“There is another path to the east garden,” Benjamin said stiffly. “I can have a footman show you. This area is… not well-maintained.”
Not well-maintained.A dismissal dressed in practicality. A door closing before she could glimpse what lay behind it.
“I—yes. Thank you.” Eleanor took a step backwards, toward the breach in the wall, her cheeks burning with an embarrassment she could not entirely name. “I apologise for the intrusion.”
She turned to leave.
“Eleanor.”
Her name again. Spoken in that roughened voice that sent something fluttering beneath her ribs.
She looked back.
He remained in the same position—between her and the cat, his expression unreadable. Yet there was something in his eyes that had not been present a moment earlier. Something almost resembling… pleading.
“The cat,” he said slowly, as though the words cost him dearly. “It has been… a project of mine. For some time.”
“A project.”
“I feed it. Every day. At dawn and dusk.” He paused. “It will not approach while I remain. But it eats after I leave. It has learnt to trust that I will return.”
Eleanor’s throat tightened. She thought of what he had said in the library—of choosing her because he recognised her armour. Of two people with matching wounds finding a way to exist, imperfect, together.
The cat has learnt to trust that he will return.
“How long?” she asked quietly.
“Four months. Perhaps five.” His mouth twisted—neither smile nor grimace. “It is… slow work. Earning the trust of something that has every reason to fear.”
They stood in silence, the weight of his words settling between them. The cat had withdrawn further into the shadows of the courtyard, invisible now yet undeniably present—still watching, still waiting, still deciding whether these humans were danger or deliverance.
“I shall not tell anyone,” Eleanor said at last.
Benjamin’s expression flickered. “I did not ask you to—”
“I know you did not. But I shall not.” She met his gaze, willing him to understand. “Your secrets are your own, Your Grace. I have no wish to expose them.”
Another silence followed—longer this time, heavy with all that neither of them knew how to express.
“The east garden,” he said at last. “The roses are worth seeing. If you follow the main path from the terrace, you will find it without difficulty.”
A dismissal. Yet gentler than before. Almost an offering, in exchange for the secret she had promised to guard.
“Thank you,” Eleanor said.
And then, because there was nothing else to be done and no words equal to the moment, she turned and walked away.
***
She did not go to the east garden.
Instead, she returned to the house, ascended the stairs to her chambers, and seated herself by the window that overlooked the wild gardens where, somewhere beyond her sight, her husband was feeding a stray cat that had no reason to trust him.
Slow work, he had said.Earning the trust of something that has every reason to fear.
Eleanor pressed her palm against the cool glass and thought about fear. About trust. About the careful, patient labour of teaching a wounded creature that not everything that approached meant harm.
She thought of Edmund Hale, who had offered warmth and meant nothing by it. She thought of her mother, who had been beautiful and beloved and slowly diminished by a love that had never been real.
