"The moors," said Viscount Hadleigh, with great dignity, "are not grey. They are atmospheric."
"We have that in common too," Lucien said.
At that, Corinna laughed, as did most of the assembled guests. Linthorpe did not laugh.
Instead, he set down his cup, clearly through with breakfast. "If you are ready, Miss Corinna. The north boundary awaits."
The laughter stopped naturally, the way conversations end when something more interesting just arrived.
"Of course, Your Grace.” Corinna pushed to her feet.
Linthorpe offered her his arm and the two of them departed without much fanfare. For a moment, the breakfast room was silent.
"Well," Mr. Atherton said pleasantly, breaking the silence as he reached for the toast rack.
"Indeed," Lucien agreed.
Hythe set down his gazette. He looked at Margaret. "Drainage," he said, with great seriousness and the slight lift of his brow.
"Mm," Margaret agreed.
Hythe picked up his gazette again.
Harriet leaned toward Margaret, patience apparently exhausted. "Margaret," she said quietly. "Tell me everything."
No, her dear friend possessed no subterfuge at all.
"After breakfast," Margaret told her serenely and would have cast her friend a telling glance, but there were too many witnesses about.
Still, things were going rather well at the moment. So, Margaret reached for the marmalade once more as it was very good marmalade, and she was in excellent spirits.
Chapter 7
The North Boundary
Acklan Castle
The north field sat in a shallow depression at the edge of the castle’s working fields. The land above it rose in a long uneven slope toward the moor. James had walked this boundary more than a hundred times over the course of his life, with his father, with Turlow, and then alone in the years after Alice passed, when walking was something to do that kept his mind occupied without requiring it to produce anything useful. He knew every dip and rise of the terrain.
It had been some time since he’d walked it with company.
Miss Corinna – Cori – walked beside him as though she’d been covering ground like this her whole life, easy and unhurried, entirely unbothered by the terrain. The morning was cool, the air carrying the clean cold smell of the moors. She’d come prepared for it, donning sensible half boots and a dark wool spencer that made her light hair appear even lighter, especially against the grey of the sky.
She looked at the land, not at him although some part of him wished it was otherwise. Foolish, ridiculous. What had come over him of late?
Cori studied the grounds with the same focused, practical attention she had brought to the drainage conversation at dinner the other night. Her gaze followed the slope, the drainage channels, and the places where Acklan's grass grew thicker.
It was remarkably easy to walk with her, even in companionable silence.
"There," Cori said, stopping.
James stopped beside her.
She gestured to a section of the slope, perhaps thirty feet above the field boundary, where the ground leveled briefly before rising again. The grass was slightly different there, darker and coarser, the kind of growth that came from ground that held water longer than it should.
"That section," she began, "it sits differently than the rest of the slope. Do you see how the grass changes?"
He did now. Of course, he had walked past it a hundred times but had not truly seen it before this morning.
