Page 25 of The Winter Companion

“Is your grandfather…?”

“Gone, many years hence.” She sighed. “And I must go, too. Mrs. Bainbridge will be expecting me.”

His faint smile faded away.

“Thank you for showing her to me,” she said.

He acknowledged her thanks with a slight inclination of his head. It was strangely formal, all things considered.

Then again, the two of them had only met yesterday.

Perhaps it was she who was being overly familiar. It wouldn’t be the first time. She privately scolded herself as she made her way back up the aisle. Would she never learn to be quiet? To be more circumspect?

Mr. Cross followed her in silence to the front of the stables.

“I shall bid you good morning,” she said, walking to the door. “And thank you again—”

“Miss Hartwright—”

She stopped and turned, her heart thumping hopefully. “Yes?”

“Your cloak.”

Embarrassment heated her face. “Of course. How stupid of me.”

He took it from the door of the loose box, offering it to her with an outstretched hand.

She had to set Bertie down again in order to take it and slip it round her shoulders. “Bertie, stay!”

“I have him.” Mr. Cross picked him up a split second before he ambled off down the aisle. Bertie snorted in protest.

Clara fastened her cloak. “I’ll take him now.” She lifted Bertie from Mr. Cross’s arms. “What a nuisance we are to you.”

He didn’t deny it, but when she once again turned to leave, he walked with her to the door. “The rain has stopped.”

“So it has. But not for long, I expect. The skies are very dark.” She pulled up her hood, wary of the coming storm. “I must hurry.”

She didn’t wait for him to speak. To bid her goodbye, or warn her—as the butler had—to be careful not to lose her footing. He didn’t owe her an excess of courtesy. He’d already shown enough this morning, both to her and to Bertie.

The gravel was slippery beneath her boots as she started up the winding cliff road, Bertie held safely beneath her cloak. She looked back only once. A foolish impulse.

Or perhaps not so foolish.

Her heartbeat quickened.

Mr. Cross was still standing in the doorway, his broad shoulder propped against the frame. He was watching her.

Neville made a final notation in the leather-bound ledger. Everything appeared in order. All the figures had been entered and balanced, each carefully copied from the reports of Justin’s quarterly earnings from his railway ventures, cotton mills, and other investments. Neville had been over them twice just to be sure.

He set down his quill, leaned back in his chair, and stretched.

The heavy wine-colored curtains on the bank of library windows had been drawn open, revealing a wide expanse of stormy gray skies over an equally stormy sea. Rain was coming again. It was always coming in Devon. But for now, at least, it had stopped.

Neville longed to be outside. To return to the stables, or to the beach with the dogs. Anything but the stifling interior of the house.

“Let me see.” Mr. Boothroyd came to stand over the library desk. He flipped through the ledger, scanning its pages. “Good, good. Yes, that’s right. And you’ve deducted the payments on the new equipment at the mill?”

Neville sat forward again at the desk. He turned the page of the ledger, drawing his ink-stained finger to a column on the left. “Here.”