“You do not know anything about him,” Arabella said, words rushing now as if she could not contain them. “He could be kind, or he could be… he could be cold. He could be cruel just like the rumors paint him to be. He looked at Father like Father was something he could crush.”
Eleanor remembered that gaze. The way James had stepped between them, effortless and menacing.
Arabella’s voice dropped. “He could be dangerous.”
Eleanor swallowed. “So could any husband.”
“That is not reassuring,” Arabella said, tears slipping free. “Eleanor, I feel–” Her throat worked. “I feel as though I have pushed you into it.”
Eleanor crossed the room at once and took her sister’s hands. “You did not.”
“I did,” Arabella insisted. “You did it for me.”
Eleanor squeezed her hands. “And I would do it again.”
Arabella shook her head fiercely. “I do not want you to.”
Eleanor’s throat tightened. She forced a smile she did not fully feel. “You are allowed to want things. You are allowed to dream of love. That is not a crime.”
Arabella’s breath hitched. “And you? What are you allowed to want?”
The question struck deeper than Eleanor expected.
She opened her mouth, then closed it.
She thought of the duke’s voice in the hall, calm and final. Of his nearness when he spoke of choices that did not feel like choices at all. Of the way her skin had flushed, traitorous, when he stepped too close.
It had been power, yes. But it had been something else too. Something she did not yet have a name for.
“I want you safe,” Eleanor said at last.
Arabella’s gaze fell to their clasped hands. “And when you leave?”
Eleanor’s breath caught.
“When you become a duchess,” Arabella whispered, “you will not be here.”
Eleanor’s grip tightened because that was the fear she had refused to speak aloud.
She would be gone, and Arabella would be left behind in this house with Charlotte and their father.
Eleanor forced herself to smile, though it trembled at the edges. “I will find a way.”
Arabella looked up. “Promise?”
Eleanor’s throat tightened, the word lodged there.
Because she did not know if she could keep it.
And as the house settled into uneasy quiet around them, Eleanor realized with sudden clarity that becoming the Duchess of Langford may save Arabella’s future, but it might also cost Eleanor her only family.
CHAPTER 5
“Your Grace!”
James Montague did not slow.
London had a way of smelling like damp stone and coal smoke, as though the city itself exhaled its exhaustion into the streets. The paving beneath his boots was slick with the residue of the morning’s dew. Spring was upon them.
