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“Ah, Winter, what could be better? Damp, drafty, bare rooms? Just right, I’d say.”

Winter blinked. Then he seemed to recover himself. “Of course, sir.”

Chapter Nineteen

The compromise Gray reached with himself some time before dawn was that he would not enter the water. He would remain on the castle battlements, looking down. He waited for Cordelia Staveley to appear beyond the line of trees. He knew without a doubt that he should avoid joining her, but he didn’t like her swimming alone. Someone should take charge of her and make her see sense about her solitary swims. One more charge to lay against her careless father who had taught her to do it. She had been swimming alone for years and managing alone, as well, the sorts of things that men were expected to manage, and those household duties that inevitably fell to women. She had faced bills and, according to her brother, flooded fields and then the move to the lodge and the selling of their possessions.

Their wager had been about his wanting to test that composure of hers, not an icy composure, but something rooted and unshakeable nonetheless. He knew men who fell to pieces much more readily than she did.

Below him, she emerged from the trees, winding her way down to the beach and crossing without hesitation to the shore. She was a little late, and he flattered himself that she might have waited for him at their meeting place. He stood in the shadow of one of the castle’s crenellations, but she did not glance back his way. At the edge of the sea, she pulled the blue wool cap over her dark, fiery curls and waded into the water. It tested his resolve to see that dark speck move out into the current. There was little wind and a small, regular swell, nothing that she couldn’t handle. He need not worry about her. She swam west, and he knew which way the tide was running.

He should be satisfied with the results of their wager. Even letting her have the ball at Delamere was working in his favor. Whatever his sister believed him to be doing in Clifton-on-Sea, he’d caused Bernie some alarm. He smiled at the thought.

Most of the time he was content to avoid his siblings and get on with his plans, but once in a while it was satisfying to unsettle them. Plainly, Bernie was more than unsettled. For her to contemplate coming to the wilds of Dorset with Lionel in tow meant she was seriously alarmed.

Below him in the distance, Cordelia Staveley turned back, still strong. Her strokes, steady and determined, carried her forward without him. It was important to remember that. If he had any part in her life, it was as an adversary, spurring her on. He could plainly see that she had no need of his spurring.

His brief satisfaction at unsettling Bernie faded. It was hardly gentlemanly behavior to enjoy setting the cat among the pigeons in his own house. His mouth settled into a grim line. He would have to take care during Bernie’s visit that no hint of his swimming partnership with Cordelia Staveley reached Bernie’s ears. He pushed away from the castle wall. A bit of the old stone crumbled. He brushed it from his hands.

*

Cordelia hung her swim costume to dry. She could not look at it without thinking of Graymont. She did not understand him, or herself. She had to admit to some disappointment that he had not come for their swim. No doubt he had his reasons, but his absence made her realize that she had been expecting him, no longer as an intruder, but as someone who shared—what could she call it?—her delight in pitting herself against the tide and current, the exhilaration of it, the way that it made her come alive for the day. Whatever had happened to him in the past, he, like her, had discovered in this morning test of strength and resolve, a way of enduring it.

She shook off a vague disappointment. Graymont had never been part of her plans. He had been an obstacle, and then briefly, something else. She did not want to examine what he had been too closely. She stepped into the shallow bath she used to wash away the salt water from her skin.

The sketch of the ruined house had conveyed a sense of loss. Naturally, Graymont would not confide in her the full effect of such a loss, but she could guess at it. And there was something, too, in his saying that his father had been unable to rebuild. He might seem indifferent to feeling, but he had lost a home to fire. And the sketch showed her he had marked that loss. He’d surprised her with his idea that the loss of their mother had led her father to the life of gambling and dissipation Sir Humphrey now led. If Graymont was right, Cordelia would have to think differently about her father. If he was, in truth, grieving, his eldest daughter had shown him no compassion. Nor had she encouraged her siblings to be compassionate.

Her skin pebbled with the cold. She stepped out of the bath onto the stone floor of the little scullery. Her father was likely lying warm in some grand London bed, in little need of her sympathy. What her father did now, what Graymont thought, didn’t matter. Her sisters needed her.

She reached for her towel, and then her wrapper. For a few days she had had a companion for her swim. Now, evidently, she did not. The thing to do was to carry on preparing for the ball. Today she would take her sisters to Delamere to confer with Mr. Winter.

*

As they approached the castle entry, Viola kept up a steady complaint that Cordelia was making a mistake in leaving Miranda at home. “Don’t you see, Cordelia?” Viola said. “We need to get Miranda in front of Mr. Winter as often as we can. Then, on the night of the ball, in the moonlight, he will likely propose.”

“Propose to Mir!” Roz scoffed. “Viola, you have maggots for brains. Mr. Winter can’t marry Mir.”

“Whyever not? Mr. Winter is perfect for her. He’s not pompous or self-important like Mr. Hartley, and he doesn’t look down on us.”

Roz gave a short, sharp laugh. “He doesn’t look down on us because he can’t. Henry says Mr. Winter is the younger son of a clergyman, with no prospects and no income on which to marry. He can’t afford to marry Mir. We may be the most disgraced family in Clifton-on-Sea, but Mr. Winter can hardly lift us up. Marrying him would sink Miranda forever.”

“Well,” said Viola. “We have to find husbands, don’t we?”

“Not you, silly,” Roz replied.

Cordelia felt she had to intervene. “Stop it, both of you. Mr. Winter is entitled to his feelings and must know his prospects. We all know Mir’s effect on unwary gentlemen. Mr. Winter is not immune, but he will likely recover his senses in time. He has done her a good turn, and we’re grateful, that’s all. Speculating about his intentions is fruitless.”

Viola halted mid-stride. “I think you are missing real signs of his being in love, Cordelia.”

“Signs of love?” Roz scoffed. “What do you know of signs of love?”

Cordelia gave Viola a little nudge to set the stalled girl in motion again.

“They both like figwort,” Viola said, moving again. “That’s a sign. Mr. Winter is a noticer. He notices Mir. Mr. Hartley doesn’t know figwort from toad flax.”

“Your signs hardly matter, Viola,” Roz said. “Mir cannot marry Mr. Winter because he doesn’t have a house. Where could they live?”

“Lord Graymont has houses. I’m sure he could find a place for them.”