"Yes."
"Do you think Marmalade is in the kitchens?"
"Very possibly."
"Even though Cook doesn't like him there?"
"Marmalade," James said, "has never allowed Cook's feelings on the matter to inconvenience him in the slightest."
Hannah seemed to find this satisfying. She swung his hand slightly as they walked.
He thought about Doctor Wells. About what the man had said, and not said. The seizure had been weeks ago, but the weight of it sat in the back of every decision he had made since like a stone in a boot. He had no right to kiss Cori. He had no right to call her his dear in that tone or to let his hand into her hair or to be in any way the thing she might come to rely on, when he couldn’t tell her with any certainty what he could or could not offer.
It wasn’t fair to her.
Besides, she was going home. She had a life across the Atlantic, a business, sisters, a house full of her father's things and her father's memory.
But he’d kissed her anyway.
He was, without question, a fool.
"Here we are," he said, at the nursery door.
Hannah went in without protest, which was either genuine tiredness or strategic compliance. He suspected the latter.
He tucked her in. He waited until she was settled.
"Papa?" she said, from the pillow.
"Yes."
"I like Cori."
James looked at his daughter in the dark. "I know you do."
"Do you like her?"
More than he should allow himself. But he wouldn’t say that to his daughter. "Go to sleep, Hannah," he said instead.
She did, with the swift totality of the very young, and James sat in the chair beside her bed for a while longer than was strictly necessary, looking at nothing in particular, thinking about a woman sitting alone in his library with a book of sonnets that had once belonged to his wife and the words ‘my dear’ still hanging somewhere in the air between them.
He had no idea what he was going to do.
That was not, in his experience, a comfortable place to be.
Chapter 11
The Duke of Linthorpe’s Study,
Acklan Castle
James had sent word to Darling the previous evening and to Daniel first thing that morning, and by half past eight all three of them were sequestered in his study with the door closed and the weight of Hawkesworth’s letter hanging heavily in the air.
Darling read it first. Then he passed it to Daniel as he quietly paced the length of the study. "Valenciennes," he muttered as he started his third path across the rug.
"A good hotel on the main square." James nodded. "Looking well, damn him."
Darling said nothing, but a muscle twitched in his jaw.
