“That is a lie,” Eliza whispered.
August looked down at the ledger, and his hand clenched. “I do not know why I am doing this,” he said. “There is no reason to add up the rent rolls now. The tenants can go another month without a reckoning.”
Eliza considered his words for a moment. “Routine is its own comfort.”
He nodded. “My father would have finished the work. Even now.”
She watched the struggle—how he wanted to be furious, or devastated, or even bold, but he settled instead for resigned sigh.
Running a hand through his hair, he leaned forward. “I do not know what to do with you here, Eliza.”
She smiled a little. “You do not have to do anything with me, August. Let me stay.”
Instead of responding with words, he stood and moved slowly to the window where he stood with his back to her.
“I do not feel like the Duke,” he said, and it was so quiet it almost didn’t reach her.
Eliza’s heart, which she had trained to be a cold and reasonable instrument, took the blow as if it were not ready. She rose and crossed to him, standing at his side. For a moment, she looked out, too, the fields gray under moonlight.
She reached for his hand. It did not meet hers right away, but when it did, it was as if every wall in the house had bent a fraction inward, holding them both in place. He did not say another word but squeezed her fingers once then again as if to reassure himself that he had someone there with him.
They stood like that for a long time. Eliza thought,Is this how it feels to be needed?
Eighteen
They buried the old Duke in the family crypt which sat hunched and predatory against the lower slope of the Wildmoore grounds in the country. The sky hung low and sullen, refusing even the decency of rain.
August stood as the pillar at the entrance, a full head taller than anyone save the stone angels posted at the eaves. His mother gripped his arm with both hands, while her body racked with the violence of sorrow. On his other side was Eliza. She stood quietly and did not cling to anyone.
He felt the presence of his sisters—April, May, and June—a few paces behind. Each with their husbands and a scattering of the better-dressed children, a Vestiere phalanx assembled to observe but not to interrupt. Their faces blurred together in his peripheral vision, a mosaic of crumpled handkerchiefs and puffy eyes.
The hush was so complete that the thump of the casket on the crypt floor was a gunshot.
His mother’s knees buckled. August bore the weight as she sagged, his arm bracing her, so she would not crumple on the marble threshold. Dorothy sobbed with such volume and force that the syllables could not arrange themselves into words. He stood with her, immovable, until the first wave passed.
Eliza shifted closer, her body angled just enough to shield Dorothy from the pitiless scrutiny of the mourners behind them.
The vicar concluded with a spasm of Latin and a splash of holy water. Two footmen, faces frozen in the manner of professional mourners, replaced the stone slab. The scrape and grind as it slid home vibrated all the way up August’s spine.
Then, nothing. A stillness so deep, it was as if the world had been shorn of all but the present agony.
April and May stepped forward, encircling Dorothy in a web of arms and whispered comfort. They lifted her away from the crypt and with a few subtle signals, drew the rest of the assembly in their wake. The crowd drained from the little clearing in a hush, leaving only the scent of cold marble and the afterimage of spectacle.
August did not follow.
He did not know how long he stood, watching the blank surface of the crypt door. It felt like a standoff. He counted the veins in the marble, the web of moss clinging to the arch, the way the sky seemed to flatten above the family dead.
He expected Eliza to leave with the rest, to vanish and leave him to his ritual.
Instead, she remained. He did not turn, but he knew she was there. Her presence was a weight, not burdensome but real.
The silence between them filled and expanded, pressed out the taste of loss and replaced it with something else. He did not recognize it at first. It was not comfort. It was not even solidarity. It was a kind of witness, a refusal to let the moment slip into nothingness.
A hand rested on his back, and he knew without looking that it was hers.
They stood like that, unmoving, the world collapsed to the width of a palm.
He could not say how much time passed. He could only say that he did not feel entirely alone.