no one should possess at that early an hour, Harriet Upwell strode into the breakfast room, her traveling cloak flowing behind her. “We are finally arrived,” she announced.
Lord Upwell followed in her wake, looking as though he had not long been out of bed, which did not appear to trouble him in the slightest." They see that, dear."
"Yes, yes, yes.” Harriet swept through the room, her assessing gaze taking stock of the guests as she did so.
“Good morning to you all. James darling, you look well.
Hythe, Margaret." She kissed Margaret's cheek and then accepted an empty chair a footman held out for her at the far end of the table.
"We made excellent time from Thirsk. The roads were better than I feared. "
"Aunt Harriet." Linthorpe set down his cup. "You look well."
"I am perfectly well," Harriet said, arranging herself and accepting a bit of coffee. "Upwell, sit down, you are making the room nervous."
Upwell sat, dutifully, as he did most things.
Harriet glanced around the table again, her gaze moving rather obviously between Corinna and Linthorpe and back. She did not possess a subtle bone in her body. "Miss Corinna. How lovely to see you again."
"And you, Lady Upwell," Corinna said, with genuine warmth.
Beside Margaret, Hythe turned a page in his gazette.
"We ought to have left yesterday," Harriet said to Upwell, in what she must have believed was sotto voce. It was not. "I said so at the time."
"You did," Upwell agreed, as he gestured for a footman to bring him a plate.
"We have clearly missed a great deal,” Harriet complained to her husband.
"We clearly have," Upwell agreed once more.
From the head of the table, Linthorpe went still and eyed his aunt with what appeared to be annoyance. He was, after all, not a man who was oblivious to his surroundings. And Harriet was far from subtle.
"Linthorpe," Hythe said, from behind his gazette, "have you given any more thought to the north field? I’m happy to make an introduction to Pemberton, if you’d like."
“Perhaps.” Linthorpe nodded. "I mean to walk the boundary this morning. After breakfast. I’ll know more then.”
"Ah, yes.” Hythe returned to his gazette. “You said as much.”
Harriet, who had been mid-sip, set her coffee cup down with great care and looked at Margaret.
Margaret looked at the marmalade.
"After breakfast," Harriet said, to no one in particular.
The conversation moved on. Upwell made an observation about the roads from Thirsk.
Miss Atherton asked a question about the castle gardens which was answered by Mr. Atherton, who had apparently explored them the previous afternoon.
Lucien mentioned that the moors looked particularly bleak this year, which Viscount Hadleigh disagreed with as he’d developed a fondness for them on the previous afternoon's ride.
"I maintain they are bleak," Lucien said. "They match my disposition, it seems."
"Your disposition is not bleak," Corinna told him.
"It's grey in the very least."
"The moors," said Viscount Hadleigh, with great dignity, "are not grey. They are atmospheric."
"We have that in common too," Lucien said.
At that, Corinna laughed, as did most of the assembled guests. Linthorpe did not laugh.
Instead, he set down his cup, clearly through with breakfast. "If you are ready, Miss Corinna. The north boundary awaits."
The laughter stopped naturally, the way conversations end when something more interesting just arrived.
"Of course, Your Grace.” Corinna pushed to her feet.
Linthorpe offered her his arm and the two of them departed without much fanfare. For a moment, the breakfast room was silent.
"Well," Mr. Atherton said pleasantly, breaking the silence as he reached for the toast rack.
"Indeed," Lucien agreed.
Hythe set down his gazette. He looked at Margaret. "Drainage," he said, with great seriousness and the slight lift of his brow.
"Mm," Margaret agreed.
Hythe picked up his gazette again.
Harriet leaned toward Margaret, patience apparently exhausted. "Margaret," she said quietly. "Tell me everything."
No, her dear friend possessed no subterfuge at all.
"After breakfast," Margaret told her serenely and would have cast her friend a telling glance, but there were too many witnesses about.
Still, things were going rather well at the moment. So, Margaret reached for the marmalade once more as it was very good marmalade, and she was in excellent spirits.