His wife’s almost breathless question caught him off guard, bringing him out of his imagined funeral planning, and forcing him to look at her, then out the window.

They had entered Cornwall some time ago, but the road did not bring them in view of the coast until much later. Harrison was accustomed to the sight and rarely peered out of the window of the carriage until they were pulling into the drive of Trevadden.

But for Adelaide, this was all new.

“Yes,” Harrison told her simply, not sure which direction the conversation would take once he decided to participate. “Welcome to Cornwall.”

Adelaide did not react, though he did not quite get the impression that she was ignoring him. Her eyes were wide as they stared out the window, and she clung to the carriage door like an eager child. “I’ve never seen the coastline… Father never liked the sea. When other girls were going to Brighton, my parents took us to Bath or to the Lakes.” She blinked, then glanced at Harrison, all evidence of their previous argument gone. “Do we live near the shore, Basset?”

We.

Such a simple word, and yet it carried such weight, which now settled upon Harrison’s chest.

“We do, as it happens,” he told her, avoiding placing emphasis on any of the words, despite how his mind caught them. “We have our own beach and cove on Trevadden lands. It’s not too far of a walk, but I prefer to ride down. I give our tenants permission to use it for the pilchards when they come in each year, given its easy landings.”

Adelaide had already turned back to the view, seeming to barely breathe. “Is the water cold?”

The innocent question made Harrison laugh. “Sometimes. Depending on the time of year and the weather at hand. Other times, it’s quite pleasant.”

He could have said it was frigid and littered with ice, and she would have looked just as intrigued. Nothing he said disrupted her experience, and he doubted anything would. But soon, the view would shift, and the coast would disappear. Almost the entire remaining journey to Trevadden would be the rolling hills and moors of Cornwall rather than her seaside.

He doubted Adelaide would find that in any way attractive when she had been so drawn to the coast. Perhaps if she had seen it first, the wildness might have appealed to her, but for someone with her innocence of the world outside of London, nothing would compare with the beaches until she became bored with it.

If she ever did.

But this wide-eyed, fascinated, childlike Adelaide was too charming a spectacle to have gone away so soon. Not when a lifetime of her irritated form loomed so prevalently.

Smiling for himself alone, Harrison pounded the roof of the carriage, signaling a stop to the driver.