“Hurt you,” he went on, voice raw. “Disappoint you. Prove unequal to protecting you. I could not endure the thought of watching you diminish as my men did. I could not endure being the cause.”
Eleanor’s throat tightened painfully.
“So you said nothing,” she whispered.
“I said nothing. I persuaded myself that if I cared for you quietly—without declaration, without expectation—then perhaps I could not injure you. That if my feelings remained unspoken, they could not destroy.”
“But they did injure me.” The words escaped before she could temper them. “Your silence wounded me. When I overheard you speak of necessity and tolerance, I heard precisely what I have always been taught to expect—that I am useful, but not wanted. Adequate, but never chosen. Valued for what I provide, not for who I am.”
“Eleanor—”
“Do you know what Edmund Hale once said to me?” she demanded suddenly. “When he chose my cousin instead? He told me I was‘pleasant enough.’As though that were praise. As though being almost beautiful, almost desirable, almost worth choosing was something I should be grateful for.”
Benjamin’s expression hardened.
“I recounted the incident to you,” she continued, “but I did not tell you what it cost me. It destroyed something, Benjamin. Some capacity for trust, some ability to believe that anyone could want me for anything other than what I could give them. I spent seven years building walls so high that no one could reach me, because being unreachable was safer than being reached and then discarded.”
“I would never—”
“I know you think that.” Her voice trembled. “I even believe you mean it. But do you comprehend what it is to hear the man one has begun to care for describe one’s marriage as necessary? To hear him speak of needing a woman who will not expect? To assume—because you have always assumed—that the harm he fears is your presence in his life?”
The tears came despite her resolve. She did not attempt to hide them.
“I cannot endure it again,” she whispered. “I cannot hope only to discover that hope was folly. I cannot open myself merely to learn that I was never truly wanted.”
Benjamin watched her weep and felt something within him fracture.
His silence. His fear. His misguided attempt to shield her from his own heart. It had led to this—to Eleanor believing herself unworthy of love.
“I should leave,” she said faintly, brushing at her tears. “I cannot—”
“No.”
The word was sharper than he intended. She stilled.
“No,” he repeated, more gently. “Pray do not retreat again. If you must be angry, be so here. If you must grieve, do it before me. But do not vanish behind those walls once more. I could not endure it.”
“What do you want of me?” she asked, exhausted. “What am I to do with what you have told me? How am I to trust words when words have failed me before?”
“You are not required to do anything.” He moved closer still, though he did not presume to touch her. “You are not obliged to trust at once. Nor to forgive at once. I ask for no miracle.”
“Then what?”
“I ask that you remain.” The plea was unvarnished. “Not to believe immediately. Not to surrender caution. Only to remain. To grant me the opportunity to prove what I ought to have shown you from the beginning.”
“And what is that?”
“That you are not a practical arrangement.” His gaze did not waver. “Not a convenience, nor a compromise. When I look at you, I see the only choice I would ever make. The only person who has led me to believe I may not be as broken as I thought.”
Her breath caught.
“You cannot mean that.”
“I mean every word.” He lifted his hand slowly, giving her ample time to withdraw, and brushed his fingers lightly along her tear-dampened cheek. “I am not skilled in declarations, Eleanor. I have told you so before. But I am learning. And I ask you to allow me to continue learning—to prove, day by day and deed by deed, that what I feel for you is not obligation, nor tolerance, nor any of the cold arrangements you have been conditioned to expect.”
“What is it, then?” Her voice was scarcely audible. “What do you feel?”
He could say it. He could utter the word that had been gathering weight within him for weeks—the word he had scarcely dared admit even in solitude. He could tell her that heloved her—that he had been falling in love with her since she quoted Dante at a gathering and endured society’s comments without flinching.
