Benjamin dismissed her with a wave that proved more abrupt than he intended. When he was alone once more in his study, he stared at the papers upon his desk without seeing them and attempted, yet again, to determine what had gone amiss.
A week earlier, Eleanor had sat beside his bed and held his hand through the worst of his nightmares. She had promised to come if the dreams returned. She had looked at him with something in her grey eyes that he had dared—foolishly—to interpret as affection.
Now she scarcely looked at him at all.
The alteration had begun the morning after the solicitor’s visit.
Benjamin had perceived it at once—the flat cadence of her voice, the deliberate reserve in her posture, the manner in which she quitted the breakfast table before he could inquire what troubled her. At first, he had assumed that the headache she had complained of the previous evening had been more severe than she admitted. He had allowed her the space to recover, confident that the easy rhythm they had begun to establish would reassert itself once she felt restored.
Yet the days had passed, and the rhythm had not returned. In its place stood something that felt increasingly like a wall—unseen but unyielding—raised brick by brick from polite deflections and convenient excuses.
“I am occupied...”
“I have already walked...”
“Perhaps tomorrow...”
Each refusal was perfectly reasonable. Each explanation entirely plausible. And yet, taken together, they amounted to a quiet dismantling of all that had begun to form between them in recent weeks.
What happened?he asked himself for the hundredth time. What altered?
The questions circled endlessly, unanswerable and relentless.
He tried, at first, to bridge the widening distance.
He presented himself at the door of her sitting room with inquiries regarding estate matters that did not, in truth, require her counsel, merely in the hope of engaging her in conversation. She responded with efficiency and perfect civility, and returned to her work before he could contrive to prolong the exchange.
He proposed walks in the gardens, reminding her that the roses were in full bloom. She declined, pleading correspondence that could not wait—though he knew very well that no letter was so urgent it might not endure an hour’s delay.
He lingered in corridors and doorways, positioning himself where she must inevitably pass, hoping for some accidental moment of connection. She moved through the house like a wraith—present yet unreachable, visible yet somehow not entirely there.
It was, he realised with mounting dread, precisely how she had once described her mother. Fading. Disappearing. Becoming invisible before death had even claimed her.
But Eleanor was not fading for want of love. She was fading by design—retreating behind walls he could see yet could not penetrate, donning once more the armour she had worn upon her arrival at Thornwood.
He had believed she had laid that armour aside. Had persuaded himself, in his foolish hope, that she had trusted him sufficiently to be vulnerable.
Plainly, he had been mistaken.
The household had begun to notice.
Servants who had grown accustomed to seeing the Duke and Duchess dine together now exchanged quiet whispers regarding the change. The gentle warmth that had begun to infuse the house—the flowers in the rooms, the well-ordered schedules, the renewed sense of purpose Eleanor had instilled—remained, yet it felt curiously hollow. Mechanical. As though the household continued upon habit rather than heart.
Mrs Harding, in particular, observed developments with an expression that suggested a deeper understanding than she chose to express. She had served at Thornwood long enough to recognise withdrawal when she saw it, and she had watched Eleanor closely enough to know that the duchess’s present conduct was a retreat, not a preference.
“Your Grace,” she ventured one morning, approaching Benjamin with unusual hesitation, “forgive me if I speak out of turn, but I feel it my duty to mention—the staff are concerned.”
“Concerned? In what respect?”
“Regarding Her Grace. She has been… altered of late. More distant. She continues to manage the household admirably, but she no longer—” The housekeeper paused, searching for a suitable phrase. “She no longer seems truly present.”
Benjamin received this confirmation of what he had already perceived. “Has she said anything? Offered any indication of what may be troubling her?”
“No, Your Grace. She is unfailingly polite. Perfectly composed. Yet the warmth that had begun to emerge—” Mrs Harding shook her head. “It has vanished. And I cannot say why.”
Neither can I, Benjamin thought.Neither can I.
The nights proved the most trying of all.
