"Well enough."
The lie came easily. Daniel had become adept at lying over the years; not the bold, obvious lies that could be easily detected, but the small, social lies that smoothed the rough edges of human interaction.I am well. I slept well. I am not in turmoil. I am not falling apart.
"Will you be riding this morning, Your Grace? The weather appears fine."
"No. I have work to attend to. I will be in my study for most of the day and I am not to be disturbed."
Fletcher paused in his preparations, a flicker of surprise crossing his professionally neutral features. "Not at all, Your Grace?"
"Not at all. I have correspondence that requires my full attention."
"Very good, Your Grace."
The valet completed his duties in silence, and Daniel submitted to the ritual of dressing with mechanical compliance. Each layer of clothing felt like armor—the crisp white shirt, the intricately tied cravat, the dark waistcoat and darker coat. By the time Fletcher was finished, the man who had spent the night in anguished contemplation had disappeared entirely, replaced by the Duke of Wyntham: cold, correct, and utterly unapproachable.
He descended to the breakfast room and found Rosanne already seated, a cup of tea cooling before her and a letter open in her hands.
"Good morning, Daniel." She looked up as he entered, and he saw her expression shift from pleasant greeting to wary concern. "You look... tired."
"I had a restless night."
"So I gathered." She set down her letter, her eyes searching his face. "Is something troubling you?"
"Nothing of consequence."
"Daniel." There was a warning note in her voice; the tone she used when she suspected him of concealing something and was preparing to excavate the truth regardless of his wishes. "Yesterday, when Lillian was here..."
"I have a great deal of work to attend to today." He cut her off with deliberate precision, reaching for the coffee service. "The quarter accounts require review, and there is correspondence from the solicitors that has been neglected. I will be occupied for most of the day."
"But Lillian might call. After yesterday, I assumed..."
"If Miss Whitcombe calls, you may entertain her as usual." He kept his voice carefully neutral, though it cost him more than he cared to admit. "I will be unavailable."
Rosanne stared at him. He could see the confusion in her eyes, the dawning suspicion that something had gone terribly wrong. She had witnessed his return from the study yesterday, she had seen his face, he suspected, and she had drawn her own conclusions about what had passed between Lillian and him.
"Daniel, what is going on?" Her voice was quiet now, stripped of its usual lightness. "Yesterday you seemed... different. When you came out of the study, you looked like a man who had just received wonderful news. And now..."
"Now I have returned to my senses." The words came out harsher than he intended, and he saw her flinch. He forced himself to moderate his tone. "Yesterday was... an aberration. I allowed myself to be carried away by circumstances. It will not happen again."
"An aberration?" Rosanne's voice rose. "Is that what you call it? Lillian is not anaberration, Daniel. She is..."
"Lady Rosanne." He used her formal title deliberately, a reminder of the distance that should exist even between siblings when one of them was the Duke of Wyntham. "This conversation is finished. I will see you at dinner."
He rose from the table without touching his breakfast and strode toward the door. Behind him, he heard Rosanne's sharp intake of breath, the scrape of her chair as she rose.
"You are going to ruin this." Her voice followed him, trembling with barely suppressed emotion. "Whatever happened between Lillian and you, whatever you felt, you are going to destroy it because you are too frightened to let yourself be happy."
Daniel paused at the threshold, his hand on the door frame but he did not turn around.
"Happiness," he said quietly, "is not the purpose of life."
He left before she could respond, and the sound of the door closing behind him was like the sealing of a tomb.
***
The study was silent and cold. The study was everything that the chaos in his chest was not.
Daniel sat at his desk and stared at the papers arrayed before him without seeing them. The quarter accounts. The solicitors' letters. The endless accumulation of duties and obligations that defined his existence. None of it seemed to matter anymore.
