Chapter Fifteen
“Would you walk with me?”
The question came at the close of breakfast, delivered with the careful neutrality Eleanor had come to recognise as Benjamin’s customary manner when uncertain of his reception. He stood near the doorway of the morning room, his posture that of a man prepared for refusal.
Eleanor set down her teacup.
In the weeks since her arrival at Thornwood, they had walked together only when necessity required it—tours of the household, inspections of the tenant farms, the practical duties of managing an estate. Never simply… to walk. Never for its own sake.
“Of course,” she said. “Allow me to fetch my shawl.”
Something shifted in his expression—relief, perhaps, or surprise at her ready agreement. He inclined his head once and stepped aside to wait.
Eleanor rose from the table, her heart beating faster than the moment warranted.
It is only a walk, she told herself. Do not make it into more than it is.
Yet as she climbed the stairs to retrieve her shawl, she could not entirely still the faint stirring of something that felt perilously like anticipation.
The gardens of Thornwood Park were beginning to recover.
Eleanor had observed the transformation gradually over the past weeks—the roses carefully pruned, the pathways cleared, the slow retreat of wild growth from spaces designed for order.
The gardener had been working with quiet diligence, encouraged by her interest and, she suspected, by unobtrusive instructions from the Duke himself.
Yet much remained to be done. The structure of the formal garden had re-emerged, but the fullness that ought to have clothed it remained fragile and incomplete. It would require years, perhaps, to restore what neglect had allowed to fade.
They walked in silence at first.
It was not an uncomfortable silence—not the charged stillness of their early days. This was something gentler. The silence of two people who had grown accustomed to one another’s company, who did not feel compelled to fill each interval with words.
Eleanor found herself relaxing into it. The day was mild, the sky a pale wash of blue scattered with clouds, the air carrying the scent of growing things and damp earth. She had not realised how much she missed gardens until she walked through one that was being tended again.
“The roses are recovering,” she said, pausing beside a bed where fresh green shoots pushed through carefully pruned canes. “Another month, and they should bloom properly.”
Benjamin halted beside her, his gaze following hers toward the renewing plants.
“Jenkins—the head gardener—says this variety is particularly resilient. His grandmother planted the original stock, apparently. It has endured worse than my neglect.”
“It is not neglect to grieve.”
The words escaped before Eleanor could weigh them. Benjamin remained silent for a moment, his scarred profile turned toward the roses.
“My mother loved these gardens,” he said at last. “She spent hours here each day, tending things. She said it helped her think.”
“Mrs Harding mentioned she walked them every evening.”
“Did she?” Something ghostlike crossed his expression—not quite a smile, not quite pain. “Yes. She would walk the paths before dinner, whatever the weather. She said the gardens spoke to her.”
Eleanor waited, sensing more lay beneath.
“I allowed them to fall into disrepair after she passed.” His voice remained quiet, factual. “The staff offered to maintain them, but I refused. I told them it was an unnecessary expense—that no one would notice.”
“But that was not the true reason.”
“No.” He turned toward her, and something unguarded flickered in his dark eyes. “It felt… dishonest to tend them when I could not tend to her. To keep beautiful what I had failed to protect.”
The words settled between them, carrying weight far beyond roses and pathways.
“You were at war,” Eleanor said gently. “You could not have been here.”
“I know. But knowledge is rarely sufficient.” He looked back at the roses, his jaw tightening slightly. “Grief is not reasonable. It does not yield to argument. It simply… exists.”
Eleanor thought of her own grief—the mother who had faded, the hopes that had quietly collapsed, the armour she had built to shield herself from such vulnerability ever returning.
“Yes,” she agreed softly. “It simply exists.”
They stood together in silence, watching the roses that had endured despite neglect, and Eleanor felt something shift between them. Some final distance narrowing, some last defence quietly weakening.
***
They walked on.
The path wound through a series of smaller gardens—the herb garden, still largely untamed; the kitchen garden, now producing again beneath the cook’s careful supervision; the small orchard where apple trees were beginning to show their first buds.
Eleanor asked questions, and Benjamin answered, his responses growing longer, more detailed, as they continued.
He carried memories of each place, she discovered. His mother teaching him to identify herbs by scent. His father attempting—and failing—to teach him to climb the apple trees. A childhood dog buried beneath a particular oak, marked by a stone long since obscured by moss and fallen leaves.
“I had forgotten,” he said, pausing beside the oak in question. “I had forgotten how much of my life took place in these gardens.”
“Perhaps that is why you could not bear to see them tended,” Eleanor suggested. “Too many memories concealed in every corner.”
He considered this. “Perhaps you are right.”
He looked at her, and something almost like wonder crossed his face. “I do not know. I only know that I can remember now, when I am here with you. The memories do not wound as they once did.”
Eleanor’s breath caught. She did not know how to answer such a statement—did not know what it meant, or what she ought to do with the warmth spreading quietly through her chest.
She was spared the necessity of reply by movement in the hedge beside them.
The cat.
It watched them from beneath a spill of untrimmed boxwood, its green eyes catching the light. It sat perfectly still, as it always did—wary, observant, prepared to flee at the slightest threat.
Eleanor felt her body stiffen. The familiar fear rose sharp and immediate, and for a moment she was back in the corridor, pressed against stone, unable to move or breathe.
But Benjamin stood beside her. And the cat was not blocking her escape—it was simply… present. Watching. Not advancing.
She forced herself to breathe. Forced her hands to unclench at her sides. Forced her feet to remain steady upon the path rather than carrying her away.
“It is all right,” Benjamin said quietly. He did not move toward her, offered no overt gesture of protection. He simply remained beside her, solid and composed. “It will not approach while we are here.”
“I know.” Her voice emerged steadier than she felt. “I know it will not.”
They stood together, observing the animal that observed them. Eleanor’s pulse still raced, but the panic began to recede—held at bay by sunlight, by Benjamin’s steady presence, by the simple fact that she was not alone.
“It appears healthier,” she said, surprising herself. “Than when I first saw it.”
“It has been fed regularly.” Benjamin’s tone remained measured, though she detected something beneath it—quiet satisfaction, perhaps. “It is still wary of my touch. But it ventures nearer than it once did.”
“Progress.”
“Of a sort.”
The cat’s tail flicked. Then, with studied indifference, it turned and vanished into the deeper shade of the hedge.
Eleanor released a breath she had not realised she held.
“Are you quite well?” Benjamin asked.
“Yes.” She was surprised to find it true. “Yes, I believe I am.”
He made no remark upon her small triumph. Offered no praise. He merely inclined his head, accepting her answer, and gestured along the path.
“There is a bench beside the old fountain,” he said. “If you would care to sit.”
“I should like that very much.”
***
The bench was old and weathered, its stone surface worn smooth by generations of use. It faced a fountain long since stilled—the basin dry, the statuary cracked, the mechanism that had once animated it presumably rusted beyond repair.
Yet the view remained beautiful. The fountain stood at the edge of a gentle slope overlooking the wider estate, and from here Eleanor could see the undulating parkland, the distant line of woods, and the silver thread of the river that had flooded during the storm.
They sat together in silence.
It was, Eleanor realised, the most peaceful she had felt since her arrival at Thornwood—perhaps the most peaceful she had known in years.
The sun rested warmly against her face, the breeze carried the scent of blossoms and new growth, and beside her sat a man who required neither conversation nor performance nor any of the exhausting social attentions that had shaped so much of her life.
He simply sat. And so did she.
“I have not done this in a long time,” Benjamin said at last.
“Done what?”
“Sat. Without purpose.” He continued to gaze across the landscape, his scarred profile softened by the mellow light. “I have spent so many years moving—planning, acting, responding. I had forgotten that stillness might be… agreeable.”
“I understand.” Eleanor folded her hands in her lap, watching a hawk wheel lazily in the distance. “I have always felt compelled to be occupied. That stillness was waste—and waste was inexcusable.”
“Because usefulness was your armour.”
“Yes.” She glanced toward him, faintly startled by the accuracy of it. “I believed that if I ceased to be useful, even briefly, it would become apparent that I possessed no other worth.”
“That is not so.”
“I am beginning to suspect it is not.” The admission came quietly, almost shyly. “But it is… a gradual lesson.”
“Most healing is.” He turned toward her, and something warm stirred in his dark eyes. “I have found that haste rarely improves matters. One must simply continue forward. Small steps. Day by day.”
“Like the cat.”
“Like the cat.” A shadow of a smile touched his mouth. “And like the gardens. And like—” He paused, the smile softening into something more thoughtful. “And like us, perhaps.”
Eleanor’s heart faltered.
Us.
It was such a small word. Yet it carried weight—the weight of shared meals and shared silences, of confidences exchanged, of a marriage that had begun as necessity and was quietly transforming into something neither of them had quite anticipated.
“Perhaps,” she agreed softly.
They remained together in quiet companionship, watching the light shift across the parkland, and Eleanor allowed herself—just for a moment—to set aside thoughts of duty and expectation and simply exist.
It was, she discovered, far less frightening than she had once believed.