"Marmalade!" Hannah appeared in the doorway at a run, her frock already somewhat in disarray. "You are not supposed to?—"
She stopped.
Hannah looked from Marmalade to Cori and then to James with the same deliberate assessment she gave to most things. "Papa," she said, her little brow furrowed in confusion. "You look different." Before James could respond, Hannah turned her attention to Cori. "Are you in trouble?" she whispered. "He makes a face when I'm in trouble. Pritchard says it’s his unfortunate face."
His unfortunate face? “I beg your pardon?—”
Cori quickly pressed her hand to her lips as though to suppress a laugh.
"I was not making my unfortunate face,” James told his daughter.
"You were making a different face," Hannah said, studying him. "I haven't seen that one before."
"Let us start over,” James began firmly. “Good morning, Hannah.”
"Good morning, Papa," she said, apparently satisfied that the situation was not a crisis after all. Then she turned her sweet face to Cori. "Have you had breakfast?"
"Not yet," Cori told her.
Hannah seemed pleased by that. "I have my breakfast in the nursery," she said with a smile. "If you wanted to come, you could. Marmalade would like it."
Cori touched the tip of Hannah’s nose. "I think I would like that very much."
“I’ll go tell Miss Roseberry so she can have your breakfast ready too.”
“I’ll meet you there,” Cori said.
Satisfied, Hannah bent down, collected Marmalade from the floor with the ease of long practice, and settled him against her shoulder. The kitten draped himself over the child with what looked a great deal like resignation.
Hannah made a direct path for the doorway, but at the threshold she looked back at them. "Papa?" she said.
"Yes?"
"You still look different," she said with great authority. "But it's a nice face." Then she went, Marmalade still draped over her shoulder. A moment later, her footsteps faded down the corridor.
The portrait gallery was quiet.
James looked at Cori and his heart filled with emotion. He wasn't certain how he'd found her when he hadn't even been looking. But he'd be forever grateful for his good fortune. She’d reminded him, without meaning to, that he was still alive and that life still had something to offer him.
“You do have a nice face,” she told him.
He kissed her once more.
Linthorpe Study, Acklan Castle
North Riding, Yorkshire
January 1819
Acklan in January was cold, magnificent and entirely uncompromising. Now in the middle of her third winter in Yorkshire, Cori still loved it absolutely. She loved the way the frost settled into the stone overnight and the way the moors looked in the pale morning light with the heather gone grey and the sky pressing down, low, and white. She understood it now, the land and most importantly, the people.
She was, she’d decided in her first year of marriage, a woman who could winter at Acklan.
Her father would’ve understood that.
"Papa," Hannah said, from her spot on the hearthrug, and chancing a glance in her father’s direction. "If you told me what it was today, I’d still be surprised tomorrow."
"That’s not how surprises work," James said from his desk, without looking up from the letter he was reading.
