James looked at his daughter. Then at the little orange kitten, who was washing his face with complete tranquility. "Yes, I’m aware of what happened in the drawing room this afternoon."
"How?" Hannah asked, her innocent face turned upward to his.
"I know everything that goes on in this castle, Hannah." That might not be exactly true, but it wouldn’t hurt if she thought that was the case.
She absorbed this with the seriousness she brought to most things. Then she turned back to kitten and pointed her finger at him like she was the severest of task-masters. "You should not have been a naughty cat," she told him. "Gentlemen's wagers are not your concern."
James managed not to smile.
Marmalade continued washing his face, utterly unmoved by the rebuke.
"I daresay gentlemen’s wagers are not your concern,” he told his daughter.
“I wasn’t there,” she said reasonably. “Samuel told me.”
Ah, the chatty footman.
“He said Marmalade was in the corridor. Then he went into the drawing room to see what was happening.”
“Is that so?”
His daughter nodded. “But he shouldn’t have sat in the middle of the rug.” She turned her attention back to the kitten. “That was not well done of him.”
Marmalade stepped to the far edge of the hearthrug and sat with his back to both of them, as though he was quite finished with being lectured on the matter.
"He knows he was wrong," Hannah said, studying the kitten's back. "He simply won't say so."
"A trait he has in common with a great many creatures," James said and managed not to let any trace of amusement reflect in his voice.
Then Hannah tipped her head and looked at him with an expression that always made him feel as though he was being assessed by someone much older than five. "Papa?"
"Yes."
"Is Cori going to go back to Bermuda?"
Maybe? Probably? Oh, damn it all. "I don't know."
In fact, James hadn’t given that any real thought at all. He probably should have. But he'd managed to keep himself too busy to think about her today, or he’d tried to. The library had put an end to that fiction. Since then, he’d been thinking about the night before, the kiss they’d shared, about what all of it meant. But not about her leaving. That possibility arrived now like a stone dropping into still water.
"I hope she doesn't," Hannah said, with the simple conviction she brought to all her preferences. "I like her very much."
So did James. Better than he should. "I know you do," he said.
She was quiet for a bit after that, looking at the fire and then the orange kitten while James just let himself just watch the child who was so much like Alice that at times it hurt to see her. She was?—
The door opened.
Miss Roseberry appeared in the doorway, a little breathless, and stopped. Her gaze went from Hannah on the hearthrug, to the kitten, and then finally landing on James. Something in her shoulders settled.
"Lady Hannah," she said, with the composed patience she always managed even when it was clearly costing her something. "I said you might occupy yourself quietly. Not that you might wander to another part of the castle entirely."
"I was quiet," Hannah said.
"You were in the library."
"It’s a quiet room," Hannah said again, with full confidence in her argument.
The governess looked at James. James looked back at her. Something passed between them, an acknowledgment, unspoken, that the child was not technically wrong on the specific point she had made, and that this therefore made it a difficult case to argue.
