"I should go," she said, breaking the spell. "My mother will be expecting me."
"Of course." He stepped back, the movement precise and controlled. "Good afternoon, Miss Whitcombe."
"Good afternoon, Your Grace."
She walked past him toward the entrance, and she did not look back.
But she felt his gaze on her, all the way to the door.
***
That night, Daniel sat alone in his study and thought about what Miss Whitcombe had told him.
She experiences genuine panic. Physical symptoms; rapid heartbeat, trembling hands, difficulty breathing.
He had known Rosanne was shy. He had known she found social situations uncomfortable. But panic? Genuine, physical terror?
He had not known that.
How had he not known that?
He thought of all the times he had watched his sister at balls and assemblies, pale and silent at the edges of the room. He had assumed she was merely reserved; an introvert in a world that rewarded extroversion. He had never considered that she might besuffering.
She did not wish to burden you.
The words stung more than he cared to admit. His sister, the person he loved most in the world, had been silently drowning, and she had not told him because she thought he was too burdened already.
What kind of brother did that make him?
A distant one, he thought bitterly. A cold one. A man so wrapped up in his own rigid control that his own sister did not feel she could come to him with her struggles.
He thought of Miss Whitcombe in the morning room, her calm voice askingand then?He thought of the way Rosanne's panic had eased under her gentle questioning, the way his sister had laughed by the end of the conversation.
Miss Whitcombe had done what he could not. She had reached Rosanne in a way he had never managed.
She brings peace.
The thought surfaced again, unbidden, and this time he did not push it away. It was simply true. There was something about Miss Whitcombe, her steadiness, her quiet confidence, her refusal to be ruffled by his coldness or his title, that created a kind of calm wherever she went.
Rosanne felt it. The servants felt it. Even the tenants, during the brief incident with Garrett and Hobbs, had responded to her presence with visible relief.
And Daniel...
Daniel felt it too. Though he would die before admitting it.
He felt it in the way his shoulders loosened when she entered a room, in the way his mind stilled when he heard her voice. He felt it in the peculiar warmth that spread through his chest when she smiled; that small, private curve of her mouth that suggested she was laughing at some jest only she understood.
He felt it, and it terrified him.
Because feeling was dangerous. Feeling led to passion, and passion led to destruction. He had watched it happen with his parents, watched their great love consume everything in its path, including themselves, and he had sworn he would never follow that path.
Control was safety. Distance was protection. And Miss Lillian Whitcombe, with her steady gaze and her unsettling insights, was a threat to everything he had built.
He should avoid her. He should maintain the polite distance appropriate to their respective positions. He should remember that she was Rosanne's friend, nothing more, and that whatever peculiar effect she had on him was merely a passing aberration.
He should do all of these things.
The question was whether he could.
