“She fell ill. Consumption, the physicians said though they seemed uncertain. It took six months.” Her eyes drifted to the candle flame between them, watching it waver in the draft. “When she passed, Lady Hartwell—my aunt by marriage—took me in.”
She did not mention the years of feeling like an unwanted obligation, the way the servants had whispered when they thought she could not hear. She did not mention the empty seat at Christmas, the rooms closed off because there was no need to heat them for just one girl. She did not mention the loneliness that had settled into her bones like cold.
“You were fortunate to have her,” August said.
“I was.” The truth and the lie tangled together, impossible to separate. Lady Hartwell had been kind in her way. It was not her fault that kindness could not fill the void left by love.
The candles had burned lower, wax pooling at their bases. One of them guttered and went out, and a servant moved forward to replace it. The small interruption broke the spell, and Eliza became aware of how much she had revealed.
August’s hand moved across the table toward hers.
She watched it travel the distance—over the roses, past the salt cellar, across the expanse of polished wood. It came to rest halfway between them, palm up, an offering or a question.
Her fingers twitched. She wanted to reach for him, wanted to close that gap and feel the warmth of his skin against hers. The want was so fierce, it frightened her.
What am I doing?
This was a marriage of convenience. An arrangement to save her from scandal. They had agreed to the terms, had signed the papers, had spoken the vows. But nowhere in that agreement had there been room for this—this pull toward him, this desire to be known.
Fear rose in her throat, sharp and acidic. Or perhaps it was not fear at all, but the weight of their arrangement, the knowledge that whatever existed between them now could shatter if she reached too far.
She kept her hands on the table.
August’s fingers curled slowly into his palm. He withdrew his hand, the movement careful, as if trying not to startle her. He cleared his throat, the sound too loud in the quiet room.
“I should—” He stood, the chair scraping against the floor. “It has been a long day.”
Eliza rose as well, her napkin falling unnoticed to the floor. “Yes.”
They stood on opposite sides of the table, the distance between them once again vast and unbridgeable.
“Thank you,” he said.
“For what?”
“For listening.” He looked at her, and his expression was raw, unguarded. “For being here.”
She nodded, not trusting herself to speak.
He turned and walked toward the door. She watched him go, tracing the line of his shoulders, the way his hand gripped the doorframe for just a moment before he passed through.
The door closed behind him with a soft click.
Eliza sank back into her chair, her legs suddenly unsteady. She stared at the empty place where his hand had been, the space between them that she had not crossed.
She had glimpsed something tonight—not the Duke, not the performance he gave for the world, but the man beneath. The boy who had laughed with his father in a stream. The son who had held his mother as she wept. The husband who had reached for her across a table and asked, without words, if she might reach back.
Her heart felt strange in her chest, tender and swollen, as if it had grown too large for the space allotted to it. She did not know what to call this feeling. It was not love—they barely knew each other, despite the vows and the shared name. But it was something close to its cousin. Something that felt dangerous and necessary all at once.
She pressed her palm to the table where his hand had been, half-expecting to find it warm.
The wood was cool beneath her fingers.
A servant entered to clear the plates, and Eliza stood, smoothing her skirts with hands that trembled only slightly. She walked from the dining room with her head high and her steps even, every inch the Duchess she had agreed to become.
But inside, in the private chambers of her heart, something had shifted. A wall had cracked, and she was no longer certain she wanted to repair it.
What am I doing?she thought, climbing the stairs to her room.