“It was perfectly organized.”
“Chronologically, yes. Alphabetically within periods, no. The current arrangement required one to know the date of publication before one could locate anything, which rather defeats?—”
“You reorganized my library.”
“I restored a rational order to it.” She pressed on before he could gather an objection. “Besides, you said yourself the Ws had been disturbed. That suggests only that I’ve been reading them, which I was entirely entitled to do.”
“The Ws,” he said with measured emphasis, “which are the Romantic poets.”
“A coincidence.”
“Wordsworth. Wollstonecraft. And, I suspect, a volume of Mrs. Radcliffe that found its way onto the shelves without my knowledge.”
“It was misfiled,” Cressida said primly. “Under R for Radcliffe, which placed it among the reference volumes. I merely corrected the error.”
He was quiet for a moment. Then: “Did you enjoy it?”
She looked at him, surprised by the question—by the absence of mockery in it. “Very much. I’m rather partial to a gothic castle.”
“I trust Ashmere did not disappoint on that score.”
“The north tower is a particular credit to the tradition. Though it wants a ghost.”
“There is one, as a matter of fact. A former housekeeper who apparently disapproves of changes to the household routine. Mrs. Agnes blames her for the disappearance of the good silver polish.”
Cressida stared at him. “Are you inventing this?”
“I categorically am not. The ghost predates Mrs. Agnes by two centuries.”
“And does she—the ghost, I mean—have a name?”
“Agnes, I believe. Though I’ve never been introduced.” He paused. “I’ll arrange it, if you like.”
Cressida bit the inside of her cheek to maintain the pretense of gravity. “I think I’d like that very much.”
They had reached the end of the rose walk, where a stone bench sat in a small alcove between two yews—the yews that Theodore had been objecting to earlier, though they looked perfectly adequate to Cressida’s untrained eye. He didn’t suggest they sit. They turned and began to make their way back toward the castle.
The morning had grown warmer while they walked. She had dressed practically for the garden, in a pale yellow muslin gown that was not her finest but was comfortable, and she was glad of it now.
Theodore walked at an easy pace beside her, with his arm close enough to hers that when she stepped on an uneven spot in the gravel and she stumbled slightly, his hand immediately found her elbow.
She steadied herself, and his hand almost reluctantly fell away again.
She was aware of him in a way that was entirely new and entirely his fault. The breadth of his shoulders in the morning coat. The unhurried cadence of his stride. The hands—those particular hands, currently clasped behind his back with ducal composure—that had undone her so thoroughly the night before that she had bitten her lip to stay quiet.
He had promised her silk sheets and candlelight. He had said she deserved to be worshipped properly, and the wordproperlyhad kept her awake until the small hours, her imagination supplying a great deal of unsolicited details about what properly might entail.
She was not going to think about that now. She thought about it entirely.
She thought of what he had said in the corridor at Lady Seymore’s house.
“I’ve spent seventeen years perfecting control… With you, all of it crumbles.”
She understood now that this morning was a kind of effort—the library comment, the offer of a walk, the steadying hand. Each of these things cost him something, and he offered them anyway.
“My favorite novel,” she said, returning to the thread of their earlier conversation as though it had never been dropped, “isCecilia.”
He considered this. “Burney.”
