Benjamin had moved.
She had not seen him do so—she had been too consumed by her own panic—but he stood beside her now, slightly to her left, his body positioned between her and the direction in which the cat had fled. Not touching her. Not speaking. Simply present. A barrier of dark wool and scarred silence, shielding her from the shadows where the creature had disappeared.
He did not ask if she was well. He did not remark upon her reaction. He did not do any of the things that would have compelled her to explain, to justify, to reveal the humiliating depth of her fear.
He merely stood where she needed him to stand, and waited.
Eleanor felt something fracture within her chest—something small and fiercely guarded shifting beneath the weight of a kindness she had never learned to request.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
He inclined his head, barely perceptible.
“Mrs Harding,” he said, his voice revealing nothing, “pray show Her Grace to her rooms. She has endured a long journey.”
“Of course, Your Grace.”
The housekeeper moved at once, efficient and impersonal, and Eleanor allowed herself to be guided toward the house. She did not look back at her husband. She was not certain she could bear to read his expression—whatever it might be.
Yet she felt his presence behind her as she mounted the steps, and she knew, with a certainty she could not explain, that he was watching the shadows.
Ensuring the cat did not return.
***
The interior of Thornwood Park proved everything the exterior had promised: imposing, restrained, and utterly devoid of warmth.
Eleanor followed Mrs Harding through an entrance hall that might have swallowed the Cheswicks’ entire ground floor, past a staircase sweeping upward in elegant curves, and along corridors lined with portraits of Whitcombes long deceased. The faces that watched her from their frames were uniformly stern, their gazes following her progress with what felt uncomfortably like judgment.
You do not belong here, they seemed to say.You are not one of us.
“The family apartments lie in the east wing,” Mrs Harding explained, her voice echoing faintly in the vast spaces. “HisGrace’s chambers are at the far end. Yours are adjoining, connected by a sitting room.”
Connected.
The word settled upon Eleanor with unexpected weight. She had not considered the physical reality of marriage—the proximity, the shared spaces, the continual awareness of another life existing just beyond a door.
“The household rises at six,” Mrs Harding continued. “Breakfast is served at eight. Luncheon at one. Dinner at seven, though His Grace frequently takes his meals in his study.” A pause, weighted with implication. “He prefers solitude.”
“I understand.”
“Do you?” The housekeeper halted and turned to face her, her expression not openly hostile, but far from welcoming. “Forgive me, Your Grace. This house has been… quiet for a great many years. His Grace has particular habits. Particular requirements. Change is not always welcome.”
It was, Eleanor recognised, a warning.Do not unsettle him. Do not disrupt him. Do not imagine your presence confers authority over the life he has built in your absence.
Under other circumstances, she might have bristled. She was the Duchess now, after all—the mistress of this house by law and custom, regardless of how long Mrs Harding had governed it.
But Eleanor had spent too many years navigating the delicate politics of other people’s households to mistake protectiveness for malice. Mrs Harding was not her adversary. She was merely a woman who had guarded a wounded man for two decades and was not yet prepared to entrust his care to a stranger.
“I have no wish to disturb His Grace’s peace,” Eleanor said quietly. “I am here because I was required, Mrs Harding—not because I desire to alter anything that does not require alteration.”
The housekeeper studied her for a long moment. Whatever she perceived appeared to satisfy some internal measure, for her rigid posture softened fractionally.
“Your rooms, Your Grace,” she said, opening a door to reveal a suite of chambers that stole Eleanor’s breath despite herself.
The rooms were beautiful.
That was the first thing Eleanor noticed—the unexpected, almost disorienting beauty of the space. The walls were papered in pale blue silk. The furniture was delicate and feminine, all curved legs and carved flourishes. The bed was vast, canopied in fabric to match the walls, heaped with pillows that appeared never to have borne the impression of a sleeper’s rest.
