I write with unfortunate news. Edmund’s business ventures have not prospered as we had hoped, and we find ourselves in some difficulty. I hesitate to ask, but I understand that your new circumstances place certain resources at your disposal, and I wondered whether you might…
Eleanor stopped reading.
She sat very still at her desk, the letter suspended between her fingers, and felt something within her grow cold and utterly quiet.
Edmund Hale’s ventures had failed. The man who had dismissed her as unfit to keep a house now, apparently, could not sustain his own. And Lydia—pretty, accomplished, enviably situated Lydia—was writing to her overlooked cousin for assistance.
It ought to have felt like vindication. Ought to have brought some small, ignoble satisfaction to learn that the man who had broken her heart had not prospered from his choices.
Instead, Eleanor felt only exhaustion.
What did Edmund’s failure matter? What did Lydia’s diminished fortune signify? None of it altered the lesson Eleanor had learned long ago—and was learning again now—that shewas not the sort of woman men loved. She was the sort of woman men utilised—for introductions to prettier relations, for sensible marriages, for the resolution of inconvenient legal problems.
She set Lydia’s letter aside without finishing it, without responding, and returned to the work that had become her sole refuge.
***
That night, the nightmares returned.
Eleanor heard them through the walls—the same fractured sounds that had woken her before, the same desperate words dragged unwillingly from sleep. For a long moment, she lay motionless in her bed, caught between the promise she had made and the pain of honouring it.
“If the dreams return—”
“Then I shall hear you. And I shall come.”
She had meant it when she spoke those words. Had believed, then, that they were building something together—something capable of withstanding nightmares and fears and all the fractured pieces they both carried.
But that had been before she had heard him describe her as a practical arrangement. Before she had realised that his gratitude stemmed from her exceeding modest expectations, not from anything deeper or more enduring.
The sounds continued. She could hear him struggling, could picture the rigid tension of his body, the scarred hand gripping sheets he could not quite see.
Go to him,some gentler voice urged.Whatever has changed, he is suffering. You can ease that suffering. You have done so before.
And then what?the wounded part of her answered.Sit beside him through the night while he dreams of fire, knowing that in daylight he will return to viewing you as a convenient solution to a practical difficulty? Offer yourself again and again, knowing he will never offer himself fully in return?
The sounds gradually faded. He had woken, perhaps. Or the nightmare had loosened its hold. Or he had simply remembered how to endure his suffering in silence.
Eleanor lay in the darkness, tears slipping soundlessly along her temples, and did not go to him.
It was, perhaps, the cruellest choice she had ever made.
And she despised herself for it.
Chapter Twenty
“Has the Duchess mentioned anything to you?”
Mrs Harding paused in her recitation of the day’s household matters, her sharp eyes studying Benjamin with an attention that set him ill at ease. “Mentioned anything, Your Grace?”
“About—” He stopped, uncertain how to frame the question. How did a man inquire of a servant whether his wife had explained why she had altered, as if overnight, from a warm and present companion into a courteous stranger? “About her health. Her spirits. Whether something has… disturbed her.”
The housekeeper was silent for a moment. When she spoke, her tone was measured with care.
“Her Grace has not confided in me, Your Grace. However, I have observed…” She hesitated, plainly weighing her discretion against her concern. “I have observed that she applies herself to her duties a great deal. More than usual. And she has been taking her meals in her sitting room rather than the dining room.”
“Yes. She spoke of pressing correspondence.”
“Indeed.” Mrs Harding’s voice suggested she possessed opinions upon that explanation, but was far too professional to give them utterance. “Is there anything further, Your Grace?”
