Lord Harwick was gone. His departure had been smooth and fast and explained to the general company as a prior commitment. Nobody believed this. Nobody said so. Lady Mirabelle came to dinner.
She sat straight and said little and smiled at nothing. Her eyes moved to Nora once, briefly, and what was in them was not the calculated warmth of earlier in the week. It was something plainer, something that looked, surprisingly, almost like recognition. Nora wore the deep gold dress. Delia had taken it in with swift, precise stitching in under 30 minutes and had not mentioned it afterward.
The Duke looked at her when she came into the dining room. Just once, directly. Then he looked at his plate and the tips of his ears were slightly less composed than the rest of him. And Tilda, seated beside Nora, made a tiny sound under her breath that she converted into a cough. After dinner, Percival appeared in the doorway and nodded once.
Nora excused herself. She walked down the corridor to the library, which was warm and fire-lit, and sat in one of the chairs and waited. Calder came in 2 minutes later and closed the door. He did not sit across from her. He sat in the chair beside hers, close enough that the armrests nearly touched, and turned to face her.
The fire was the only sound. "I told you on the first morning," he said, "that I wanted to find out whether what I believed about you was real or whether I had constructed it. " He paused. "It is real. More real than I had calculated. " She looked at him. "I am not a man who does this easily," he said.
"You know that. I am not built for the kinds of declarations that come easily to other people. But I think you also know what I mean because I have not said anything this week that I did not mean. " "I know that," she said quietly. "Then I want you to know," he said, "that I am not interested in finishing this week and returning to what it was before. I am interested in you, Nora.
Not as a candidate. Not as a selection outcome. As a person who walked into this house to fix a hem and made everything I thought I had already decided feel worth deciding again from the beginning. " The fire moved in the hearth. Outside the wind had picked up, pressing against the old windows of Ashvale Manor, and the house held them in its warmth, as it had held four generations of Reinhardts through every season. Nora looked at the man beside her, at the careful, steady face that had been present, genuinely present, every single day.