"Rosanne..."
"You are afraid." She stopped pacing, turning to face him with an intensity that was almost startling. "You are afraid of feeling something real, because our parents felt things that were real, and it destroyed them. But Lillian is not our mother, Daniel. And you are not our father. Whatever love might grow between you would not be the same destructive passion that tore this family apart."
Daniel stood abruptly, his chair scraping against the floor.
"You do not know that."
"I knowyou." Rosanne's voice softened. "I know that you have spent your entire life trying to be the opposite of our father; controlled where he was volatile, rational where he was passionate, cold where he was consumed by heat. And I know that it has made you miserable."
"I am not miserable."
"You are not happy."
The words landed like stones in still water, sending ripples through his carefully constructed composure.
"Happiness is not the purpose of life," he said quietly.
"Then what is?"
He did not have an answer. He had never had an answer. Duty, he might have said; responsibility, honor, the obligations of his position. But those were purposes imposed from without, not reasons for living. They were the framework that held his life together, not the substance that filled it.
Lillian filled it. The thought surfaced unbidden, treacherous and true. Lillian, with her steady gaze and her practical wisdom and her ability to see past his walls to the man beneath. Lillian, who brought peace wherever she went. Lillian, who had looked at him yesterday as though he were worth knowing, worthwanting,despite all his efforts to prove otherwise.
"She is coming today," Rosanne said, breaking the silence. "For our usual visit. I thought you should know."
Daniel's chest tightened. "I have work to attend to. I will not..."
"You will be here." Rosanne's voice was gentle but implacable. "You will face her, and you will stop hiding behind your work and your walls and your ridiculous notes. You owe her that much, at least."
"I owe her nothing."
"You owe her everything. She has made youfeelagain, Daniel. After all these years of cold and emptiness, she has made you feel. That is a gift beyond measure, and you are treating it like a burden."
She left before he could respond, sweeping out of the morning room with the dignified fury of a young woman who had reached the end of her patience.
Daniel remained standing by the table, his breakfast forgotten, his thoughts churning.
Lillian was coming. He would have to face her. And he would have to decide, once and for all, whether he was going to continue running from what he felt or whether he was finally going to stop.
***
Lillian arrived at Wynthorpe Hall at eleven o'clock, precisely as she had every other day for the past several weeks.
But today felt different.
She had spent the morning turning Daniel's note over in her mind, analyzing every word for hidden meaning, trying to reconcile the stiff formality of his apology with the raw terror she had seen in his eyes when he pulled her from the path of the cart.
I was not myself.
But he had been entirely himself. That was the contradiction she could not resolve. The man who had flung himself into danger to save her, who had held her with shaking hands and demanded to know if she was hurt, who had called herLillianin a voice that broke on the word; that was not a man who felt nothing. That was a man who felt far too much and did not know what to do with it.
"Miss Whitcombe." The butler's voice was warm as he admitted her. "Lady Rosanne is in the morning room. And His Grace..."
He hesitated, and Lillian felt her pulse quicken.
"Yes?"
"His Grace has asked to be informed of your arrival. I believe he wishes to speak with you."
