She knocked and pushed the door open. He was cross-legged on the floor with three books open around him and a fourth in his hands, tilted toward the window to catch the last of the afternoon light.
James looked up. “Annabelle.”
“You’ve found the library,” she said.
“Yes. It’s bigger than Uncle Dominic’s other library. I didn’t know he had two.”
“Neither did I.” She settled into the armchair nearest him, close enough to see his pages. “Has anyone shown you around?”
“Mrs. Howell. She has a very loud walk.” He said this as a report. He turned a page and looked up at her again. “Uncle Dominic said I should leave you to settle. But you’re settled.”
“I am,” she agreed.
Newton opened one eye, surveyed the situation, and closed it again.
“There are twenty rooms on this floor,” James told her. “Mrs. Howell told me because I asked.” He set the fourth book flat. “One of them is locked.”
Annabelle said nothing.
He looked up at her. “I know which one.”
“So do I,” she said.
He returned to his page without pressing further, and she did not know whether that was discretion or simply a new direction of thought; with James, she had learned, it was generally wiser to wait and see.
And so, she sat while he turned pages and the fire settled low in the grate.
After a while, James set down the ship book and cleared his throat.
“Have you by any chance seen the morning room?” he asked. With each word, his excitement climbed. “It has a painting of two horses on the south wall. I find it remarkable.”
Annabelle shook her head with a small laugh.
“Well, will you show it to me?” She asked, and James nodded.
So she followed him down the corridor to look at the horses, and both horses were very fine, and she told him so; and then he showed her the second sitting room, which had better light but was colder and smelled faintly of a pipe no one had smoked in some time; and then the small breakfast room adjoining the kitchen stair, where Mrs. Howell had arranged white flowers on the sideboard for no occasion she could identify, except that white flowers had been arranged in every room that morning and Mrs. Howell was thorough.
They were coming back along the first-floor corridor when she heard a door close below, and then footsteps crossing the entrance hall, quick and even.
When she looked down through the railing, a footman was moving toward the front door with a folded letter in hand, the wax seal still dark and wet.
She watched him go.
James had stopped beside her. “A letter,” he said.
“Yes,” she said.
He considered this, then said that the brushwork on the foreleg of the horse on the left was interesting, and she should look at it again from a closer distance.
She let him lead her back down the corridor.
James appeared in the dining room doorway at a quarter past seven, two full minutes before Annabelle, and had already stopped in front of the table when she arrived.
“There are three settings,” he said to the footman nearest him.
“Yes, my lord. One for you, one for Her Grace, and one for His Grace.”
James looked at the table. “I’ve never had dinner with Uncle Dominic before.”
