***
Eleanor watched from the window of her sitting room.
She had not intended to observe him. She had been seated at her desk when movement in the garden drew her glance upward, and she saw Benjamin slip through the narrow breach in the crumbling wall that led to his concealed courtyard.
She ought to have looked away. Ought to have returned at once to her correspondence and pretended she had not noticed. Yet something compelled her to rise and cross to the window—some impulse too strong to resist.
From that angle, she could not see into the courtyard itself, but she could see the gap in the wall. She waited—though she scarcely admitted to herself that she was waiting—until at last he reappeared.
His face was turned aside, his shoulders bent in a posture she had never before witnessed in him.
Even at that distance, she knew something was amiss.
Go to him, some part of her whispered.Whatever has happened between you, he is in pain. You could ease that pain. You have done it before.
But the voice was fainter now than it had been a week earlier. The instinct to comfort, to bridge the gulf she herself had created, still existed—buried beneath layers of wounded pride and hard-won self-protection—but it diminished with each passing day.
He does not want you,she reminded herself sternly.He wants a practical arrangement. A wife who will not expect. A woman who can endure without asking for more.
You are giving him precisely what he said he required.
She turned from the window and resumed her work.
***
The library, once their shared sanctuary, now felt like a mausoleum.
Eleanor avoided it whenever she could, yet the estate ledgers were housed there, and she could not, in perpetuity, dispatch a servant to fetch them on her behalf. On the sixth day of her retreat, she gathered her resolve and entered.
Benjamin was already there.
He sat in his customary chair by the hearth—though the fire lay cold in deference to the warmth of the evening—with an open book resting in his lap, which he was plainly not reading. He looked up at her entrance, and the expression that crossed his face made her chest constrict with painful force.
Hope.
Unvarnished, undisguised hope, kindled by nothing more than her presence.
“Eleanor.” He set the book aside and rose at once, an eagerness in his manner that was almost unbearable to behold. “I was hoping you might come. I thought perhaps—”
“I only need the tenant ledgers from 1815.” She kept her voice brisk, professional. “I believe they are on the third shelf. I shall not disturb you long.”
The hope in his face dimmed. “You do not disturb me. I was, in fact—I wished to ask—”
“I must return directly to my work.” She moved to the shelves, presenting him with her back, her hands less steady than she would have liked as she searched for volumes she did not truly need. “The merchant contracts demand reply before the week concludes.”
“Eleanor.”
Something in his voice stilled her. It was not anger—he had never once spoken to her in anger since their marriage. It was something far worse. Something perilously close to despair.
“Pray,” he said quietly, “tell me what I have done.”
She closed her eyes briefly.Nothing, she thought.You have done nothing but be precisely the man you told me you were from the beginning. The fault lies with me, for imagining you might become more.
“You have done nothing,” she replied. “I am simply occupied with work.”
“That is not so.” His voice had drawn nearer—he had crossed the room, though he halted several feet away, scrupulously preserving the distance she had imposed. “Something altered. A week ago, you sat beside my bed. You held my hand. You promised to come if the dreams returned. And then—”
“Circumstances alter.” She found the ledger she ostensibly sought and drew it from the shelf, clasping it to her chest as though it were a shield. “We both possess duties that claim our attention.”
