Diana bent over and retrieved a folder from inside her drawer. It would be a week before the orders were due on that line, so she hadn’t gotten to them yet. She walked them to Nate and placed them on his desk. “Thank you,” she said. Nate took the stack of papers and started leafing through them in the efficient manner with which he always did everything. Memories of her first months here with him and Mr. Richardson flooded her with a feeling of belonging. “It will be nice to be working together again. Just like before.”

Nate’s eyes slid to Mrs. Oliver’s desk and back before nodding. That had been Mr. Richardson’s desk for years. She knew what he was thinking: it would never be the same, not with Mr. Richardson gone. Nate rubbed the top of her old desk, sliding his hands back and forth along the smooth wood. “Perhaps when you sell Richardson Rail, we should consider selling Barton Rail as well.”

“Perhaps.”

He tapped the back of his pen on the papers in front of him. “It is something to think about.”

“I know.”

Nate wanted to spend his time in Baimbury with Grace. The estate was finally becoming more profitable, thanks to his innovations and the large influx of funds that the sale of a few railroad lines had brought the family.

Diana walked slowly back to her desk. Nate had adjusted to the life he had had before he started the company, only a happier version of it. He was ready to focus on a different future with his growing family. She could see it in the way the shadows touched his eyes whenever he looked at his friend’s old desk. Her hand traced the nicks along the edges of the desk she had been using for the past six months. Diana had always known working on the railroad would be temporary. But her old life didn’t await her on the other side of this. Her reputation simply wasn’t what it used to be. Nor was she. Even if she could go back to Baimbury, she knew what life was like there. Could she really go back to living each day waiting for something to happen instead of making things happen?

Nate might be ready to sell the railroad company, but she wasn’t certain she was.

Chapter 17

Everton drummed his fingers on his thigh as his right foot tapped a silly rhythm on the carriage floor. He had never been so impatient to reach Diana. His friend. He hadn’t had a friend for years, and now that he did, he wondered why the deuce he had waited so long.

Despite Everton’s declaration that he would come back to the office the very next day, he had decided to give the siblings a full twenty-four hours alone together to make up for lost time, a fact that had led to one of the dullest days of his life. Even in the two weeks prior, when he had made himself stay away from Diana, he hadn’t been so anxious to leave the house. Those weeks had been filled with a different sort of dullness, a deeper and more hopeless understanding that sitting at home, alone, was always to be his lot in life. He was used to that type of monotony.