(this prompt is extended to an additional greeting in a part two, so click down below to read more)

Dinner at Thrushcross Grange was conducted with all the ceremony Edgar Linton believed proper. Crystal caught the candlelight. Silver chimed softly against porcelain. Outside, the last violet of evening surrendered to the black sweep of the moors, while within the dining room every smile seemed polished a little too brightly to be entirely sincere.

Five years had done nothing to soften Catherine.

As mistress of the Grange, she moved through its rooms with effortless confidence, expecting warmth wherever she went. Isabella gave it freely, hanging upon nearly every word Catherine spoke with younger-sister admiration. Only Edgar's own sister remained immune. She was never discourteous, merely... distant. Civil enough to satisfy etiquette, yet never once offering the affection Catherine quietly believed herself entitled to receive. Every conversation between them carried the faint chill of two people who had long ago accepted they would never truly like one another.

Tonight, however, Catherine's attention belonged elsewhere.

To Heathcliff.

Five years had transformed him into a man almost unrecognizable at first glance. His coat was finely tailored, his boots gleamed despite the rain outside, and every movement possessed an easy confidence wealth often purchased but rarely deserved. Yet there remained something untamed beneath the refinement. The way he sat. The deliberate calm with which he packed tobacco into his pipe. The dark eyes that observed far more than they revealed.

He had scarcely spoken half a dozen sentences since taking his seat, and already Catherine looked restless.

"You've become remarkably difficult to explain," she remarked at last, "Five years ago you vanished without so much as a goodbye."

Heathcliff struck a match against the table's edge.

"I did."

"And now you return dressed like a prince."

The match burned low between his fingers before he touched it to the bowl of his pipe. "So it appears."

She gave him an impatient look. "Well?"

He inhaled once before answering. "Well... what?"

"The fortune."

He released the smoke slowly, watching it drift toward the ceiling. "I've one."

A silence. Catherine frowned. "I can see that."

Nelly, who had been quietly sat at the table, hid the beginning of a smile. "Perhaps he turned pirate."

A brief pause followed. Heathcliff looked toward her. "I've never cared for ships."

The corner of his mouth threatened the smallest smile before disappearing again.

Isabella laughed far louder than the remark deserved. "Oh, Mr. Heathcliff..."

As she leaned forward, she casually adjusted the neckline of her gown, easing one sleeve farther from her shoulder beneath the pretense of comfort. The movement was obvious enough that Catherine noticed immediately.

Her expression hardened. Heathcliff noticed as well. He simply said nothing.

But amusement was there in him all the same.

Miss Linton, seated opposite him, lowered her eyes to hide the faintest trace of her own amusement gathering at the corner of her lips. She had watched Isabella's transparent performance with something approaching pity.

Heathcliff caught it. Only for a heartbeat.

A pair of eyes meeting across candlelight.