“I would hope so,” she replied, looking out the window.
Theodore stood abruptly, his chair scraping across stone. The sudden movement made Cressida flinch, and he hated himself for it.
“More coffee, Your Grace?” A footman had materialized at his elbow.
“No.” The word came out harsher than Theodore had intended. “Leave us.”
The servant vanished, and Theodore forced himself to sit back down, to regain the composure that had abandoned him thanks to this morning’s torture of watching her eat breakfast in that damned dress.
Cressida was looking at him with something that might have been concern. “Your Grace?—”
“The castle is extensive,” he interrupted, desperate to redirect the conversation away from storms and dramatic changes. “If you wish to explore, I could… that is, you shouldn’t wander alone. You might lose your way again.”
She blinked at the abrupt shift. “Are you offering to give me a tour?”
“If you’re going to roam my home at will, you might as well do so with a guide.” He stood again, this time with more control. “Unless you’d prefer to remain here?”
“No.” She rose quickly, smoothing her skirts in a gesture he suspected was a nervous habit. “A tour would be… a good idea. Thank you.”
A good idea. As though spending more time in her company wouldn’t be exquisite torture.
The castle’s corridors stretched before them, shadows and light playing across ancient stone. Theodore kept a careful distance between them as they walked, though he remained acutely aware of her presence beside him: the rustle of her skirts, the soft sound of her breathing, the occasional brush of fabric against his arm when she leaned closer to examine something.
“This wing was built in the fourteenth century,” he offered, gesturing toward the vaulted ceiling. “The architecture is?—”
“Norman,” Cressida finished, tilting her head back to study the stonework. “You can tell by the rounded arches. Though there’s been modification since, hasn’t there? Those windows are much newer.”
Theodore found himself staring at her. “You’re familiar with architectural history?”
“I read.” She said it simply, as though everyone spent their time studying medieval building techniques. “Your library must be extensive, given your interest in such things.”
“It was my father’s library.” The correction came automatically. “I merely… inherited it.”
“But you use it.” Her gaze was too perceptive. “Those books in your study show signs of frequent reading. Wordsworth, particularly.”
He’d forgotten she’d been browsing his shelves last night before he’d found her. And he didn’t care to discuss Wordsworth.
“This way.” Theodore turned down another corridor, putting distance between himself and that memory.
They passed through a gallery lined with portraits, generations of Yeats ancestors staring down with varying degrees of severity. Cressida paused before each one, studying faces and frames with genuine interest.
“Your family has quite a distinguished lineage,” she observed.
“Distinguished is one word for it.” Theodore kept his tone neutral, though something bitter crept in regardless.
She glanced at him sharply. “What word would you use?”
“Complicated.” He moved past the portraits without looking at them. “All families are, I suppose.”
“Some more than others.” There was understanding in her voice that made him uncomfortable. “My own family is… complicated.”
He thought of her comment at breakfast, that her parents likely hadn’t noticed her absence, and wondered what precisely “complicated” meant in her home. But before he could formulate a question that wouldn’t seem intrusive, they’d reached another portrait gallery.
Rain-gray light filtered through tall windows, illuminating dozens of paintings. Landscapes mostly, though there were several portraits interspersed among them. Cressida drifted toward a particularly fine rendering of the moors in autumn, her expression softening.
“This is beautiful,” she breathed. “Look at how the artist captured the heather. The color is perfect… that shade between purple and pink that only exists for a few weeks each year.”
Theodore found himself watching her instead of the painting, taking in the way her face transformed when she looked at something that moved her. No artifice, no careful social mask. Just genuine appreciation.
