Chapter 13 #2
"Which means I have until dawn," Mr. Atherton replied with a bit of gusto. "And I have a great deal to say."
"You always have a great deal to say," Emma laughed. "Tomorrow will simply be a novelty."
"A cruel novelty," her brother agreed. "An unnatural one." He turned to Cori as though she were exactly the sympathetic audience he'd been looking for. "I ask you, Miss Beckett, is it not deeply unjust that a man should be silenced by a cat?"
"The cat," Cori said carefully, "was not in the terms."
"Exactly my—"
"But you still fell," she finished.
Mr. Atherton stared at her as though she was Brutus to his Caesar. "You are," he said, with great feeling, "a very fair-minded woman and I mean that as a criticism."
From his spot, Lucien said nothing. However, the corner of his mouth moved almost imperceptibly.
"Gates," Mr. Atherton began, leaning forward to look past Emma. "You might show some magnanimity in victory."
"I might," Lucien agreed pleasantly as he dabbed at the corner of his mouth with his napkin. "However, I find I simply don’t have the desire."
Cori pressed her lips together very hard to keep from laughing. Emma appeared to be studying the ceiling.
Then Cori glanced toward Cara down the table.
She seemed quieter than usual tonight, not unhappy exactly, but contemplative in a way she hadn’t been that morning.
Had she learned that Chopwell had been spotted in France?
Cori caught Cait’s attention, and relaxed a bit when her middle sister nodded ever so slightly.
Good. Cait would deal with the Cara situation.
The lamb came with the second course, fragrant with rosemary, and the table conversation loosened with more wine and good food.
Mr. Atherton, true to his word, seemed determined to use his remaining fourteen hours to dispense his opinions on nearly every topic — the state of the roads through Lincolnshire, whether a man could reasonably be held responsible for decisions made before his second cup of coffee in the morning, the precise moment at which a house party reached its ideal duration before tipping into chaos.
"By the end of a fortnight," he said, with authority, "even the best of company begins to know each other too well. The mystery evaporates. Conversation becomes merely practical."
"You find mystery essential," Emma said.
"I find mystery essential," Mr. Atherton agreed. "I find I wilt without it."
"You don't wilt," Emma said. "You simply run out of new material."
"That," he said, gesturing at his sister good-naturedly, "was unkind."
"It was accurate," Lucien said, from the other side of Emma, with perfect neutrality.
"Gates—"
"Atherton."
Cori chanced a glance toward the head of the table.
Through the entire dinner she’d been aware of James the way she was always aware of him, constantly, without even deciding to be.
He was talking to his sister and she could hear the low register of his voice without making out his words. She glanced away.
Then she heard him say, "Miss Beckett walked the north boundary with me earlier this week."
Cori glanced toward him again.
He was looking at her. Not at his sister, not toward the window.
But quite pointedly and very directly at her.
A shiver went through her as the memory of his kiss washed back over her.
His look was direct and steady and warm in a way that she felt it in her chest, in the pit of her stomach, and all the way down to her fingertips which had gone very still against the cool stem of her glass.
"She had a theory about the gradient above the north field," he said, keeping her gaze. "That the problem wasn't where everyone assumed."
"The channel was fine," Cori told Mrs. Fairleigh, because her voice still worked, which seemed remarkable under the circumstances. "The problem is with the land above the channel."
"Yes," James said. Just that. His eyes held hers for a moment longer which seemed to stretch on forever, saying something he could not say aloud with the assembled guests. Then he turned his attention back toward his sister. "Which is why Turlow is having someone look at it next week."
"Sounds like it’s about time," Mrs. Fairleigh said warmly.
The conversation continued but Cori could not focus on what anyone said. How could she when he’d just looked at her like that?
She set her glass down while the echo of that look warmed her chest like the first sip of claret on a cold evening.
He hadn’t looked at her like that all night.
He’d been measured and careful and had given her no indication that he was thinking about her at all, and then to look at her like that across a table full of people—
Goodness! She would have fanned her cheeks but she didn’t want to draw any more attention to herself.
By the time the ladies returned to the drawing room and left the men to their port, Cori’s heart was thumping in her chest. She accepted a cup of tea she did not particularly want, and managed to evade a pair of curious expressions from her sisters.
She couldn’t talk to either of them, not now.
Not when she couldn't sit still, and certainly not in a room full of other women.
So, she excused herself quietly and went directly to the library.
The memory of his kiss from the previous night pulled her there, though she didn’t examine the decision too closely. After the way he’d looked at her over dinner, he would find her there. She knew that as surely as she knew her own name.
The fire in the library had burned low but was still warm. The book of sonnets was on the side table where she had left it the night before, and the room was exactly as it’d been, which was both a comfort and an ache.
Cori sat in the chair, though she didn’t pick up the book.
Instead, she listened to the castle around her, to the fire settling and to the distant sound of voices from the direction of the dining room.
James would find her. He would.
But he didn’t.
She waited. And waited. And waited some more.
The fire burned lower. The voices faded. The castle grew quiet and even the sound of rain that had been ever-present over the last two days finally subsided.
He wasn't coming. Cori sat with that for a bit.
Hope, she decided, had a very particular feeling when it ran out.
Not dramatic. Not weeping. Just heavy, in a way she hadn't quite anticipated.
The duchess had told her James wouldn't make it easy.
She hadn't truly understood what that meant, not really, until now.
She was about to rise and return to her chambers when she heard a small sound at the door.
Not footsteps. Something softer, more deliberate.
Then Marmalade appeared from the shadows near the door as though he had been expected. He crossed the library floor and leapt onto the arm of her chair.
Cori looked at the kitten. "You're not supposed to be in here," she said softly.
Marmalade regarded her with his steady amber eyes.
"Neither am I, I suppose," she said.
She scratched gently behind the kitten’s ears.
He permitted this as though he was doing her a favor.
Then he stepped from the arm of the chair into her lap.
He turned twice and then settled. His purr filled the quiet library, warm and steady and entirely indifferent to the evening's disappointments.
Cori rested her hand on his back, looked at the fire, and let him purr.