He was in the study.
She knew before she reached the door. Could hear the scratch of his pen, the creak of his chair, the quiet restlessness of a man pretending to work while his mind operated elsewhere. She paused outside, her hand raised to knock, and realised with a lurch that she had never knocked on this door before. Had always simply walked in—drawn by a question, a piece of news, a crying baby, the gravitational pull of someone who infuriated and unsettled and moved her in equal measure.
She knocked.
The pen stopped. A beat of silence.
“Come.”
She opened the door. He was behind the desk, coat off, shirtsleeves rolled to his elbows in the way that she had stopped pretending not to notice weeks ago. His hair was disordered. He had not shaved. The morning light caught the shadows beneath his eyes, and she realised with a pang that he had slept as poorly as she had.
He looked up, and something moved across his face—quick, unguarded, gone before she could name it. Then the mask resettled. Not the rakish grin. Not the practised charm. Something newer, more careful—the guarded neutrality of a man bracing for impact.
“Penelope.” He set down the pen. “Sit, please.”
“I’d rather stand.” The words came out steadier than she’d expected. She clasped her hands before her—a habit she’d developed in childhood, her mother’s voice whispering that a lady’s composure began with her fingers. “I wanted to speak with you. About what comes next.”
He leaned back. The chair creaked. His hands settled on the arms with a precision that looked deliberate, as though he were physically holding himself in place.
“Of course.”
“Now that Rose is with her parents—” She paused.Her parents.The words tasted like iron. “The reason for our arrangement no longer exists. The scandal has faded. The child is safe. There is no further need for us to maintain—” She searched for the word and hated every option. “—this proximity.”
The study clock ticked. Outside, a blackbird sang from the garden wall, bright and oblivious.
“I think it would be best,” she continued, each word placed with the care of someone walking across ice, “if I returned to London. To Blackmere House. We agreed at the start that this marriage was for appearances and for Rose. Both purposes have been fulfilled. There’s no reason I should remain here, taking up space in a household that?—”
“Taking up space?” His voice was quiet. Something flickered beneath the surface of it—a current she couldn’t read.
“You know what I mean.” She held her ground, though her nails were cutting crescents into her palms behind the shield of her clasped hands. “We agreed. Separate lives. No expectations, no interference. I should like to honour that agreement now that circumstances allow it.”
He said nothing.
The silence lasted five seconds. Ten. Long enough for the blackbird to complete its song and begin another. Long enough for Penelope to catalogue every detail of his face—the set of his jaw, the tension in his shoulders, the way his thumb pressed hard against the arm of the chair as though he were restraining himself from movement.
Say it,she thought, and the ferocity of the thought startled her.Tell me I’m wrong. Tell me the agreement was foolish and the rules were a mistake and you don’t want separate lives. Stand up. Cross this room. Fight for me the way you fought for Rose.
He didn’t move.
“If that’s what you want,” he said.
. He delivered it in a tone so carefully controlled it could have been discussing the weather, or the state of the roads, or any of the thousand inconsequential things people discussed when they could not bring themselves to say what mattered.
The floor shifted beneath her. Not literally—the boards were solid, the house was sound, everything was exactly where it should be. But something inside her—some final, stubborn pillar of hope she had not known she was leaning on—buckled.
“I believe it’s the sensible course,” she managed.
“Sensible.” He repeated the word the way one might repeat a medical diagnosis. “Yes. I suppose it is.”
He stood then, and for one wild, irrational heartbeat she thought he was coming to her. Thought he was going to cross the three feet of oak floor between them and take her hands and say?—
He moved to the window instead. Stood with his back to her, his hands clasped behind him, his shoulders a rigid line against the morning light. When he spoke, his voice was pleasant. Distant. The voice of the Duke of Blackmere conducting business.
“I’ll send word to the London household. Have your rooms prepared. Crawford can arrange transport within the day, or tomorrow if you prefer.”
Tomorrow.He was already making arrangements. Already managing the logistics of her departure with the same quiet efficiency he’d applied to the Whitcombe confrontation, to the cottage for Thomas and Marianne, to every crisis he’d handled with cool competence and zero visible emotion.
She was a crisis being resolved. A problem being managed. One more item on the ledger of his obligations, neatly discharged.