After he had accused her of things she had not done. After he had failed to trust her. After he had proven himself exactly the sort of man who would let fear poison what might have become real.
He set down the cup with more force than necessary. Tea sloshed over the rim and pooled on the saucer.
The empty chair stared back at him.
He forced himself to eat. Toast with marmalade. Two eggs. A rasher of bacon. Everything tasted like ash, but he ate it all because a duke ate breakfast and maintained his strength and did not allow his wife’s absence to affect his routine.
When the plate was empty, he stood and made his way to his study.
The ledgers did not care that Eliza had left. They required his attention regardless of whether his wife sat in the morning room or in Lady Hartwell’s London townhouse. The tenants needed decisions about crop rotation. The steward required approval for repairs to the north fence. A letter from his solicitor demanded a response about the settlement of his father’s remaining debts.
August settled behind his desk and pulled the first ledger toward him. His quill scratched across parchment. He worked through the morning accounts then moved to correspondence. A letter to his solicitor about the debts. Another to the steward about the fence repairs. A third to?—
He paused mid-sentence, his quill hovering above the paper. Footsteps sounded in the hallway outside his study. Light. Quick. A woman’s steps.
He looked toward the door. It remained closed. The footsteps passed and faded down the hall.
Not her. Obviously not her. She is in London.
He returned to the letter.… regarding the matter of the north pasture, I believe we should…
What had he been about to write? He stared at the half-finished sentence. The north pasture. The fence repairs. Something about drainage, perhaps, or…
August set down the quill and pressed his palms flat against the desk.Focus.
He picked up the quill and started the sentence again.
The afternoon crept by. He signed documents, reviewed contracts, made notations in the margins of his steward’s reports. He was the Duke of Wildmoore, and dukes did not allow personal matters to interfere with their responsibilities.
When the light through the window began to slant toward evening, he set aside his work and stood. His back protested. He had been sitting too long.
A walk. He needed to clear his head.
He moved through the hallway without conscious destination. His feet carried him past the family portrait gallery, past the music room where someone had left sheets scattered across the pianoforte. Past the morning room.
Past Eliza’s chambers.
He stopped outside her door. His hand lifted toward the handle then fell back to his side.
She was not in there. She was in London, drinking tea with Lady Hartwell, probably relieved to be away from him and his inability to trust her.
But he stood there anyway, listening to the silence behind the door. No rustle of fabric. No quiet footsteps. No sound of pages turning as she read in the window seat she favored.
Nothing.
He continued down the hallway toward the library. Perhaps he would read. Distract himself with someone else’s words until his mind stopped circling back to the empty breakfast table and the note folded in his pocket.
The library was dark save for the last rays of sunlight streaming through the tall windows. He moved to the lamp on the side table and lit it then turned.
Her chair sat empty. The blue damask chair by the window where she always read in the afternoons. A book rested on the table beside it, a ribbon marking her place.
The manor was too quiet. That was the problem. Houses were meant to hold people, hold sound and movement and life, but Wildmoore Hall felt hollow tonight, every room larger and colder than it had been this morning.
Behind him, the door opened. He turned to find a footman standing in the doorway with fresh candles.
“Forgive the intrusion, Your Grace. Mrs. Finch asked me to refresh the candles.”
“Of course.”