Chapter Nineteen
“The solicitor has arrived, Your Grace.”
Eleanor looked up from the tenant correspondence she had been reviewing, a faint frown touching her features. “I was not aware we were expecting visitors.”
“Mr Carroway sent word yesterday,” Mrs Harding replied. “His Grace requested that he be shown directly to the study upon arrival.”
“Carroway?” Eleanor repeated. The name was unfamiliar.
“A new appointment, I believe. His Grace dismissed the former firm some weeks ago. Mr Carroway is said to have served with him abroad.”
“I see,” Eleanor said slowly, setting down her pen as her thoughts adjusted to this information. “Has luncheon been arranged?”
“Cook is preparing a cold collation for the study. His Grace indicated he did not wish to be disturbed during the meeting.”
There was nothing unusual in any of this. Solicitors attended great estates as a matter of course; quarterly reviews were routine; Benjamin’s preference for privacy in business matters was well established. And yet something in the timing unsettled her—a faint unease she could not quite define.
Perhaps it was only that she had grown accustomed to being included in estate concerns.
In recent weeks, Benjamin had begun consulting her on matters ranging from tenant disputes to investment decisions, treating her judgment as practical rather than ornamental.
The notion of a significant meeting proceeding without her involvement felt… odd.
You are being ridiculous, she told herself firmly. He is entitled to conduct business privately. Not every matter requires your participation.
And yet—
“Thank you, Mrs Harding,” she said aloud. “Pray inform me if anything is required.”
The housekeeper inclined her head and withdrew, leaving Eleanor alone with her correspondence and the faint, persistent impression that something was not quite right.
***
The morning passed without incident.
Eleanor completed her translation work—a series of letters from German wool merchants requiring meticulous interpretation—and reviewed the household accounts for the coming month.
The labour proved sufficiently absorbing to quiet her earlier unease, and by midday she had almost forgotten the solicitor’s visit altogether.
She took luncheon in the morning room, as had become her custom when Benjamin was occupied elsewhere.
The meal was excellent, the mild weather filtering pleasantly through the windows, and Eleanor found her thoughts drifting—inevitably—toward the other night.
Toward his hand in hers, his voice roughened with gratitude, and the promise she had made to come should the nightmares return.
Something has changed, she thought. Something fundamental. We are no longer simply two people sharing a house. We are...
She did not know how to finish the sentence. Partners? Companions? Something more?
The uncertainty should have troubled her. Instead, it felt almost exciting—the sense of standing on the threshold of something new, something she had never allowed herself to imagine.
Perhaps this is what hope feels like, she thought. Perhaps this is what it means to trust.
She finished her meal and returned to work, her heart lighter than it had been in years.
The translated documents were completed by mid-afternoon.
Eleanor gathered them into a careful stack, reviewing her work once more for accuracy.
The German merchants proposed a revised shipping arrangement that might considerably benefit the estate’s wool trade, though the terms were intricate and, in places, deliberately obscured.
She had spent hours disentangling their meaning and felt a quiet satisfaction in the result.
Benjamin will want to see this, she thought. The timeline they propose is aggressive. He should review it before replying.
She knew he remained engaged in conference with the solicitor.
Mrs Harding had mentioned that Mr Carroway had arrived bearing an unusually extensive portfolio of documents, suggesting the quarterly review might extend beyond its usual duration.
Still, by now they must surely be nearing its conclusion.
The merchants’ proposal was still time-sensitive; postponing discussion until much later might mean forfeiting a valuable opportunity.
Eleanor rose from her desk and made her way toward the study.
***
The corridor outside Benjamin’s study lay quiet, the afternoon light slanting through windows overlooking the formal gardens. Her footsteps were softened by the thick carpet, her approach nearly soundless, and she was almost at the door before she realised that voices still carried from within.
She ought to turn back. She ought to wait until the meeting concluded—ought to send word through a servant requesting an audience at the Duke’s convenience. To intrude upon a private business discussion would be improper, and she had no wish to place either Benjamin or his solicitor in discomfort.
Yet something in the tenor of the voices arrested her.
Not anger—nothing so overt—but urgency. The strained cadence of a conversation that had moved beyond routine business into more personal territory.
The door was not fully closed. It stood perhaps an inch ajar, too narrow to allow a view within, yet wide enough for sound to carry clearly into the corridor.
Eleanor knew she should withdraw. Knew that lingering to overhear a private exchange was a betrayal of trust—a violation of the respect she and Benjamin had so carefully constructed between them.
Then she heard her name.
“—the Duchess,” Mr Carroway was saying. “I trust the arrangement continues to answer your purpose?”
A pause. Then Benjamin’s voice, low and carefully controlled.
“The legal requirements have been fulfilled. The clause in my father’s will is satisfied. The estate is secure.”
“That is not precisely what I meant, Your Grace.”
Another silence—longer this time. Eleanor pressed herself against the wall beside the door, her pulse beginning to quicken. She should not remain. She should not listen. Yet her feet seemed fixed in place, her body refusing the urgent commands of her reason.
“The marriage was necessary.” Benjamin’s tone was flat, the measured neutrality he adopted when speaking of matters he found personally uncomfortable. “You are aware of my circumstances. I required someone who would not expect—who could endure—”
He broke off. Eleanor heard the creak of a chair, the faint shift of movement within the room.
“Endure what, Your Grace?” Mr Carroway prompted gently.
“My scars. My silences. The… difficulty of sharing a life with a man who has forgotten how to live amongst others.” Another pause.
“I required a practical arrangement. A wife who would not anticipate romance or sentiment. Someone willing to accept what I could offer and not demand what I could not give.”
Eleanor felt the blood drain from her face.
A practical arrangement. Someone who would not expect. Someone willing to accept.
The words echoed through her thoughts, each one striking with cold, deliberate precision.
“And the Duchess has answered this requirement satisfactorily?” Mr Carroway asked.
“She has been—” Benjamin halted again. When he resumed, his voice sounded altered—rougher, stripped of some of its careful restraint. “She has been more than satisfactory. She has been… everything I did not know I required. And that is precisely the difficulty.”
“The difficulty, Your Grace?”
“I fear I shall injure her.” The words escaped in a rush, as though long restrained. “As I injure everything entrusted to my care. I have destroyed everyone who ever depended upon me—my men, my mother, all whom I was meant to protect. I am cursed, Carroway. Or broken. Or simply incapable of—”
His voice faltered.
“It would be better if she did not—”
Eleanor did not remain to hear the rest.
She was already retreating down the corridor, her translated documents clutched against her chest like armour, her thoughts scattering beneath the fragments she had overheard.
The marriage was necessary.
I required a practical arrangement.
A wife who would not anticipate romance or sentiment.
I fear I shall injure her.
It would be better if she did not—
She required no conclusion to that unfinished sentence. Her mind supplied it readily, assembling a dozen merciless possibilities from the pieces she carried away.
It would be better if she did not expect anything.
It would be better if she did not exist in my life at all.
***
She reached her chambers before the tears came.
They rose without warning—great, shuddering sobs that tore through her like a storm, years of carefully maintained composure collapsing beneath the weight of what she had heard.
She pressed her face into her pillow to muffle the sound, terrified someone might hear, that a servant might come to inquire, that she might be forced to explain why the Duchess of Thornwood wept like a child in the middle of the afternoon.
Fool, she thought savagely. Fool, fool, fool.
She had done it again. Allowed herself to hope, to trust, to believe this time might be different. She had mistaken kindness for affection, attention for desire, a hand clasped through nightmares for evidence of something beyond obligation.
The marriage was necessary.
Of course it was. She had known that from the beginning—had accepted his proposal with her eyes open, fully aware that she was a practical solution to a legal difficulty.
He had never promised love. Had not even hinted at romance.
He had offered security, independence, a household to govern, and she had accepted because those things exceeded anything she had ever expected to possess.
I required… a wife who would not anticipate romance.
And she had not anticipated. Not at first. She had been careful, practical, armoured against disappointment. She had told herself that convenience was enough, that security was enough, that a marriage without affection was still infinitely preferable to the alternative.