Chapter 20
Twenty
“You have eaten precisely three bites of toast in the last quarter hour,” Eliza said, setting down her teacup with a bit more force. “I begin to suspect you are punishing it for some past offense.”
August looked up from the morning paper which he had been holding at an angle that suggested he was reading it though Eliza suspected he had not turned a page in some time. “The toast is innocent. I am merely… distracted.”
“By what? The news from Parliament or the fact that you have been awake since four o’clock?”
His brows lifted. “How did you—”
“The servants talk, Your Grace. And you left your study door open when you finally retired at midnight. It does not require a great mind to calculate that you are running on four hours of sleep at best.”
He folded the paper with exaggerated care and set it beside his plate. “I could say the same of you. I heard you moving about your rooms well past two.”
Eliza had not known he paid such attention. The realization sent a small jolt through her chest, one she tried very hard to ignore. “I was reading.”
“In the dark?”
“There was a candle.”
“One candle.”
“It was sufficient.”
They stared at each other across the table, and Eliza felt the absurdity of the argument settle between them. A smile tugged at her mouth before she could stop it.
August’s expression softened in response. “We are a pair of fools, are we not?”
“Speak for yourself. I am perfectly sensible.”
“You read by single candlelight in the dead of night and claim sensibility?”
“Better than prowling the halls at dawn like some restless specter.”
He picked up his coffee, took a sip, and made a face that suggested he had forgotten to add sugar. Or perhaps he had added too much. Eliza could not tell which. “I was not prowling. I was… thinking.”
“About?”
He set the cup down. “Everything. Nothing. The estate. My father.” He rubbed at his temple then seemed to catch himself and dropped his hand. “Forgive me. You did not ask for a recitation of my anxieties.”
“I asked what you were thinking about,” Eliza said. “You answered. There is nothing to forgive.”
He looked at her then, really looked, and something in his face shifted.
It was not quite vulnerability, but it was close.
Closer than she had seen before their dinner last night.
Before his father’s death. Before he had let her stay in his study while he dictated letters and fell apart by increments.
“You have been very patient with me,” he said.
Eliza busied herself with buttering a piece of toast she had no intention of eating. “I have done nothing extraordinary.”
“You stayed.”
The words were simple, but they landed with surprising force. She looked up and found him watching her with an expression she could not quite name. Gratitude, perhaps. Or something more complicated.
“Where else would I go?” she asked, aiming for lightness and missing by a mile.
“London. Your aunt’s house. Anywhere that did not require you to bear witness to my family’s grief.” He leaned back in his chair, and the movement seemed to cost him something. “Most wives of convenience would have found an excuse by now.”
“Then I suppose I am not most wives.”
“No,” he said, and his mouth curved just slightly. “You are not.”
The silence that followed was not uncomfortable, but it was full.
Eliza found herself acutely aware of the space between them, of the way the morning light caught in his hair and showed the shadows beneath his eyes.
He looked as though he had aged a year in the span of a week, and yet there was something in his bearing that had not been there before.
A kind of rawness that made him seem more real, less the polished duke and more the man who had once chased down a fox kit to save it from the gamekeeper.
She wanted to reach across the table and touch his hand. The impulse shocked her with its strength, and she gripped her knife instead, holding it so tight her knuckles went white against the handle.
“You should rest today,” she said because it was easier than admitting she cared whether he slept or not. “The estate can wait another day.”
“The estate waits for no man, Duchess. My father used to say that.”
“Your father is not here to say it now.” The words came out sharper than she intended, and she winced. “I only meant—”
“I know what you meant.” He picked up his fork, examined it as though he had never seen such an object before, and set it down again. “You are right of course. I am running myself into the ground, and for what? The tenants will not revolt if I take a morning to myself.”
“Or an afternoon.”
“Let us not be radical.”
She smiled despite herself. “Heaven forbid.”
He stood then, pushing back his chair, and Eliza thought he meant to leave. Instead, he walked to the window and stood looking out at the gardens, his hands clasped behind his back. The posture was so like his father’s that her throat went tight.
“I keep expecting him to walk through the door,” August said, his voice low enough that she had to strain to hear it.
“Every time I sit at his desk, I think he will appear and tell me I am doing it all wrong. That I have missed some crucial detail, made some unforgivable error.” He paused, and his shoulders rose and fell with a breath.
Eliza set down her knife and rose from her chair. She did not cross to him, not yet, but stood at the edge of the table, her hands resting on the back of her seat. “No one is ever ready to lose a parent. Or to inherit a dukedom. You are doing both at once. It would be strange if you felt capable.”
“You sound very certain of that.”
“I am certain of very little, Your Grace. But I am certain that you are more prepared than you think. Your father saw to that.”
He turned to face her, and the morning light threw his features into sharp relief. He looked carved from something harder than flesh, but his eyes were soft. Tired. Afraid, perhaps, though he would never say so.
“What if I fail?” he asked.
The question sat between them like a confession. Eliza knew what he wanted her to say. That he would not fail. That he was brilliant and capable and had been trained for this his entire life. That his father’s faith in him had been justified.
But she had never been good at pretty lies.
“Then you will pick yourself up and try again,” she said. “And if you fail a second time, you will do it again. And again. Until you do not fail anymore.”
He blinked, and something in his expression shifted. “That is not very comforting.”
“I am not very comforting.”
“No,” he agreed. “But you are honest.”
She did not know what to say to that, so she said nothing.
They stood in the morning light, the breakfast table between them, and Eliza felt the shift again.
The same one she had felt last night over dinner, when he had admitted he did not know how to be the Duke. When he had thanked her for listening.
It was terrifying, this shift. Because it meant something had changed, and Eliza was not at all certain she was ready for whatever came next.
August cleared his throat and moved back to the table.
He did not sit, but he picked up his coffee cup and drained it in one long swallow, as though fortifying himself.
“I have meetings this afternoon. The solicitor is coming to discuss the will, and I expect it will take hours.” He set the cup down. “Will you be at home?”
“I had thought to visit the village,” Eliza said, the lie forming before she could stop it. In truth, she had no plans, but the idea of sitting in the house all day, waiting for him to return, felt unbearable. “But I can stay if you need me.”
“I do not need—” He stopped himself, and his jaw worked as though he were chewing on words he did not want to swallow. “I would like it if you were here when I returned. If that is not too much to ask.”
Her heart did something complicated in her chest. She told it to stop. “It is not too much.”
“Good.” He looked at her for another moment, and Eliza had the absurd thought that he meant to say something else. Something important. But instead, he gave her a small, tired smile and moved toward the door. “Enjoy your morning, Duchess.”
“And you yours, Your Grace.”
He left, and the room felt colder for his absence.
Eliza sank back into her chair and stared at the cooling tea in her cup. She had married August out of necessity and had promised herself she would not become entangled. She would not let her heart become involved.
And yet here she was, sitting in a breakfast, wishing he had stayed a little longer.