Cara folded her arms across her chest. And she waited some more.
"Very well. Something happened," Cori admitted.
Then she dropped onto the nearby settee and told her sister all of it. The library. The fire. The kiss.
"…and he said ‘Good evening, my dear’," she finished with a sigh. "And then he walked away into the night with Hannah and I haven’t seen him since."
Cara was quiet for a moment. “My dear? "
"My dear," Cori confirmed.
"The Duke of Linthorpe called you his dear? "
"In that tone," Cori said. "Yes."
Cara sat back. She was quiet in a way that meant she was thinking. "But this morning he wasn't at breakfast?"
"No."
"And you don't know where he is?"
"No."
Cara was quiet again, which was neither reassuring nor the opposite. "Cori," she said at last, carefully. "He kissed you and he called you his dear. Those are not the actions of a man who has decided against something."
"I know," Cori said. "But he didn’t come to breakfast…”
“Perhaps he slept in. Yesterday was rather eventful.”
Cori didn’t for one moment think he had slept in. He was as early a riser as she was, and she was about to say as much when the sitting room door opened.
Reese stood in the threshold. He did not appear to be his usual gregarious self. His expression was pinched and his eyes were troubled. "Cara," he said. “There you are.”
“Were you looking for me?”
“Just wandering.” He shook his head. “Tired of the incessant rain.”
He was not himself. Not at all.
“We are in England,” Cara reminded her husband as she reached her hand out to him. “Is everything right? You seem out of sorts.”
“Of course,” he said and though he smiled, his expression did look forced.
“I should leave you to it,” Cori said and would have pushed out of her seat if Reese hadn’t waved her back down.
“No, no, no,” he said and directed his wife back toward the settee. “Don’t leave on my account. Tell me what we are discussing this morning.”
“Cori and I were simply talking about yesterday,” Cara said, keeping her gaze directed on her husband’s face as though trying to sort him out. “Cait was the loveliest of brides.”
“She was indeed,” Reese agreed. “Though not quite as lovely as you, my dear.”
My dear. The endearment hung in the air and Cori tried, for the hundredth time to not think about the man who’d called her those words the night before.
Chapter 12
Drawing Room
Acklan Castle
