Low. Genuine. The rare, brief sound of something that had actually surprised him.
He looked toward the window.
The morning was fully arrived now — the early gold gone, replaced by the cleaner, higher light of mid-morning, the shadows shorter, the territory outside laying itself out in full visibility beyond the glass. Fields. The lane. The distant tenant houses with their smoke.
Hartfield territory.
His wife's territory now.
He looked at it for a moment.
"By the way," he said, to no one in particular, his eyes still on the window. "How would that woman be."
Not a question. The particular, internal tone of a man following a thread.
Rihana stirred against his back. Eliantra made a small sound against his calf.
The old maid simply looked at the floor and said nothing, which was the correct response from a woman who understood that some sentences are not directed at anyone in the room.
Viktor looked at the window.
At Hartfield territory waking up under the mid-morning light.
