"What about it," he said.
"The small dining room," she said. "I want to eat there every night. Not the main one. The small one with the south field view."
He looked at her for a moment. "Done," he said, the same word he had used about the gardening book, delivered with the same complete absence of ceremony and the same absolute certainty of follow-through.
She settled deeper into the chair.
He turned back to the fire.
The cottage held them — the fire doing its work, the lighthouse doing its work, the sea outside making its loud November argument with the rocks.
She was aware, at the edges of her attention, that tomorrow Carson would appear from the pub with the fish and his opinions. The week after they would go back to the estate.
All of it waiting.
