Chapter 7
The North Boundary
Acklan Castle
The north field sat in a shallow depression at the edge of the castle’s working fields.
The land above it rose in a long uneven slope toward the moor.
James had walked this boundary more than a hundred times over the course of his life, with his father, with Turlow, and then alone in the years after Alice passed, when walking was something to do that kept his mind occupied without requiring it to produce anything useful.
He knew every dip and rise of the terrain.
It had been some time since he’d walked it with company.
Miss Corinna – Cori – walked beside him as though she’d been covering ground like this her whole life, easy and unhurried, entirely unbothered by the terrain.
The morning was cool, the air carrying the clean cold smell of the moors.
She’d come prepared for it, donning sensible half boots and a dark wool spencer that made her light hair appear even lighter, especially against the grey of the sky.
She looked at the land, not at him although some part of him wished it was otherwise. Foolish, ridiculous. What had come over him of late?
Cori studied the grounds with the same focused, practical attention she had brought to the drainage conversation at dinner the other night. Her gaze followed the slope, the drainage channels, and the places where Acklan's grass grew thicker.
It was remarkably easy to walk with her, even in companionable silence.
"There," Cori said, stopping.
James stopped beside her.
She gestured to a section of the slope, perhaps thirty feet above the field boundary, where the ground leveled briefly before rising again. The grass was slightly different there, darker and coarser, the kind of growth that came from ground that held water longer than it should.
"That section," she began, "it sits differently than the rest of the slope. Do you see how the grass changes?"
He did now. Of course, he had walked past it a hundred times but had not truly seen it before this morning.
"The gradient shifts there," she said. "I’d wager on it.
Not much, perhaps not even visibly, but enough that the water which should drain south into the field drainage is instead pooling at that level change and then seeping slowly sideways rather than down.
" She tilted her head slightly. "After a heavy rain you’d see it more clearly.
A dark line across the slope where the water collects before it finds its way around the obstruction. "
James frowned at the section of slope in question.
He thought of the flooding in the north field.
He thought of Turlow's previous attempts to clear the drainage channel.
He thought of the years that the problem had persisted while the solution sat merely thirty feet uphill, yet invisible because he had been looking in the wrong direction.
"I daresay you’ve discovered the issue," he said.
Cori shifted her gaze, glancing at him briefly with her soft blue eyes, and he felt it in his soul. She was lovely, wasn’t she? He could stare at her all day and never wonder where the time went.
But Cori began walking along the slope, now at the level of the change she’d identified, looking at the ground as she went.
"If I’m correct—" she said over her shoulder “—there’ll be a place where the gradient shifts more sharply. A ridge, perhaps, or a change in the underlying stone. That’s where you’d need to work.
Cut a channel above it to intercept the water before it reaches the level change, and direct it away from the field drainage entirely. "
James followed after her.
Cori stopped again. She crouched and pressed her fingers into the soil, promptly ruining her gloves, though she did not appear to have noticed.
"Here," she said, looking up at him from the wet moorland grass, apparently unbothered by neither the dampness nor the state of her gloves.
James crouched beside her.
He could see it now. The soil here was compacted differently, a faint ridge beneath the turf that the grass had grown over and disguised. Not large. Not dramatic. Exactly what she’d said it would be.
"Your drainage channel," she said, "needs to run along here, just above this ridge, directing the water east rather than letting it pool." Then she stood and brushed the soil from her fingers, already moving on. "I imagine Pemberton will confirm it."
James pushed back to his full height.
He looked at her. The soil on her gloves. The complete absence of any awareness that she’d just solved in twenty minutes what Turlow had not solved in the last three years.
Then he thought of Arch Atherton making her laugh at the breakfast table, and his heart twisted a bit.
She was still young, ten years his junior, but young enough that her life had barely started while his could end at any moment.
She deserved someone whole and hale. Someone who could give her everything she could ever want.
She deserved someone like Atherton, perhaps, who had his father's confidence and moved through the world without the fear of an untimely death trailing after him like an unwelcome shadow.
The thought landed with considerably more discomfort than it should have, which was itself information he did not want.
"You’re quiet," Cori said.
He looked at her.
"Have I missed something? About the slope?"
"No," he said. "You’ve not missed anything."
"Then what is it?"
He was quiet for a moment. The wind came off the moors, the same cool clean smell, and somewhere above them a curlew was calling.
"You’re very good at this," he finally said because he couldn’t tell her the maudlin thoughts that had plagued him during their walk.
She tilted her head slightly. "At drainage?"
"At reading land," he said. "At reading problems. At arriving at the answer before anyone else has thought to look in the right direction."
She looked back at the slope. “Papa taught me," she said, her voice was different, softer somehow.
"He believed the only way to understand a problem was to put your hands in it.
Literally, where possible." Her eyes dropped to her soiled gloves with a brief look of surprise as though she just remembered she was wearing them.
"He would’ve walked this slope before he ever looked at a map of it. "
"He sounds like a man who understood a great many things.”
"The things that mattered." She was quiet for a moment, looking out at the moors. "I find I still miss him rather a lot."
James thought of Hannah and what she would remember of him when he was gone.
"I’m sorry," he said after a bit. "For the loss of him."
"Thank you for bringing me out here."
"I should be thanking you,” he said. “You solved my drainage problem.”
"Yes," Cori agreed, briefly meeting his gaze. "But I meant for bringing me to the moors." She turned and looked out at them, the vast pewter sweep of the landscape under the white sky. "I think I shall be sorry to leave them."
Then do not leave Acklan. Stay forever.
"We should go back," he said instead, because it was wise.
"Yes," she agreed. But she stood for one more moment, looking out at the moors, and he stood beside her and let her have it, because he would have given anything to stay right there with her and never leave.
But then they walked back toward the castle in the grey morning light, and the curlew called somewhere above, and the cool breeze moved through the heather. Through it all, James kept his hands in his coat pockets and his thoughts to himself, which was harder than it had been the day before.
He suspected it would be even more difficult in the days to come.
Corridor, East Wing
Acklan Castle
"You told me to climb it," Cori said the same words she’d been saying since she was seven.
"I told you to climb to the second rung," Cait replied, parroting the same words she’d been repeating for years. "Whatever you did above the second rung was your own decision."
"You told me to go higher."
"I said no such thing."
"You told me to higher and then you ran."
"I ran to get Papa because you were already climbing and there was nothing else to be done about it." Cait pushed open the door to a cozy sitting room and went in. " You had already passed the third rung before I had said anything at all."
"Because you told me to,” Cori explained. Again.
"Corinna."
"Caitrin."
Cara looked up from where she was sitting beside Emma Atherton near the fire, assessed the situation in approximately one second, and said, "Cait told you to climb it."
Cait turned to stare at their oldest sister. "I did not."
"You absolutely did," Cara returned pleasantly. "I was watching from the deck. You said, ‘Go on,’ and then you pointed upward."
"I was gesturing," Cait said.
"You were gesturing upward," Cara said.
"In the general direction of the rigging," Cori added the important part, the part Cait never acknowledged.
"At the sky," Cait said firmly. "I was gesturing at the sky. It was a fine day. I was making an observation about the weather."
Miss Atherton, who had been following this exchange, pressed her lips together as though to hide a smile.
"The sky," Cori repeated incredulously.
"It was a particularly fine sky," Cait said, with great dignity, and sat down in a window seat.