“I am asking you to remember who you are.”
Eleanor pressed her lips together. She remained silent for a moment, and Alexander had the unsettling thought that she might simply agree, nod, and leave the room, and that hersilence could signify something far more troubling than another argument.
Then she said, “And if I cannot?”
“You will.” He held her gaze. “I expect you at dinner tonight, and I expect you at the ball. That is all I am asking of you at present. The rest will follow.”
She looked at him for one long moment then turned and walked out of the study without another word.
Alexander stood very still after the door had closed behind her. He turned back to the window, watching nothing in particular, and let himself breathe. She would come around. She always did, eventually. She was young and feeling, and she would come to see, as he had, that a life built on duty was steadier than a life built on hope.
He picked up his quill and returned to his task.
His mother’s room was quieter than the rest of the house when he opened the door and stepped in several hours after his argument with Eleanor.
She was sitting up against her pillows which was a better sign than yesterday, when she had barely been able to lift her head.
She is smaller than she was a year ago.He noticed it every time, no matter how he tried not to.
“Alexander.” Her face changed when she saw him, not dramatically—she did not have the energy for that—but something in it softened and settled, and she lifted one hand toward him.
He crossed the room and took it, pulling the chair close to her bedside and sitting down. Her hand was thin, with skin looser than it should be for a woman of four-and-fifty, and he carefully wrapped both of his around it.
“You look tired,” she said.
“I am perfectly well.”
“Hmm.” She studied him in that particular way she had, the way that made him feel seventeen again, caught in some small deception. “Eleanor?”
“We spoke this morning.”
“And?”
“And we disagreed as we frequently do.” He paused. “She will be at the ball. She will behave herself.”
His mother did not look entirely convinced, but she did not press it. She turned her head slightly toward the window, and for a moment, they simply sat together in the quiet. These were the visits he valued most, not when she was well enough to worryover him, not when she had advice he hadn’t asked for, but these still moments when it was enough to simply be present.
“How is the child?” she asked at last.
“She is well.” He kept his voice even. “She wants for nothing.”
“That is not quite what I asked.”
He met his mother’s eyes and found them patient and steady and far too perceptive for his comfort. “She is cared for,” he said. “She is safe. The governess writes regularly, and the reports are satisfactory.”
“Satisfactory.” His mother repeated, the word in a tone that made it sound considerably less reassuring than he had intended. “She is a little girl, Alexander, not an estate account.”
“I am aware of that.”
“Are you?” She did not say it unkindly. She never did anything unkindly. “You ought to bring her here. To us. She should not grow up in the countryside with a governess for company when she has family who could?—”
“She has every comfort.”
“Comfort is not family.” She shifted against her pillows, and he adjusted them behind her without being asked. “You need aduchess, my dear. You have needed one for some time. Bring the child home, find a good woman who will love her, and allow yourself to?—”
“I will marry when Eleanor is settled. That is how it ought to be done. The younger sister must be established first.”
“That is not a rule, Alexander. That is an excuse.”