“I imagine your husband—your late husband—appreciated your unconventional education.”
“George was a shipping magnate who’d built his fortune importing spices and silk from the Orient,” Eleanor replied. “He was twenty years my senior and looking for a practical wife rather than an ornamental one. He’d heard about Father’s work and come to commission charts for his new routes to India.When he met me…” She shrugged elegantly. “He said he’d rather marry a woman who could read his cargo manifests than one who could only embroider them.”
“A practical arrangement, then?”
“George appreciated my mind, which was more than most men offered. We were… compatible.” The careful way she said compatible told Damien volumes about what that marriage had lacked.
“And after his death? You could have remarried conventionally.”
Eleanor’s chin lifted with familiar stubbornness. “I’d tasted independence. The idea of surrendering it to another man’s whims, however well-intentioned, held no appeal. George may have valued my opinions, but he still controlled where we traveled, which charities received our support, how our money was invested. Though I’ll admit, there were moments when I wondered if I was being foolishly stubborn.”
“And now? Do you regret the path you chose?”
Eleanor was quiet for a moment, watching the countryside roll past. When she spoke, her voice was thoughtful. “I regret the necessity of it. I regret living in a world where a woman’s intelligence is seen as threatening rather than valuable. But I don’t regret refusing to be diminished.”
“Diminished,” Damien repeated softly. “An interesting choice of words.”
“Most men prefer their wives decorative and compliant. Present company excepted, perhaps.” She studied his face with intensity. “You seem remarkably comfortable with… uncomfortable women.”
“Comfortable women are dull,” Damien replied with a grin. “I prefer the sort who challenge my assumptions and keep me guessing. Much more entertaining.”
“Is that what I am? Entertainment?”
The question carried an undercurrent Damien couldn’t quite identify. “You’re many things, Eleanor. Entertaining is certainly one of them, though it’s not the most important.”
“Oh? And what would you consider most important?”
Damien found himself speaking honestly. “Your refusal to be anything other than exactly who you are. It’s… refreshing. In a world full of people performing roles they think others expect, authenticity is remarkably rare.”
Eleanor blinked, clearly taken aback by his sincerity. For a moment, the careful walls she maintained seemed to waver, revealing glimpses of the vulnerable woman beneath the formidable duchess.
“That’s…” she began, then stopped, apparently at a loss for words.
“Unexpected?” Damien suggested gently.
“Yes,” she admitted. “Most men find my authenticity rather more alarming than refreshing.”
“Then you’ve definitely been conversing with the wrong sort of men,” he said with warm conviction.
A charged silence settled between them as the carriage continued its journey. Then, driven by a curiosity he couldn’t quite suppress, Damien found himself asking, “Was there ever anyone? Before your marriage to George, I mean. A young man who appreciated your unusual interests?”
Eleanor’s expression grew suddenly soft, almost wistful, and a smile played at the corners of her mouth in a way that made Damien’s heart twist uncomfortably. “There was someone,” she admitted quietly, her gaze turning to the window with a faraway look that he found distinctly unsettling.
“Tell me about him,” Damien said, though he wasn’t entirely certain he wanted to hear the answer.
“Walter was Father’s assistant.” Eleanor’s voice carried a warmth that made Damien’s attention sharpen. “He wasbrilliant—could calculate celestial navigation in his head and had the most beautiful hands when he drew coastlines. He treated my questions as though they were important, never once suggesting I should be embroidering instead of learning about tidal patterns.”
The sweet, reminiscent way she spoke of this Walter fellow sent a surprising spike of jealousy through Damien’s chest. “And what became of this paragon?”
“He received an offer from the Royal Geographic Society to join an expedition mapping the Amazon basin. The opportunity of a lifetime.” Eleanor’s smile grew both tender and melancholy. “I encouraged him to go, of course. How could I not? He was meant for great discoveries, not to be tied down by a provincial cartographer’s daughter.”
“He left,” Damien said, and he couldn’t quite keep the satisfaction from his voice.
“He left,” Eleanor confirmed, though she didn’t seem to notice his tone. “We exchanged letters for a while, but expedition life… well, it doesn’t allow for romantic attachments. The last I heard, he’d married a colonel’s daughter in Brazil and was establishing his own surveying company.”
Damien found himself irrationally irked by the fond way Eleanor remembered this Walter character. The man had abandoned her for adventure, yet she spoke of him with genuine warmth rather than bitterness. It suggested a generosity of spirit that was both admirable and deeply grating.
The contrast with Laura’s reaction to his own departure struck him forcefully—where Laura had seen his devotion to Dominic as a betrayal of their future together, Eleanor had encouraged Walter’s pursuit of his dreams even at the cost of her own happiness. Where Laura had demanded he choose between her and his brother, Eleanor had freely released the man she loved to follow his calling. The realization that Eleanorpossessed the very understanding and selflessness that Laura had lacked made his chest tighten with longing for the kind of partnership Eleanor offered.