"I heard you've been asking questions about me," she said quietly, her hand still resting against his forehead. "Mrs Williams mentioned it. And Liz was here. Was it something she said?"
Aubrey couldn't speak. Couldn't find words adequate to the enormity of what he had learned. So instead, he reached for her—his good arm wrapping around her waist, pulling her toward him with more strength than he had managed in days.
"I'm sorry." The words broke from him like a dam bursting. "Eleanor, I'm so sorry. For everything. For these two years. For being blind and selfish and unforgivably cruel. For not seeing you. For not knowing you. For destroying something precious before I even understood what I had."
Eleanor went rigid in his embrace, her hands braced against his shoulders as though she might push away at any moment. But Aubrey held on, his face pressed against her shoulder, breathing in the lavender scent of her hair.
His arm tightened around her small frame. "I wish I could hold you properly. Wish I could stand and take you in my arms the way a husband should. Wish I could show you how desperately sorry I am for every moment of pain I've caused you."
For a long moment, Eleanor remained frozen. Then, slowly, her hands moved from bracing against his shoulders to resting there more gently. Not returning the embrace, exactly, but no longer resisting it.
When Aubrey finally released her, Eleanor pulled back with an expression he couldn't quite read. Perplexed, certainly. Perhaps touched. But underneath it all, something harder. Something determined.
A wall going up where there had been, for just a moment, a crack.
"I see," she said quietly, smoothing her dress with hands that trembled slightly. "Liz told you about... about before."
"She told me who you were," Aubrey said. "Who you are. What I was too foolish to discover for myself."
Eleanor's jaw tightened. She turned away, moving toward the washbasin with rigid composure. "You're healing well, my lord. Well enough that we need only change your bandages every other day now instead of daily. I'll see to them now, and then we can reduce the frequency of care."
Her tone was professional. Distant. As though the moment of connection had never happened.
"Eleanor—"
"Let me help you turn," she said, already moving to the bedside. "One... two... three."
She manoeuvred him with her usual competence, her hands gentle but more impersonal than she’d been the last few days. Aubrey tried to catch her eye, to see past the stoic mask, but Eleanor kept her gaze carefully averted.
She worked in silence, checking his wounds, applying fresh salve where needed. Her movements were efficient but rigid, her hardened countenance giving him no permission to explain, to apologise further.
When she finished, she pulled the sheet back up and stepped away quickly. "There. That should do. Unless you experience any pain or signs of infection, of course."
"Eleanor, I need—"
But she was already hurrying toward the door, her spine rigid, her movements just slightly too quick to be trulycomposed.
She pulled the door open and nearly collided with Mr Davies and Steven Kedleston, who stood in the corridor, apparently about to knock.
Eleanor stopped short, staring at them. Then at Aubrey. Then back at them.
"What's going on?" she asked, her voice tight.
"Lord Madeley requested to see Mr Kedleston," Davies said carefully. "I was just about to announce him."
Eleanor's face flushed. "You sent for Steven?"
"I did," Aubrey said from the bed. "I'm trying to understand who you are. To learn what I should have known all along. Your family, your friends… anyone who knows you better than I do. Which, at present, is nearly everyone."
"Why?" The word came out sharp, almost wounded. "Why now? Why any of this?"
"Because I was wrong about everything," Aubrey said simply. "And I need to make it right."
"Stop." Eleanor's hands clenched at her sides. "Don't bother. It's too late. I'm leaving in two weeks. There's no point in any of this. No point in learning about me or apologising. It would be easier if you continued not to care."
"I must for my own selfish reasons," Aubrey said, keeping his voice steady despite the desperation clawing at his chest. "I'm trapped in this bed with nothing to do but think. Humour me, at least. Let me spend this week learning about the woman I married."
Eleanor stared at him for a long moment, her eyes bright with emotions he couldn't name. Anger, certainly. But also, something that looked like pain.
