The girl came back. "She says to come in."
The study was small, book-lined, and extremely occupied—papers on every surface, a fire going well, three lamps lit against the early dark, and Adelaide standing at the far end behind a table covered in what appeared to be transcripts and parish records. She was wearing a plain wool dress the color of winter moss, and her hair was less carefully arranged than he had ever seen it, as though she had been working for some hours and had stopped noticing.
She looked up when he came in. Her face did not perform surprise. She looked at him, and something moved behind her eyes—not alarm, not delight, but something more complicated than either.
"Your Grace," she said.
"I came to correct something," Rafferty said.
She waited. He had rehearsed this in the carriage for four hours. He had several versions; all of them had seemed adequate in the carriage, and now, standing in her father's study with the lamplight and the fire and her watching him with those careful, honey-warm eyes, none of them seemed sufficient. He said the true thing.
"At the gate in October," he said, "I said that the household had come to expect your visits. I meant to say that I had come to expect them. There is a difference between the two, and I allowed you to hear the lesser version and did not stop you from leaving, which was... that was wrong." He paused. The fire settled. "I have thought about it every day since October. I have also," he said, "been unreasonably productive, which is how I manage things I am not managing." He looked at his hands briefly, then at her. "Hegel sits at the east gate every morning at ten o'clock. He does not do it for the estate's benefit."
Adelaide said nothing for a long moment. Rafferty had reached the limit of prepared things to say. He was standing in a small study in Thornton village in December, having driven four hours to correct a sentence, and he had corrected it, and now he was waiting for the rest of it, which was hers.
"You said the household expected it," she said finally.
"I did."
"And you meant that *you* expected it."
"Yes," he said. "And when I did not expect it anymore, it was considerably worse than the drainage culvert and the estate accounts combined. And those are not negligible things."