Neil lay still for a moment listening to the day start outside.
Ileana was warm beside him and stirred with the small sound she made when she was waking but had not decided to yet, and he got up carefully with the movement of someone trying not to disturb the quality of morning quiet that existed in the window between a person sleeping and a person waking.
He washed and came back to find her sitting up with the loose unhurried quality of someone who had slept well and was not going to pretend the morning required urgency.
She looked at him with morning eyes, clear and direct.
They ate breakfast at the domain table and the morning moved at the pace mornings moved when there was no immediate emergency pressing from behind, which was a pace Neil had learned to receive rather than push against.
