Eleanor considered this carefully, her fingers tracing the edge of her book. “I’ve found them to be more honest about their motivations, as you said. Less likely to dress selfishness in noble rhetoric.”
“An interesting distinction. Honest selfishness versus dishonest altruism.”
“Precisely.” Eleanor’s eyes lit up, and Damien noticed how her gaze intensified.
“Yet both acts serve a purpose,” Damien pointed out. “The children are fed, the charity receives funding. Does motivation matter if the outcome is beneficial?”
“Of course it matters,” Eleanor said, leaning forward slightly in her enthusiasm, bringing their knees even closer. “Actions taken from genuine compassion create lasting change. Actions taken from guilt or social pressure are merely… temporary performances.”
“So you believe in the purity of motive as well as deed?”
“I believe in understanding why people act as they do. It’s the only way to predict future behavior.” Eleanor paused, then added with a slight smile that transformed her face, “For instance, your current attempt to engage me in philosophical debate is clearly designed to distract me.”
Damien burst into delighted laughter, the sound filling the carriage’s intimate confines. “Brilliantly deduced. Though I prefer to think of it as demonstrating my intellectual worthiness as a companion.”
“Worthiness for what purpose?”
“Why, for the honor of conversing with a woman clever enough to read Wollstonecraft while simultaneously plotting her husband’s social destruction through strategic use of laundry techniques.”
Eleanor’s cheeks flushed, but her eyes danced with suppressed mirth. “Your Smugness deserved the pink shirts.”
“Completely,” Damien agreed cheerfully. “Though I maintain that my response was proportionate to the provocation.”
“Proportionate? You nearly gave me an apoplectic fit with that yellow and green ensemble.”
“Nearly?” Damien adopted a wounded expression. “I was aiming for complete aesthetic devastation. Clearly my fashion sense requires further refinement.”
“Your fashion sense requires burial in an unmarked grave,” Eleanor retorted.
“Such passion, Duchess. One might think you actually care about my sartorial choices… or what’s underneath.”
“I care about not being blinded by them,” Eleanor replied primly, her complexion turning rosy and her lips curving with a barely suppressed grin.
As the carriage continued its steady progress toward Ashford, Damien found himself profoundly proud of himself. The woman who usually treated him with arctic politeness had finally thawed enough to engage in genuine conversation.
“Tell me,” he said, assuming a more casual tone as he settled back against the carriage cushions. “I realize I know remarkably little about the formidable woman I married. Where did this passion for independence originate? Were you always such a determined revolutionary, or did circumstances forge you into one?”
Eleanor’s expression grew more guarded, though not entirely closed off. “I was fortunate in my upbringing. My father believed girls should be educated as thoroughly as boys—a radical notion that scandalized most of his acquaintances.”
“And what was your father’s profession?”
“He was a cartographer,” Eleanor said, and Damien caught a note of pride in her voice. “One of the finest in England. The Admiralty commissioned him to chart coastal waters, and private shipping companies paid handsomely for his precision. He said maps were about understanding the world as it truly was, not as people wished it to be.”
“How fascinating. That explains your analytical mind—and your appreciation for accurate information over comfortable assumptions.”
Eleanor smiled at that. “Father always said that wishful thinking was the fastest way to run aground, whether you were navigating waters or life. He taught me to chart my own course based on facts, not fantasies.”
“And your mother? Did she share his progressive views?”
“My mother died when I was twelve,” Eleanor said simply. “After that, it was just Father and me. He treated me more as an apprentice than a decorative daughter, teaching me mathematics, geography, even basic surveying techniques.”
Damien felt a pang of sympathy at the matter-of-fact way she delivered this information. “That must have been lonely.”
“Lonely?” Eleanor considered this with apparent surprise. “I suppose it might have been, but I was too busy learning to calculate longitude and studying coastal formations to notice. Father said if I was to inherit anything worthwhile, I needed to understand how to navigate the world myself.”
“Wise man. Did your interests deter or assist your social status?”
Eleanor’s smile turned slightly wry. “The local young ladies found my interests rather peculiar. I preferred reading navigation charts to practising watercolors, and I could discuss trade routes but couldn’t manage a conversation about the latest fashions.”