She had expected it. But she had not expected his hand to rest briefly on the back of her chair after she sat. His fingers curled over the carved wood before he moved to take his seat.
It’s nothing.It’s just furniture.
She unfolded her napkin.
“The east field at Pembroke,” Mr. Pembroke was saying to James as he settled into his chair and arranged his napkin, “has yielded more crops since the drainage work in August. I was right about the approach. You might see the same result on your south paddock.”
“That’s exactly what Henderson tells me,” James said. He reached for his wine glass and then, with the unhurried movement of someone doing two things at once, glanced at Isadora. “Have you everything you need?”
She looked at him, unable to stop the warmth spreading through her.
He is checking.He is actually checking.
“Yes,” she replied. “Thank you.”
He returned to Mr. Pembroke as though the brief interruption was the most natural thing in the world.
Because to him, it is.He is playing the part.
She looked down at her soup.
She was playing the part, too. They were both playing their parts, and they were, she had to admit, playing them well with the ease of people who knew each other well enough to move through a room without collision, who did not need to coordinate because they had arrived at a sort of unconscious fluency over the past several days that she had not entirely noticed developing until this evening, watching it from the outside as it were, seeing how it appeared to other people.
Apparently, it was entirely convincing.
“Your Grace,” Lady Eversleigh addressed her from across the table with the directness of a woman who considered preambles a waste of everyone’s time. “I hear you have taken a particular interest in the nursery.”
“I have.” Isadora nodded.
“The child is well?”
“She is.” She paused. “She is… She has had some difficulty settling, but she is improving. She is a very… determined little girl.”
Lady Eversleigh smiled, a genuine smile rather than a polite one. “They always are at that age. My own children were absolute tyrants until they were three. After three, they become merely difficult.” She glanced toward James. “She is fortunate to have you both.”
“We are fortunate to have her,” Isadora said.
She said it without thinking and then felt the slight weight of having said something she meant in a room full of people she barely knew, which was more than she had intended to offer.
She reached for her wine in a bid to distract herself.
James was looking at her. There was not a question in his eyes, but something else. Then it was gone, and he returned to Mr. Pembroke and whatever he was saying about the country roads. Still, she had sensed the pause, the attention in those three seconds.
You are reading things into looks,she told herself firmly.Stop it.
The thing about James at a dinner table, Isadora was discovering, was that he was entirely impossible to look away from.
She had known he was charming. She had years of evidence for this and had thought herself adequately prepared. What she had not accounted for was the effect of his charm in a room this size,small enough that she could see it at work in the way he moved between people.
“The road matter,” Colonel Hartley was saying, “is not going to resolve itself before winter, Your Grace. I said as much to the parish council in August, and they received it the way they receive most things I say in August—which is to say they nodded and did nothing.”
“They nod beautifully, though,” James drawled. “Years of practice.”
Lord Eversleigh laughed. “He’s right, Hartley. The nodding is excellent.”
“The road, however, remains a problem.”
“It does.” James set down his glass with the easy authority of a man changing register without losing the room. “I’ve spoken to Henderson about our section. We’ll address it before the ground freezes. However, the parish section is…” He paused. “A more delicate matter.”
