Chapter 14 #2
“You are not.”
“Then yes,” she said. “I should like that.”
***
By dinner the household had become unexpectedly animated. Word of Lady Catriona’s arrival had traveled through the estate with astonishing speed.
Mrs. Maggie looked only mildly displeased by the disruption, which for her counted as approval. Clara, after one sharp look at Logan hovering in the kitchen doorway asking whether anything additional was needed, had decided to produce a second pudding.
Maisie was fascinated by Catriona almost immediately. Duncan, to Jamie’s surprise, had not fled the room, watching her instead with suspicious intensity.
Maisie leaned toward Catriona. “I like your necklace.”
Catriona lowered her head so Maisie could see the clasp. “It belonged to my mother.”
Maisie studied it with interest.
“It is beautiful,” she said.
Logan drifted near the table again. “More bread?” he asked, though the basket was still full.
Clara gave him a look. “We have enough.”
Logan stayed anyway, adjusting a chair that did not need adjusting.
Clara shook her head, but her eyes followed him once before she returned to her work.
“Miss Beauchamp,” Catriona said, attempting inclusion. “What subjects have the children been enjoying?”
“Duncan is especially interested in the coast,” Eloise replied.
“That seems sensible.”
Eloise nodded but did not elaborate, and Jamie frowned slightly. Her tone had changed. It had become more guarded and distracted. No one else seemed to notice, but Jamie did.
“And Maisie?” Catriona asked.
“Drawing.”
“That is excellent.”
Catriona turned to Duncan after a moment. “Do you like the sea?”
Duncan hesitated. “Cold water.”
Catriona nodded as though this were a full answer. “Thank you for such a straightforward answer.”
Duncan sat up a little straighter.
Catriona looked at Maisie’s drawing next. “That is a fine horse.”
Maisie giggled, a sound lighter than any Jamie had heard from her in days.
Duncan frowned at the page. “The legs are wrong.”
Catriona considered the drawing. “Would it help if the back leg were set a little farther apart?”
Duncan thought about it. “Maybe.”
Mrs. Maggie let out a breath, but she said nothing.
Catriona seemed to sense the barrier and did not press at it, turning instead to Jamie with questions about the estate road and the weather and the condition of the village path after rain.
He answered at greater length than usual, partly because Catriona made conversation effortless, and partly because he wanted attention off Eloise, whose quietness had begun to trouble him deeply.
By the time the plates were cleared, Catriona had drawn a full account of her aunt’s complaints about Inverness, coaxed one more word from Duncan, and made Maisie laugh by declaring that her horse had the dignified air of a retired general.
She tried once more to draw Eloise in, asking about her favorite books, and Eloise answered with proper courtesy and no particular warmth at all.
Jamie could not see why, and the not knowing irritated him more than the silence itself.
“Lady Catriona must spend the night,” Mrs. Maggie said decisively. “The roads are poor this season, and her own estate is too far to travel before dark.”
Lady Catriona gave a graceful nod, seeming to have assumed the invitation was expected.
“Your hospitality is appreciated, Mrs. Maggie.”
Jamie looked down the table. Maisie was smiling again. Duncan was watching the pudding with more concentration than any dessert required. Clara was pretending to be annoyed by Logan’s continued presence.
This is what a viscount’s dinner was supposed to look like, he thought with strange suddenness.
Conversation. Guests. Children. He had nearly forgotten what that felt like.
Years of seclusion had made the ordinary seem almost impossible to remember, and he had wallowed in his own temper long enough to believe such evenings belonged to some other household, some other man, when in fact they had been waiting here all along for him to rejoin them.
The realization was almost embarrassing, and unexpectedly welcome.
By the time the meal ended, Catriona had charmed everyone except, perhaps, Lawrence, whose smile remained fixed but whose interest had grown more pointed. Jamie saw it and was not sure whether to be uneasy or merely annoyed. Probably both.
He rose when the children were dismissed, intending to find Eloise and ask whether she was all right. She had been too quiet all evening for it to be nothing.
He had reached the corridor outside the dining room when Lawrence stepped beside him and caught his arm lightly in passing.
“Lady Catriona is delightful,” Lawrence murmured. “Such a credit to her family. Such a comfortable presence.”
The words were easy, light, the sort of remark another man might make about a fine pistol. Harmless, on the surface, but Jamie felt the faintest click beneath it. To Jamie, it felt like something had been placed very carefully rather than said in passing.
Lawrence released his arm before Jamie could decide what to make of it. “Good evening, Jamie,” he said, and walked on without waiting for a reply.
Jamie watched him go, the comment lingering. He turned the corner to find Eloise walking alone ahead of him, her face unreadable again.
He crossed the hall in two steps and caught her lightly by the elbow.
She turned, startled, and he released her once he was sure she did not mean to keep walking.
“Are you all right?” he asked, more sharply than he intended.
“I am fine,” she said, her expression settling too carefully, too quickly.
He studied her. The answer was polite enough to be impossible to challenge, and he disliked it more than he should have.
“You were quiet at dinner,” he said.
“Was I?”
“Yes.”
“I did not notice.” That was not true, and he could tell. “I am simply tired,” she added, after the briefest pause.
He held her gaze, unsure whether she meant it, and even more uncertain whether he wanted her to. The silence between them stretched with a tension that had not been present a few days before. Or perhaps it had been there all along, and he had only just begun to notice.
“If something is wrong,” he said, more gently, “you should tell me.”
She gave him a twitch of a smile. “I will.”
He did not entirely believe her, and she seemed to know it. For a second he thought she might say more. Instead, she bowed her head. “Goodnight, my lord.”
“Goodnight,” he said with formality that stung more than it should have.
She turned and took two steps before the urge to say something else rose in him and then passed unused.
She walked on and disappeared around the corner, and Jamie stood where he was, with the cumbersome sensation that something had changed yet again.
It was unexpected and, for that reason, very unsettling.