He would not have known to ask.
Standing in the corridor, hidden from view, Daniel listened as his sister's breathing slowed and her voice steadied. He heard the watery laugh, the genuine gratitude, the warmth in Rosanne's tone when she saidI am very glad you are my friend.
He heard Miss Whitcombe's response,I am very glad as well,and something shifted in his chest.
Miss Whitcombe had done in five minutes what Daniel had never managed in seventeen years of trying. She had taken Rosanne's panic, that wild, spiraling terror that seized her in social situations, and she hadcalmedit. Not by dismissing it, not by telling Rosanne to simply control herself, but by walking beside her through the worst of her fears and emerging on the other side.
She brings peace, he thought, the realization settling into him like a stone dropped into deep water.Somehow, impossibly, she brings peace.
He moved away from the door before he could be discovered, his footsteps silent on the polished floor. The library could wait. Everything could wait. He needed to be somewhere else; somewhere he could process this new information without the distraction of Miss Whitcombe's presence nearby.
But where in this house could he escape her?
She was everywhere now. In the morning room with Rosanne, in the gardens where they walked together, in the corridors where he encountered her on her way to or from some visit. She had infiltrated his home with the gentle persistence of water seeping through stone, and he could not seem to support his defences against her.
She is good for Rosanne, he told himself.That is all that matters. Rosanne needs a friend, and Miss Whitcombe has proven herself to be a genuine one. Whatever inconvenience her presence causes me is irrelevant.
He almost believed it.
But beneath the rational justification, beneath the cold logic that had governed his life for so long, something else was stirring. Something that had nothing to do with Rosanne's well-being and everything to do with the way Miss Whitcombe had looked at him yesterday, when he had acknowledged her reasoning about the oak tree.
I acknowledge your acknowledgment.
The words echoed in his mind, accompanied by the memory of that slight curve at the corner of her mouth. She had been laughing at him. Gently, perhaps, more amused than mocking, but laughing nonetheless.
And instead of irritating him, the memory made him want to see that expression again.
Stop, he commanded himself.Stop this immediately.
He was the Duke of Wyntham. He did not develop feelings for country neighbors. He did not find himself listening at doors, straining to hear a woman's voice. He did not lie awake at night replaying conversations, analyzing expressions, wondering what she thought of him.
He was controlled. He was rational. He was safe.
Miss Lillian Whitcombe was none of those things. She was a disruption, a disturbance, a crack in the walls he had spent a lifetime building. And if he allowed her to continue weakening his defences...
No.
He would not allow it. He would be polite but distant. He would avoid unnecessary contact. He would remember that she was Rosanne's friend, nothing more, and that whatever peculiar effect she had on his equilibrium was merely a temporary aberration.
It would pass.
It had to pass.
Daniel retreated to his study and closed the door firmly behind him. The drainage report awaited.
***
Later that afternoon, Lillian prepared to take her leave of Wynthorpe Hall.
The conversation with Rosanne had left her drained in a way she had not expected—not from the effort of helping, but from the unexpected intimacy of it. She had shared things with Rosanne that she rarely shared with anyone: her philosophy of survival, her approach to fear, the practical wisdom she had accumulated through her own struggles with anxiety and uncertainty.
And Rosanne had received these offerings with such naked gratitude that Lillian had felt something crack open in her own chest; some carefully guarded place where she kept her loneliness and her longing for connection.
She was not accustomed to being needed. Her parents loved her, certainly, but they had their own lives, their own concerns; she had learned early to manage her own troubles without troubling them. Her acquaintances in the neighborhood were pleasant enough, but none of them had ever looked at her the way Rosanne had; as though Lillian possessed something precious, something that could not be found anywhere else.
It was terrifying but it was wonderful.
She was still turning these thoughts over in her mind when she encountered the duke in the corridor.
