"I’m so glad she’s safe,” Miss Corinna said. "When I arrived, the mare was blocking her spot. I think that’s why the first search missed her."
"She wanted to see the foals," James said, closing his eyes with the first bit of relief he’d had all morning. “She’d talked of them before she went to bed.”
"Yes, she did.”
James pushed back to his feet and turned to face Miss Corinna. She was still in the doorway of the stall, not ruffled by any of it. Simply calm. The same way she had been in the corridor with the kitten, and at the turret, and at dinner. How he envied her calm demeanor. He would give anything to experience such calm himself. “I am forever in your debt.”
But she shook her head, her light hair swaying gracefully with the motion. “There is no debt, Your Grace. I am?—"
James could hear Daniel calling his name from just inside the stable door.
"We’re here!" he called. “Hannah’s here!”
Less than a moment later, Daniel appeared in the doorway with his coat half-buttoned and his face carrying the weight of the same fear James had been managing all morning. “She’s in here?”
James gestured to Hannah’s bed of hay. “She is,” he said again as he cast a grateful glance in Miss Corinna’s direction before turning his focus on his brother. “No worse for the wear, it seems.”
“Good God,” Daniel breathed out as he stopped at James’ side and looked at Hannah. "The little imp."
James crossed the stall and lifted his daughter from the hay. Hannah stirred in his arms, frowned slightly in her sleep, and then settled against his shoulder.
Marmalade expressed his views on the disruption at some length and then led the way from the stall with considerable poise, as though the whole expedition had been his idea from the start.
With her quiet and calm demeanor, Miss Corinna watched this display and pressed her lips together as though to conceal her amusement.
"That cat has a great deal of dignity, doesn’t he?" Daniel said wryly.
"Entirely unearned," James added.
"But completely convincing,” Miss Corinna agreed.
James laughed at that, not a large laugh, but one of the first genuine laughs he’d experienced in a long time. His soul felt lighter for it.
Daniel fell into step beside him as they came out of the stable block into the grey morning with Miss Corinna following in their wake.
Chapter 5
After the excitement of the morning, Acklan had settled back into its usual routine by afternoon. Lord and Lady Darling had arrived with Captain Gates before noon, and the house had absorbed the additions as if they were always meant to be there. Hannah, restored to the nursery and entirely unaware of the chaos she had caused, had declared the morning a great success and gone to sleep after luncheon without argument, much to Miss Roseberry’s relief.
James worked at his desk for most of the afternoon, going through correspondence that had accumulated during his journey from London, and he’d been doing it with an ease that surprised him.
The study at Acklan had always been the room he found hardest to sit in for long. Too many mornings with his father at this desk. Too many evenings with Alice in the chair by the window, reading while he worked, a quiet domestic life that had seemed permanent but hadn’t been. He had developed, over the last three years, a habit of conducting estate business in London rather than at Acklan, which Turlow managed with professional patience and James knew was not ideal.
This afternoon, however, the study was simply a room with good light and a desk, and he’d sat there without difficulty, which he noticed without examining the novelty too closely.
When he heard the sound of an approaching carriage on the gravel road, he set down his pen and went to the window.
His sister had arrived. He felt the warmth of it settle into him, quiet and certain, the way Laura's presence always had.
He was at the front door before Mills had finished opening it.
The air was cool and grey and carried the smell of heather from the moors in the distance. James stood at the top of the steps and watched the carriage come to a full stop and felt something in his chest expand.
The Reverend Mr. Thomas Fairleigh alighted first from the conveyance, lean and dark-haired, quietly dignified in a way that had nothing to do with his collar and everything to do simply who he simply was. Fairleigh turned to offer his hand to Laura, steady and unhurried about it in the way he was steady and unhurried about most things. Laura stepped onto the drive in a dark travelling dress and looked up at the castle. When her eyes found James at the steps, she smiled.
James went down to meet her. Laura was fair and slight. She had their mother's eyes, a particular shade of blue that had always seen to reassure him in ways words could not.
She took both of his hands in hers, the way she always had, since he was small enough for it to mean something different. Then she looked at him, the way Laura always looked at him. Carefully. Thoroughly. She had known his face since he’d been born and she missed nothing in her assessment.
