Every day. Another task.
The schedule grew in her mind, not as a list but as a corridor lined with closed doors. Each door held an obligation. Each door needed her to be present, smiling, graceful, unblemished.
James’s voice droned on, steady and relentless, and Eleanor felt herself drifting into a peculiar haze where words became sound rather than meaning.
He spoke of timing and appearance and the land agent’s expected arrival. He spoke of which street would be most visible for promenades.
Eleanor listened, but she did not hear.
Her attention slid instead to the small, human details of him. The way his hands remained controlled even when he spoke. The way he did not glance around the room as if seeking approval. The way he looked at the schedule like a weapon.
He was doing this for a reason, not for romance.
To make the marriage appear sound, and silence theton.
Eleanor’s gaze drifted, unbidden, to the line of his throat above his collar.
She remembered the kiss from the night before. The sudden force of it. The way his hand had held her as though he had forgotten himself. The moment he had stopped, as if some invisible boundary had snapped taut.
Her cheeks warmed.
She took a sip of tea too quickly and nearly scalded her tongue.
James paused mid-sentence.
Eleanor looked up, startled, and found him watching her with that unsettling precision he used to read her face as if it were a ledger he already knew how to balance.
He set the paper down.
“Was there a question you had regarding this schedule?” he asked. “You are awfully silent.”
Eleanor blinked, her mind scrambling to return to the present. “I was listening.”
“You were not,” he replied.
Her jaw tightened. “I was.” Eleanor hesitated, then chose honesty because she did not yet know what else to choose with him. “Well, what am I meant to do in between?”
A pause.
James’s brows drew together, faint irritation creasing his forehead. “Is that not enough activity for you, Duchess?”
The title sounded pointed in his mouth, as though he had sharpened it deliberately.
Heat rose in Eleanor’s cheeks. She forced herself not to flinch. “That is not what I meant.”
“What did you mean, then?”
“I meant,” Eleanor said carefully, “that if we are to be seen, if I am to perform, if we are to host, attend, inspect, promenade, and do all the rest, then there will still be hours of the day where I am… present. Where I must occupy myself. And I do not know what you expect of me.”
James’s gaze remained fixed on her. “I expect you to adapt.”
Eleanor’s fingers tightened against her napkin. “Adapt to what, precisely?”
His eyes narrowed slightly. “To being a duchess.”
The air in the room felt suddenly thinner.
Eleanor looked down, then back up again. She changed her approach the way she would have changed her posture under Norman’s scrutiny. She softened her tone, tempered her expression, smoothed the edges of herself into something more palatable.
