“My father is ill.” Elinor’s voice came out flat and strange. “I am leaving for Morland Hall within the hour.”
Rebecca looked up. Her expression moved through several calculations before settling on concern, the brand she assembled when the situation required it.
“Your father has been ill for some time, Elinor,” she said. “More importantly, the Season is not yet concluded, and I cannot have the entire household disrupted. Belinda and Joanna have engagements this week.”
“I’m not asking the household to come. I’m telling you thatIam going.”
Rebecca’s face shifted at the tone. Elinor had never spoken to her like this, direct and unyielding, without the usual careful softening. Belinda’s eyes widened over the rim of her teacup.
“You will go alone?” Rebecca asked.
“With Natalie. And Newton.”
“The cat.” Rebecca’s mouth pressed thin. “Very well. I will send word to His Grace that you have been called away on family matters and will return within the week.”
“Do not.” The words left Elinor’s mouth before she could weigh them. “Do not send word to anyone. I will write when I know more.”
She did not wait for a response. She turned, walked through the hallway she had crept down on so many nights, passed the staircase she had descended in the dark to meet Lucien’s carriage, and climbed into the coach that Natalie had arranged.
Newton settled on her lap. His weight was warm and grounding, and Elinor pressed her hand to his back and watched London fall away through the window.
She held the steward’s letter in one hand and Newton’s fur in the other and stared at the passing countryside and told herself that her father was strong, that he had survived this long, that she would arrive and find him sitting up in bed with a book on his lap and a gentle scolding for her worry.
She told herself that for the entire six-hour journey, and by the time the carriage turned onto the long drive toward Morland Hall, she had almost believed it.
“My girl! Oh, I told Mr. Thorne not to send word. I shall have a word with him promptly.” Her father’s voice was a thread.
It reached her from the bed as she pushed open the door to his chamber, and the sound of it cracked something in her chest that she had been holding together since London.
William Caverleigh, the Marquess of Morland, lay propped against pillows that seemed to swallow him. He had lost weight since her last visit. His face was gaunt, his color poor, the veins at his temples visible in a way they had not been before. His hands rested on the coverlet, and she could see the tremor in them even from the doorway.
But his eyes … his eyes were the same. Warm and sharp and full of a light that had always made Elinor feel as though she were the most interesting person in any room.
“Papa.” She crossed the room and took his hand.
It was cool in hers. She pressed it between both of her palms and sat on the edge of the bed. The tears she had refused on the journey rose now, hot and sudden, blurring his face.
“Well now. None of that,” he said. His fingers curled around hers with a strength that surprised her. “Let me look at you, my dear.”
She blinked the tears back and let him look. He studied her face the way he had always studied her, both quietly and with subtle awe.
“You look different,” he said. “Something has changed.”
“Nothing has changed, Papa.”
“Liar.” He smiled, and the smile cost him. She saw the effort it took, and the way his breath shortened. “Do you truly think you can fool your old man? I don’t think so. Now, how about you tell me about this duke you’re to marry?”
Elinor opened her mouth to deny it and found that she could not. Not here, not to him. He had always seen through her like the way telescopes saw through the darkness by finding light where others saw nothing.
“We can talk about that later,” she said. “Right now, I am going to sit with you, and you are going to rest.”
“What an authoritative child.”
“I learned from you.”
He laughed, and the laugh turned into a cough that shook his frame. Elinor held his hand through it, her own grip tightening, willing her steadiness into him. When the coughing passed, he settled back against the pillows and closed his eyes.
Newton, who had padded into the room behind her, leaped onto the bed with the careful precision of a cat who understood that this human required gentleness. He circled once, twice, and settled against her father’s hip, his body warm, his purring filling the room with a low, constant sound that seemed to ease the tightness in her father’s breathing.