“Very good, Your Grace.” With that, Mrs. Holt withdrew.
The corridor fell quiet.
“Eight,” James said.
“So it seems.”
Isadora looked at him. He looked back. Something lingered in the air between them. Not the argument, not his hand on her waist, but the ghost of both.
“Good evening, James,” she said.
“Good evening, Isadora,” he returned.
She went downstairs.
The warmth followed her, which she had expected. What she had not expected was that she would find herself looking forward to a dinner because it meant an evening in the same room as him, which was a significant development that she intended to consider very carefully at a later time. Now, she was going to speak to Mrs. Farrow about the menu and think about nothing else whatsoever.
She thought about it the entire way to the kitchen.
CHAPTER 13
“Lord and Lady Eversleigh,” Briggs announced, “and Miss Eversleigh.”
Isadora had approximately three seconds to arrange her expression before the drawing room doors opened, which was sufficient since she had been arranging her expressions on short notice since she was old enough to understand why it was necessary.
She was standing near the fireplace when they came in, with James beside her.
Lord Eversleigh was a large, tall man of sixty with the ruddy complexion of someone who spent more time outdoors than indoors. Lady Eversleigh was precisely what her husband was not. She was small, sharp-eyed, impeccably dressed, and taking in the room with the comprehensive speed of a woman who had been collecting gossip at dinner parties for years.
Miss Eversleigh was perhaps five-and-twenty, pleasant-faced, and looking around with the open curiosity of someone who had heard a great deal about the Ashbourne estate and was comparing the reality to the account.
Isadora suspected that they had all heard a great deal about the estate recently.
“Your Grace.” Lord Eversleigh’s hook James’s hand with the warmth of genuine acquaintance, then turned to Isadora. “And Lady—Your Grace,” he recovered smoothly. “Forgive us; we are still adjusting.”
“As are we,” Isadora said pleasantly.
Beside her, she felt rather than saw James’s reaction—a slight shift that might have been amusement if it had been allowed to develop.
“Congratulations are long overdue,” Lady Eversleigh said, taking Isadora’s hands in her own. “We were so pleased to hear it. Ashbourne has needed a duchess for some time.” She glanced at James. “And you, Your Grace, have needed someone to prevent you from spending every evening in that study.”
“You wound me, My Lady,” James said dryly.
“I don’t. You are constitutionally incapable of being wounded by accuracy.” She released Isadora’s hands and looked betweenthem with the satisfied expression of a woman whose opinion had been confirmed. “You look well together. That’s all I’ll say.”
She said it as though it were simply a fact she was reporting, which was somehow more effective than if she had made a fuss over it.
The Pembrokes arrived shortly after. Isadora and James greeted them warmly, offering Mrs. Pembroke a smile and a gentle embrace before turning to Mr. Pembroke, who bowed politely. Mr. Pembroke was a quiet, thoughtful man who managed the nearest estate with the understated competence of someone who preferred doing things to discussing them, and Mrs. Pembroke had kind eyes and the comfortable manner of a woman entirely at peace with her life and genuinely interested in other people’s lives.
Then Colonel Hartley, who was sixty and widowed and had the distinguished bearing of a man who had done important things in his youth and was now content to have done them.
The Colonel’s nephews joined to form a party intimate enough for real conversation but small enough that Isadora had nowhere to hide.
Not that I am hiding.I am simply… adjusting.
James pulled out her chair for her.
It was not remarkable. It was the right thing to do, and he did it with the ease of long habit, one hand on the back of the chair and a slight inclination of his head as she sat.
