Something inside Eleanor snapped, not loudly, but completely.
“You are always trying to escape your duties,” he went on. “Just like your mother.”
The room took a collective inhale. Eleanor’s vision blurred, edges sharpening too brightly, the world tilting.
Her mother was never spoken of here. Not kindly. Not at all.
Her hands trembled.
For one terrible moment, she saw it. The porcelain cup. The weight of it. The arc it might take through the air.
She could hear it shatter.
She could imagine the sound.
Her fingers twitched.
Then Arabella’s face flashed before her eyes.
The fragile balance they lived within. The way every outburst rebounded twice as hard on her sister.
Eleanor forced her hands to still.
She lowered her gaze.
“I apologize,” she said, the words tasting like ash.
Lord St. George seemed satisfied.
“Just go, Eleanor,” he said. “Charlotte needs rest. And you are agitating her.”
Charlotte sighed weakly. “I hope she learns one day.”
Eleanor turned toward the door.
“Oh, and Eleanor,” Lord St. George added.
She stopped.
“You would do well to remember your place,” he said. “It is unbecoming for you to forget it.”
Her nails bit into her palms as she inclined her head. “Yes, Father.”
She reached for the handle.
The door opened before she could turn it.
Graham stood there, rigid as a pillar, his voice carrying with unmistakable authority.
“The Duke of Langford,” he announced, “has arrived and requests the presence of Miss Eleanor Barker.”
The name echoed through the room like a thunderclap.
Charlotte’s head snapped up, eye brightening wildly.
Lord St. George froze.
And Eleanor, still burning from the inside out, felt the world shift beneath her feet.
