A beat.
"Miss Thornton, I am not practiced at any of this. I have been running an estate and managing obligations and being diligent about everything that required diligence for seven years. And it has... it has left me," he stopped, "unused," he said.
Something moved across her face quietly, like weather. "I know," she said. "I know that about you."
He looked at her. "Do you?"
"You are very careful," she said. "You speak precisely when you speak at all. You went to one garden party in three years because Oldwin was quiet about it, which is clearly your system for working out what you actually need to do." She came around the edge of the table. She was three feet from him now in the lamplight, with the fire behind her and her father's papers all around. "You found me in the fountain and said it was the step. You came to Mrs. Holbrook's dinner to look at drainage records. You said the library should be seen. You said nothing, and then corrected nothing, and then drove four hours in December." She paused.
"Yes," he said.
"You are extremely inefficient," Adelaide said, "for a man who manages an estate of that size."
"I am aware of this," Rafferty said.
"I was also," she said, "alphabetizing books at eleven o'clock at night because I couldn't think of anything better to do about it."
The fire made a small sound. Outside, darkness had arrived in full.
"I should like," Rafferty said, "to not be inefficient about this any further."
Adelaide looked at him. Her eyes were very bright in the lamplight, and her face had the look it had in the fountain—unafraid, just present, just there. "Then say what you mean," she said quietly.