“Are you quite well?” Benjamin asked.
“Yes.” She was surprised to find it true. “Yes, I believe I am.”
He made no remark upon her small triumph. Offered no praise. He merely inclined his head, accepting her answer, and gestured along the path.
“There is a bench beside the old fountain,” he said. “If you would care to sit.”
“I should like that very much.”
***
The bench was old and weathered, its stone surface worn smooth by generations of use. It faced a fountain long since stilled—the basin dry, the statuary cracked, the mechanism that had once animated it presumably rusted beyond repair.
Yet the view remained beautiful. The fountain stood at the edge of a gentle slope overlooking the wider estate, and from here Eleanor could see the undulating parkland, the distant line of woods, and the silver thread of the river that had flooded during the storm.
They sat together in silence.
It was, Eleanor realised, the most peaceful she had felt since her arrival at Thornwood—perhaps the most peaceful she had known in years. The sun rested warmly against her face, the breeze carried the scent of blossoms and new growth, and beside her sat a man who required neither conversation nor performance nor any of the exhausting social attentions that had shaped so much of her life.
He simply sat. And so did she.
“I have not done this in a long time,” Benjamin said at last.
“Done what?”
“Sat. Without purpose.” He continued to gaze across the landscape, his scarred profile softened by the mellowlight. “I have spent so many years moving—planning, acting, responding. I had forgotten that stillness might be… agreeable.”
“I understand.” Eleanor folded her hands in her lap, watching a hawk wheel lazily in the distance. “I have always felt compelled to be occupied. That stillness was waste—and waste was inexcusable.”
“Because usefulness was your armour.”
“Yes.” She glanced toward him, faintly startled by the accuracy of it. “I believed that if I ceased to be useful, even briefly, it would become apparent that I possessed no other worth.”
“That is not so.”
“I am beginning to suspect it is not.” The admission came quietly, almost shyly. “But it is… a gradual lesson.”
“Most healing is.” He turned toward her, and something warm stirred in his dark eyes. “I have found that haste rarely improves matters. One must simply continue forward. Small steps. Day by day.”
“Like the cat.”
“Like the cat.” A shadow of a smile touched his mouth. “And like the gardens. And like—” He paused, the smile softening into something more thoughtful. “And like us, perhaps.”
Eleanor’s heart faltered.
Us.
It was such a small word. Yet it carried weight—the weight of shared meals and shared silences, of confidences exchanged, of a marriage that had begun as necessity and was quietly transforming into something neither of them had quite anticipated.
“Perhaps,” she agreed softly.
They remained together in quiet companionship, watching the light shift across the parkland, and Eleanor allowed herself—just for a moment—to set aside thoughts of duty and expectation and simply exist.
It was, she discovered, far less frightening than she had once believed.
Chapter Sixteen
“This cannot possibly be correct.”
