Chapter Two #2
He stood very still in the dim study, half-shadowed, half-revealed. When he spoke, his voice had lost its sharpest edges and become something almost uncertain.
“You did not flinch.”
It was not a question, but Eliza answered it nonetheless.
“No, Your Grace. I did not.”
“Why?”
She considered the question—considered the dozen replies she might offer, the clinical explanations and practised reassurances. In the end, she chose the simple truth.
“Because I see no reason to flinch from a man who has suffered greatly. Your scars are evidence of survival, Your Grace, not cause for revulsion. I have learned to look at what is before me, not only at what was lost.” She paused. “Good night.”
She slipped through the door before he could answer, closing it softly behind her. In the corridor, she allowed herself one long breath, steadying the heartbeat that had quickened without her permission.
It was not the scars that had unsettled her, she realised.
It was the eyes.
Those winter-sea eyes, alive with pain and pride and something else—something dangerously close to hope, though starved almost beyond recognition.
You will not send me away, she thought as she made her way towards the east wing.
Not yet.
She had no evidence for the belief. Only the instinct of a woman who had spent her life reading the subtle language of wounded things.
***
Rowan remained standing for a long time after the door closed.
The study had fallen silent again, but it was not the same silence as before. It felt charged now, as though the air itself had been altered by her presence. He could still hear her voice: calm, steady, cutting through his defences with surgical precision.
Your scars are evidence of survival, Your Grace, not cause for revulsion.
He did not believe her.
Could not believe her.
He had seen the faces of servants who looked at him by accident, had seen the swift, horrified flicker they tried and failed to hide.
He had seen his own reflection during that first terrible week, before he had ordered every mirror removed: the monster staring back, unrecognisable as the man who had ridden to war with confidence and purpose.
And yet.
She had not flinched.
He had positioned himself deliberately, allowing the light to fall across the worst of his scars, and waited for the telltale flash of disgust or pity.
It had not come.
She had looked at him as she might look at any patient: assessing, analytical, but not unkind.
“Well?” Marcus’s voice broke through his thoughts. “What do you think?”
Rowan turned slowly, his leg protesting the movement. “I think you had no right to bring her here without my consent.”
“That is not what I asked.”
No. It was not.
Rowan moved to the leather wingback near the cold fireplace and lowered himself into it with the careful movements that had become second nature. His leg throbbed dully, an ever-present companion, and he closed his eyes against the pain.
“She is… not what I expected.”
“In what way?”
In every way, Rowan thought.
He had expected someone older, perhaps. Someone with the brisk, impersonal manner of a nurse, or the simpering deference of a woman eager to curry favour with a duke.
He had not expected youth and quiet composure.
He had not expected eyes the colour of warm honey, steady and unafraid.
He had not expected to feel, for one disorienting moment, as though she could see past the ruin of his face to something beneath.
“It matters not,” he said aloud. “She will be gone tomorrow.”
“Rowan—”
“The discussion is closed, Marcus.” He opened his eyes and fixed his cousin with a look that had once commanded soldiers. “I appreciate your concern. I do not appreciate your interference. Let that be an end to it.”
Marcus looked as though he wished to argue, but something in Rowan’s expression must have warned him against it. He sighed, the sound heavy with frustrated resignation.
“Very well. I shall leave you to your solitude, since you seem so determined to preserve it.” He moved towards the door, then paused with his hand on the frame.
“But Rowan? I saw the way you looked at her. And I saw the way she looked at you—without flinching, as you said. Do not be so quick to dismiss what that might mean.”
The door closed behind him, leaving Rowan alone with the shadows.
He sat for a long time, watching the light fade beyond the curtains, thinking of nothing and everything. The pain in his leg ebbed and returned like a tide. The scars on his face felt tight and foreign, as they always did.
And beneath it all—beneath the bitterness, the resignation, and the careful walls he had built around himself—something stirred.
Something small and dangerous.
Something he had thought long dead.
I shall remain available, should you change your mind.
Her voice. Her steady, unflinching gaze. The way she had spoken to him not as a patient to be managed, nor as a duke to be flattered, but as a man. Simply a man, worthy of honesty rather than comfortable lies.
No one has spoken to me so plainly, Rowan realised, the thought settling in his chest like a stone.
No one, since before the war.
He did not know what to do with that knowledge. He did not know whether it was hope or merely another form of torment.
He only knew that sleep, when it finally came, was long in arriving—and that when it did, he dreamed not of cannon fire and screams, but of honey-coloured eyes that had looked upon him without fear.