She was about to rise and return to her chambers when she heard a small sound at the door.
Not footsteps. Something softer, more deliberate.
Then Marmalade appeared from the shadows near the door as though he had been expected. He crossed the library floor and leapt onto the arm of her chair.
Cori looked at the kitten. "You're not supposed to be in here," she said softly.
Marmalade regarded her with his steady amber eyes.
"Neither am I, I suppose," she said.
She scratched gently behind the kitten’s ears. He permitted this as though he was doing her a favor. Then he stepped from the arm of the chair into her lap. He turned twice and then settled. His purr filled the quiet library, warm and steady and entirely indifferent to the evening's disappointments.
Cori rested her hand on his back, looked at the fire, and let him purr.
Step Five
Chapter 14
The rain had stopped sometime the night before. James couldn’t have pinpointed when, exactly. But when he awoke this morning, the incessant drumming on the stone had ceased and a calm had settled over Acklan.
He’d risen early that morning, earlier than usual, and his mind kept returning to Cori as he wondered what to do about her. If he should do anything. He had lain in bed for another hour telling himself to go back to sleep, but he eventually gave up when slumber refused to find him again. So, he dressed in the dark and went downstairs before the rest of the castle was properly awake.
Out of habit, he went to his study but then stood in the threshold, looking at the desk. There was nothing that required his immediate attention. He’d seen to everything yesterday, and the absence of having anything useful to do was considerably worse than having too much. A man with too much to do did not have time to think. A man with nothing to do had no such excuse.
Again, he thought of Cori. He couldn’t help it. He thought about the night before, about arriving in the drawing room after port only to find her gone. He’d told himself that she must have retired early, but he hadn’t examined that too closely. Examining it, after all, would have required him to ask himself whether he’d been relieved or disappointed by her absence, and he was not prepared for either answer.
Fresh air would help him clear his mind. It always did.
So, James headed for the kitchen gardens but?—
She was already there.
He stopped in the gateway and swallowed a bit nervously, which was ridiculous. He was the damned Duke of Linthorpe. He shouldn’t be nervous, just coming upon a young woman in his gardens.
Cori was crouched at the far end of the herb beds with her back to him, her attention on something low along the east wall, her light hair braided loosely over one shoulder. She hadn’t heard him approach which allowed him a moment to collect his composure.
The garden was saturated from the last few days of rain. There were puddles on the stone path, the espaliered trees along the south wall still dripped with rainwater, and the smell of wet earth and thyme filled the morning air. The moors beyond the open wall were visible for the first time in days, pale gold and grey in the early light, the sky above them wide and clean.
Cori turned something over in her fingers, examining it, entirely absorbed in her work.
James should go back inside. He’d come to the garden to clear his head, not to find her, and finding her before he’d decided what his next steps should be would only confuse him more. But he went through the gate anyway, like a lovesick schoolboy who couldn’t help himself even though he knew better.
She heard his footsteps on the wet stone and looked up at him, surprise in her blue eyes.
"The rain stopped," she said, as though this explained everything, which perhaps it did.
"It did," he agreed and came to stand closer to her, noticing a sprig of rosemary in her hand, bruised from where her fingers had pressed. The scent of it was sharp and clean.
"It survived," she said, glancing at the bed. "I wasn't sure it would. The stems were quite waterlogged."
"Rosemary is resilient," he said.
"Most things are," she said, offering him the slightest of smiles before returning her gaze to the herb bed, "if you give them time."
She said it lightly and he wasn't certain she meant it the way he heard it.
He looked at her profile and said nothing for a moment. “You weren't in the drawing room last night," he said. "After dinner."
