He paused. He generally responds well to it. She nodded and walked back down the corridor. Dinner that evening was more populated than breakfast had been. Lord Harwick had stayed, which meant Lady Mirabelle was considerably more animated than usual.
Her smiles warmer and her conversation more pointed. She had seated herself near the Duke, who had appeared for dinner looking tired in the particular way of someone who had spent a full day dealing with things he would rather not have been dealing with. He caught Nora's eye once across the table, just briefly. She held his gaze for a moment and then looked away. Lady Mirabelle noticed.
Of course, she did. She turned to the Duke with a fresh smile and said something about the Dunmore Winter Ball, and the Duke turned toward her politely, and Lord Harwick, three seats down, watched Nora with those pale quiet eyes and said nothing at all. Lord Cecil was telling a story about a horse race to Lady Gwen, who was laughing more than the story probably warranted. Mrs. Corbett was eating with the focused expression of a woman who was definitely composing her memoirs in real time.
The Lady Farroww was speaking to the woman beside her about the merits of various London modistes. And Clarissa was sitting very straight and eating very little. And Delia was watching everything with the cool intelligence she always turned on situations she did not trust. It was Delia who caught Nora's eye across the table, unexpectedly. Delia, who had never once been warm to her, who had treated her for years as useful furniture in the family household, looked at her for a moment with something that was not warmth, exactly, but was something close to recognition.
Then Delia looked at Lord Harwick, then back at Nora, and very slightly, so slightly it might have been nothing. She tipped her head in Lord Harwick's direction with an expression that said, "I see him watching you. " Nora gave the smallest possible nod. "I know. " And Delia turned back to her plate. It was, Nora thought, possibly the most communication she and her middle cousin had ever had. After dinner, when the company had moved to the drawing room for the evening, Percival appeared in the doorway and caught Nora's eye and tilted his head almost imperceptibly toward the corridor.
She made her excuses quietly, which no one needed to hear since most people were engaged in their own conversations, and followed Percival out and down the corridor to the study. The study was at the back of the manor, lined with books and maps and the accumulated documentation of an estate that had been managed by the same family for four generations. The Duke was already there, standing at the far side of the room near a large map of the Ashvale lands pinned to the wall, still in his dinner clothes. Well, he turned when she came in. Percival closed the door behind her and stayed outside.
"Percival said it was important. " The Duke said. "It is. " She said. She did not sit. "I need to tell you something before someone else does because if you hear it from someone else, it will be shaped in a way that is designed to damage how you see me. And I would rather you hear it plainly. " He looked at her steadily.
"All right. " She told him. She told him about her father's debts, about the loan against the Eastern Field, about the two-year-old boundary dispute, and the lender's patience that had a limit. She told him clearly and without apology because it was not her failure, it was her inheritance, and there was a difference. She told him Lord Harwick Fenn had arrived that afternoon and had already referenced the dispute by name in casual conversation within three hours of his arrival. She told him she believed Lady Mirabelle intended to use it to make her look like a liability.