Chapter Twenty
“Has the Duchess mentioned anything to you?”
Mrs Harding paused in her recitation of the day’s household matters, her sharp eyes studying Benjamin with an attention that set him ill at ease. “Mentioned anything, Your Grace?”
“About—” He stopped, uncertain how to frame the question. How did a man inquire of a servant whether his wife had explained why she had altered, as if overnight, from a warm and present companion into a courteous stranger? “About her health. Her spirits. Whether something has… disturbed her.”
The housekeeper was silent for a moment. When she spoke, her tone was measured with care.
“Her Grace has not confided in me, Your Grace. However, I have observed…” She hesitated, plainly weighing her discretion against her concern.
“I have observed that she applies herself to her duties a great deal. More than usual. And she has been taking her meals in her sitting room rather than the dining room.”
“Yes. She spoke of pressing correspondence.”
“Indeed.” Mrs Harding’s voice suggested she possessed opinions upon that explanation, but was far too professional to give them utterance. “Is there anything further, Your Grace?”
Benjamin dismissed her with a wave that proved more abrupt than he intended. When he was alone once more in his study, he stared at the papers upon his desk without seeing them and attempted, yet again, to determine what had gone amiss.
A week earlier, Eleanor had sat beside his bed and held his hand through the worst of his nightmares. She had promised to come if the dreams returned. She had looked at him with something in her grey eyes that he had dared—foolishly—to interpret as affection.
Now she scarcely looked at him at all.
The alteration had begun the morning after the solicitor’s visit.
Benjamin had perceived it at once—the flat cadence of her voice, the deliberate reserve in her posture, the manner in which she quitted the breakfast table before he could inquire what troubled her.
At first, he had assumed that the headache she had complained of the previous evening had been more severe than she admitted.
He had allowed her the space to recover, confident that the easy rhythm they had begun to establish would reassert itself once she felt restored.
Yet the days had passed, and the rhythm had not returned. In its place stood something that felt increasingly like a wall—unseen but unyielding—raised brick by brick from polite deflections and convenient excuses.
“I am occupied...”
“I have already walked...”
“Perhaps tomorrow...”
Each refusal was perfectly reasonable. Each explanation entirely plausible. And yet, taken together, they amounted to a quiet dismantling of all that had begun to form between them in recent weeks.
What happened? he asked himself for the hundredth time. What altered?
The questions circled endlessly, unanswerable and relentless.
He tried, at first, to bridge the widening distance.
He presented himself at the door of her sitting room with inquiries regarding estate matters that did not, in truth, require her counsel, merely in the hope of engaging her in conversation.
She responded with efficiency and perfect civility, and returned to her work before he could contrive to prolong the exchange.
He proposed walks in the gardens, reminding her that the roses were in full bloom. She declined, pleading correspondence that could not wait—though he knew very well that no letter was so urgent it might not endure an hour’s delay.
He lingered in corridors and doorways, positioning himself where she must inevitably pass, hoping for some accidental moment of connection. She moved through the house like a wraith—present yet unreachable, visible yet somehow not entirely there.
It was, he realised with mounting dread, precisely how she had once described her mother. Fading. Disappearing. Becoming invisible before death had even claimed her.
But Eleanor was not fading for want of love. She was fading by design—retreating behind walls he could see yet could not penetrate, donning once more the armour she had worn upon her arrival at Thornwood.
He had believed she had laid that armour aside. Had persuaded himself, in his foolish hope, that she had trusted him sufficiently to be vulnerable.
Plainly, he had been mistaken.
The household had begun to notice.
Servants who had grown accustomed to seeing the Duke and Duchess dine together now exchanged quiet whispers regarding the change.
The gentle warmth that had begun to infuse the house—the flowers in the rooms, the well-ordered schedules, the renewed sense of purpose Eleanor had instilled—remained, yet it felt curiously hollow.
Mechanical. As though the household continued upon habit rather than heart.
Mrs Harding, in particular, observed developments with an expression that suggested a deeper understanding than she chose to express.
She had served at Thornwood long enough to recognise withdrawal when she saw it, and she had watched Eleanor closely enough to know that the duchess’s present conduct was a retreat, not a preference.
“Your Grace,” she ventured one morning, approaching Benjamin with unusual hesitation, “forgive me if I speak out of turn, but I feel it my duty to mention—the staff are concerned.”
“Concerned? In what respect?”
“Regarding Her Grace. She has been… altered of late. More distant. She continues to manage the household admirably, but she no longer—” The housekeeper paused, searching for a suitable phrase. “She no longer seems truly present.”
Benjamin received this confirmation of what he had already perceived. “Has she said anything? Offered any indication of what may be troubling her?”
“No, Your Grace. She is unfailingly polite. Perfectly composed. Yet the warmth that had begun to emerge—” Mrs Harding shook her head. “It has vanished. And I cannot say why.”
Neither can I, Benjamin thought. Neither can I.
The nights proved the most trying of all.
In the brief weeks before everything shifted, he had grown accustomed to the knowledge of Eleanor’s nearness.
Not in his bed—they had not yet attained that degree of intimacy—but close enough that her presence afforded comfort.
He had begun to sleep more soundly, assured that she lay just beyond the connecting door.
He had even dared to hope that the nightmares might, in time, recede—replaced by the quiet peace of a life shared with someone who understood.
Now, however, the nights stretched on without end.
The nightmares returned with renewed ferocity—vivid and dreadful, crowded with fire and screams and the faces of men he had failed to save. He would wake gasping, drenched in perspiration, his hand reaching instinctively for one that was not there.
She had promised to come if the dreams returned. On that first night, in the ragged silence that followed his waking, he lay very still and strained to hear any sign of movement beyond the connecting rooms—any soft footstep, any creak of a door that might signal she was coming.
None came.
She did not come.
Her absence felt like judgment. Like confirmation that whatever he had believed was growing between them had existed only in his own desperate fancy.
She is finished with you, some dark voice whispered in the hollow hours before dawn. She has perceived what you are—damaged, dangerous, unfit to be loved—and she has retreated to protect herself.
You cannot blame her. Were it possible, you would retreat from yourself as well.
***
On the fifth day of Eleanor’s withdrawal, Benjamin walked to the hidden courtyard to feed the cat.
He had not missed a single morning or evening since the ritual began, regardless of weather or circumstance. The feeding had become a fixed point in his days—a small, dependable act of care that required nothing of him but quiet constancy.
The cat was waiting.
It sat in its customary place beside the hedge, green eyes watchful, grey coat far sleeker than it had been in those first months of cautious acceptance.
Yet something was altered. Instead of retreating at his approach, it remained where it was.
And when he set down the dish and stepped back, it did not wait for him to reach his usual distance.
It advanced while he was still only a few feet away.
Benjamin stilled at once, scarcely daring to breathe lest he frighten it. The cat lowered its head, sniffed the food, and began to eat—calmly, without haste, as though a man’s nearness no longer signified danger.
Something gave way in his chest.
It trusts me, he thought, watching the small grey creature consume its meal without fear. After months of patience, of consistency, of showing up every day without demanding anything in return—it finally trusts me.
The realisation should have brought joy. Instead, it brought a grief so sharp he could hardly draw breath.
For while the cat was learning trust, his wife was learning distance. While this wary, half-wild creature permitted him nearer, Eleanor was erecting walls so high he could no longer glimpse what lay beyond them.
What have I done? he thought, the question rising with quiet desperation. What have I done to make her retreat so?
The cat finished and lifted its head. For a moment, they regarded one another—the scarred man and the stray creature, both long accustomed to expecting little kindness from the world.
Then the cat did what it had never done before.
It came toward him.
Slowly, cautiously, yet with unmistakable intent, it crossed the space he had always preserved between them and approached the hand that had fed it for months without ever seeking to claim it.
It pressed its head briefly against his fingers.
The contact lasted but a heartbeat—soft fur brushing against scarred skin—before the animal withdrew to safer ground. Yet it was sufficient to undo the fragile restraint by which Benjamin had held himself together.