***
Daniel had not slept.
He had been given a room, Lady Smith's hospitality extending that far, at least, but he had spent the night pacing its confines, too agitated for rest. The events of the previous day played through his mind in an endless loop: Lillian's anger, her demands, her conditional acceptance of his presence.
Prove yourself. Show me.
He intended to. He would stay as long as she needed him to stay. He would face whatever trials this house gathering presented. He would not retreat, not hide, not allow his fear to drive him back behind the walls that had protected him for so long.
But good intentions, he knew, were not the same as accomplishment. The true test would come when circumstances pressed against his resolve, when every instinct screamed at him to flee.
A knock at his door interrupted his ruminations.
"Your Grace." The footman's voice was carefully neutral. "Lady Smith requests your presence in her private sitting room."
Daniel felt his stomach tighten. He had expected this summons, Lady Smith was not a woman who tolerated surprises in her domain, but expecting it did not make the prospect any less daunting.
"Tell her ladyship I will attend her directly."
He took a moment to compose himself, checking his appearance in the glass. His valet had done what he could with the clothes Daniel had brought, hastily packed, wrinkled from the journey, but he still looked less than ducal. His cravat was merely adequate, his coat showing signs of hard travel.
It would have to do. Lady Smith had seen him arrive in considerably worse condition.
The sitting room was warm, a fire crackling in the grate despite the mildness of the morning. Lady Smith sat in a wing chair, dressed in her customary purple, her expression suggesting a hanging judge preparing to deliver sentence.
"Your Grace." She did not rise; a deliberate slight, or perhaps simply the prerogative of age. "Do sit down. We have matters to discuss."
Daniel sat, maintaining the posture of calm authority that had served him well in countless difficult situations. "I am at your disposal, Lady Smith."
"Are you indeed? How gratifying." Her eyes, sharp as cut glass, studied him with undisguised assessment. "You arrive at my house gathering without invitation, looking as though you have ridden through several counties without pause for rest or hygiene. You disrupt my carefully arranged entertainments with your presence. You pursue a young woman who is under my protection, despite having, by all accounts, treated her abominably in recent weeks." She paused. "Have I summarized the situation correctly?"
"You have, Lady Smith."
"And you have nothing to say in your own defence?"
Daniel considered his response carefully. He could offer explanations, he could speak of his fears, his parents' legacy, the terror that had driven him to push Lillian away. But explanations, he was beginning to understand, were merely words dressed up as justification.
"I have behaved badly," he said simply. "I hurt someone I care for deeply, and I am attempting to make amends. That is all I can say in my defence, and I am aware it is not much."
Lady Smith's expression did not change, but something shifted in her gaze; a flicker of something that might have been surprise, or perhaps reluctant respect.
"Most men in your position would offer excuses. Reasons why their behaviour was justified, or at least understandable."
"I have reasons, Lady Smith. But Miss Whitcombe has heard them already, and they did not prevent me from causing her pain. I am not certain they deserve to be repeated."
"Hmm." She was silent for a moment, her fingers tapping against the arm of her chair. "I knew your parents, Your Grace. Well enough to observe their marriage. It was….. Tempestuous."
Daniel felt his jaw tighten. "So I have been told."
"They loved each other with an intensity that was almost frightening to witness. And that intensity destroyed them both, in the end." Lady Smith's voice had softened slightly—not with sympathy, precisely, but with the understanding of someone who had witnessed tragedy firsthand. "I have often wondered what became of their children. Whether the same capacity for... excess... had been inherited."
"I have spent my life trying to ensure that it was not."
"By feeling nothing at all?"
"By controlling what I felt. By refusing to allow passion to override judgment." Daniel met her gaze steadily. "I believed I was protecting myself. Protecting others from what I might become. I see now that I was merely hiding."
"And Miss Whitcombe drew you out of hiding."
