“How many bottles is that?” Annabelle stood in the doorway of his study.
She had stopped knocking two days ago. Lucien sat behind his desk, his coat on the floor, his cravat loose, an empty bottle of brandy beside a second that was well on its way to joining it.
“Not enough,” he said.
“It is eleven in the morning.”
“I am aware.”
Annabelle crossed the room and sat opposite him. She did not remove the bottle. She did not lecture. She folded her hands in her lap and looked at him.
The clock ticked. Outside, London carried on with the indifference of a city that did not care whether a duke was falling apart inside a Mayfair townhouse.
“She is better off without me.” The words came out thick and slow. “I am empty, Annabelle. I have been empty for years. A woman like Elinor deserves someone whole, someone who can give her what she needs without flinching every time she gets close.”
“That is what you tell yourself,” Annabelle said. “It is not the same thing.”
“I had her. I had something real, and I agreed to end it because I was too afraid to let it become what it wanted to become.”
Annabelle leaned forward. “You are going to listen to me now, because I am tired of watching you destroy yourself over a story you decided was true when you were twenty-one years old.”
He blinked at the sharpness in her voice.
“You are not empty. Your heart is so full it terrifies you, and that is why you keep trying to shut it down.” Her eyes locked onto his. “You took a workhouse full of forgotten children and gave them a home. You sat on the floor of their schoolroom and took notes because a woman with spectacles made you want to learn about stars. You named their home after a constellation she taught them.”
His throat closed.
“And you made Elinor happy.” Annabelle’s voice cracked. “The wallflower who could not hold a man’s gaze at a ball stood on a dance floor and held yours without flinching. Your love did that, whether you called it love or not.”
He pressed the heel of his hand against his eye.
“Being broken does not make you empty, Lucien. It makes you someone who knows what it costs to trust, and you trusted Elinor anyway. That is not an empty man. That is a man who is so full he is overflowing, and too afraid to look down and see it.”
He closed his eyes and let the words land.
“Do not let Vivian and Henry take this from you,” Annabelle whispered. “They took eleven years. That is enough.”
A knock cut through the silence. The butler stood in the entrance with a woman behind him whose face Lucien knew but had not expected to see here.
Mrs. Neal.
She wore her best shawl and a silk bonnet that looked as though it had been brushed for the occasion.
“Your Grace.” She curtsied. “Forgive me for calling without an appointment. I would not have come if it were not important.”
Lucien rose. The brandy swam in his head, but the sight of Mrs. Neal had the effect of freezing water. “What has happened? The children?”
“The children are well.” Mrs. Neal’s hands tightened on each other. “It is Lady Elinor.”
He gripped the edge of the desk.
“She came to Lyra House two days ago. Her stepbrother escorted her. She held the children and said goodbye to each of them, and then she—” The old woman’s voice faltered. “She left Newton with us. She asked me to keep him, because she said she was to be married and the man would not allow Newton in his home.”
“Married,” Lucien repeated.
“To a Lord Bramwell. A baron in the north.” Mrs. Neal drew a breath. “Your Grace, she was miserable. I have never seen her like that. She held those children as though she were saying goodbye to her own life.”
Mrs. Neal reached into the fold of her shawl and produced a piece of paper. A drawing, folded in half, its edges soft with chalk.