The thought arrived without preamble or the careful scaffolding of logic and justification he usually constructed around his feelings. It was bare and brutal and entirely true.
Something cracked inside his chest. Not dramatically—he did not weep or cry out or pound his fists against the armrest. It was quieter than that. A fracture that ran deep, splitting open the carefully sealed compartment where he had stored everything he refused to feel.
His father’s death. The grief he had been too busy to process, too needed to indulge. The loneliness that had been his constant companion since he was seventeen years old and took on the weight of an entire family without anyone asking if he could bear it. The regret—God, the regret—for every moment he had chosen charm over honesty, deflection over vulnerability, performance over truth.
Eliza had offered him something real. And he had responded by accusing her of betrayal, by listening to her marriage described as a practical arrangement and letting the description stand, by being so terrified of needing someone that he had driven away the one person he actually needed.
The duck stared up at him with its lopsided eyes.
He closed his fingers around it and pressed his fist to his mouth. The room was silent around him, and he did not try to fill the silence with anything. He sat in it and let it hurt.
She deserved better than what he had given her. She deserved honesty, and he gave her performance.
August opened his hand and looked at the duck one more time. Then he set it carefully back on the shelf, exactly where she had placed it.
It was time to give Eliza the choice she truly wanted.
Thirty-Six
“Mr. Caldwell, I need you to handle the northern property negotiations in my absence,” August said, holding out a stack of papers to one of his advisors.
Caldwell stared at the papers then at August then back at the papers as though one of them had suddenly begun speaking French.
“Your Grace?”
“The northern properties. The drainage dispute with Lord Fenton, the tenant leases requiring renewal, the matter of the boundary fence.” August reached for a second pile and turned to his steward. “These are for Mr. Hewitt. The solicitor will need authority to act on my behalf regarding the settling of my father’s estate. I have written a letter granting him temporary power of attorney. It requires only my seal which—” He pressedthe seal into hot wax and stamped it with a decisive thud. “There.”
The advisor and steward had not moved. His mouth hung open in a manner that would have been comical under different circumstances.
“Sir, I—forgive me, but you have never?—”
“No. I have not.” August pulled a third sheaf of papers from the drawer and added them to the pile. Notes on every matter that had crossed his desk in the past fortnight, annotated in his own hand with clear directions for resolution. “But I am doing so now. You are more than capable, Caldwell. I would not have hired you otherwise.”
August stood while the men looked at his as though he had gone mad. Of course, he had gone mad. One woman had driven him to this, and it was time he relieved himself of estate burdens to show her what truly mattered in his life.
“Gentlemen,” he murmured with a sharp nod then walked around his desk and out of the study.
Two hours later, he was standing in front of Lady Hartwell’s Mayfair home. The butler admitted him into the drawing room. August stood in the center of the pale green room as rigidly as he could, waiting. His hands wanted to fidget. He clasped them behind his back instead.
Lady Hartwell entered, her cane preceding her, and her eyes sharp as she assessed him. “You look terrible.”
No greeting or pleasantries. Very like his aunt.
August did not smile. Did not summon a self-deprecating quip or a charming deflection. He had nothing left for performance.
“I need to find my wife.”
Lady Hartwell regarded him. The silence stretched, and under that gaze, he felt as though every pretense he had ever constructed was being methodically dismantled. She saw through him. She had always seen through him—it was a family trait Eliza had clearly inherited.
“Sit down,” Lady Hartwell said.
“I would rather?—”
“Sit.”
He sat. The settee creaked beneath him, and he placed his hands on his knees like a schoolboy summoned before the headmaster.
Lady Hartwell lowered herself into the chair opposite and studied him for a long moment. Whatever she found in his face must have satisfied something because her expression shifted.Not softened, exactly. More like a door opening a fraction of an inch.