She thought of Benjamin, kneeling in a hidden courtyard, speaking to a cat in a voice she had never heard—soft, warm, and utterly unguarded.
I feed it. Every day. At dawn and dusk
The words echoed in her mind, taking on meanings she was not certain he had intended.
It has learnt to trust that I will return.
***
That night, Eleanor could not sleep.
She lay in her beautiful, impersonal bed, gazing at the canopy above her, and listened to the silence of a house that was beginning—slowly, tentatively—to feel more like a home.
She thought of the cat—of its wary green eyes, its matted grey fur, and the careful distance it maintained even from the man who fed it.
She thought of herself—of her own wary gaze, her carefully maintained armour, and the distance she preserved from anyone who attempted to draw near.
Are we so very different?she wondered.The cat and I?
Both strays, in their fashion. Both scarred by experiences that had taught them to expect injury. Both learning—slowly, painfully, against every instinct—that this particular human might be safe.
He provides for it,she thought.Without demanding anything in return.
And what had Benjamin offered her, if not the same? Security without condition. Patience without pressure. A willingness to wait until she was ready to believe.
Eleanor turned onto her side, curling around the ache in her chest.
She was not ready. The fear remained too strong, the wounds too raw, the lessons of Edmund Hale too deeply ingrained. She could not simply choose to trust, could not willherself into vulnerability, could not command her battered heart to open merely because her mind understood that it ought.
But she could observe.
She could observe the way her husband spoke to frightened creatures. The way he placed himself between her and her fears. The way he offered kindness without expectation, patience without limit, and truth without cruelty.
She could observe, and remember, and allow—slowly, cautiously, against every instinct—the first fragile seeds of trust to take root.
Slow work,she thought.Earning the trust of something that has every reason to fear.
Perhaps it was time to allow herself to be earned.
Chapter Ten
“Fresh flowers, Your Grace?”
Mrs Harding’s voice carried a note Eleanor could not quite identify—surprise, perhaps, or cautious approval. The housekeeper stood in the doorway of the morning room, observing as Eleanor arranged a spray of early roses in a vase that had clearly lain unused for years.
“The gardens are overgrown,” Eleanor said, coaxing a particularly stubborn stem into place, “but they are not without beauty. It seems a pity to let it go unappreciated.”
“The previous duchess—His Grace’s mother—did the same.” Mrs Harding stepped further into the room, her severe posture softening almost imperceptibly. “Every chamber held flowers while she lived. After her passing, His Grace requested that the practice be discontinued.”
Eleanor’s hands stilled upon the roses. “He requested it specifically?”
“He said it was an unnecessary effort. That no one would observe whether the rooms held flowers or not.” A brief pause. “I believe he meant thathewould observe it. And that observing would be… painful.”
Painful.To encounter beauty in rooms where beauty had once been arranged by hands now gone. To be reminded, in every spray of roses and carefully composed bouquet, of amother who had died before she could see what her son had become.
Eleanor understood that sort of pain. Understood the impulse to strip a house of anything that might stir memory.
“Perhaps,” she said with care, “enough time has passed that the sharpness has dulled.”
