“Do not play coy,” Cara told her. “You know exactly what we’re talking about.”
Cori looked between her sisters and decided that she was not going to manage this gracefully. "He invited me to walk the north boundary with him tomorrow," she said. "After breakfast."
"Did he?" Cara asked, her brow lifted in surprise.
“You don’t have to look at me like that.” Cori shook the question away. "He’s not courting me. It’s just because of the drainage conversation at dinner last night.”
“Ah, yes, drainage. How very romantic.” Cara frowned slightly.
"He wants to look at the land above the north field,” Cori explained with a shrug. “He thought I might have an opinion worth hearing. That’s all."
"Indeed. I am certain that is the only reason," Cara replied, and this time it was her turn to catch Cait’s gaze in the dressing mirror.
"Cara," Cait said slowly.
"I am being supportive." Cara turned her full attention to Cori. "I was at the table too, Cori. I saw the way he looked at you when you spoke last night. And now he wants you to walk the north boundary with him. That is promising, I suppose.”
“It’s very him,” Cait said. “He takes his duties as duke very seriously.”
“I daresay he takes everything very seriously,” Cara added thoughtfully. She was quiet for a moment, the way she always was when she was thinking a problem through. "Reese thinks very highly of him," she said at last. "He has said more than once that Linthorpe is one of the most deliberate men he has ever met. That he doesn’t do or say things without meaning them."
"That is either very encouraging," Cori said, "or the most terrifying thing anyone has said to me in a sennight."
"Probably both," Cara agreed. Then she turned to Cait. "What is your impression of him? You’ve spent more time in his company than we have."
Cait set down her hairbrush and turned from the mirror to face them properly. "He’s a good man," she said. "Genuinely. Not in the way people say it when they mean harmless, but in the way that means it’s cost him something." She paused, seeming to choose her words with more care than she usually did. "He loved his wife very much. When she died, he put a great deal of himself away. Daniel says he’s not broken, but more like a man who decided the safest thing was to feel very little, and he became rather good at it."
"That is not a very encouraging portrait," Cara said, her voice laced with cautious concern.
"No," Cait agreed. "But he almost laughed twice at the supper in London, apparently. Daniel was keeping count."
“How do you keep track of someone almost laughing?” Cara grimaced just a bit.
But Cait was undeterred by the question. “You would have to ask Daniel. He is the one keeping track and I believe him.” Then she glanced at Cori. "By the way, Daniel says this is a rare feat.”
Cori’s cheeks warmed, and she was glad of the dim candlelight.
"Linthorpe also has Hannah," Cait continued. "She is everything to him. Anyone who matters to him will matter in relation to her first."
“Hannah clearly adores you," Cara said.
"As does her kitten," Cait added.
Cori smiled, thinking about the child and her little cat. They were quite the pair, Hannah and Marmalade.
“But the man seems rather complicated,” Cara said, her brow furrowing just so.
Did he seem complicated? Cori hadn’t thought of him that way. He seemed preoccupied with duty and life, which weren’t necessarily bad things. There was something about him that called to her, something that had captured her interest since the first time she’d seen him. “He seems," she said after a moment, "like someone worth the risk, I think."
Cait frowned slightly at that. However, her expression was gone a moment later as though it had never been there. But Cori had seen it and?—
“Speaking of risks,” Cara began, looking a bit hopeful. “I heard an interesting piece of on-dit about the Somertons before we left London.”
“The puffed-up buffoon who owns a rather large interest in The Bahamas?” Cait asked.
Cara’s eyes sparkled with just a bit of mischief. “The puffed-up buffoon whose wife’s family owns that interest.”
“These are the hairs we’re splitting?” Cait asked, her eyes narrowing just slightly. “Why? Did he have a falling out with his father-in-law?”
