Chapter 23
Twenty-Three
The theater offered other attractions beyond the stage.
Eliza could not get Lady Wilhampton’s words out of her mind, and that ensured that this might be her second night without sleep.
She threw back the covers and reached for her wrapper, tying it with more force than necessary.
A book might help. Something dull and improving, the sort of thing that made one’s eyes cross with boredom.
She had seen a volume on agricultural reform in the library that looked promising in its tedium.
She lit a candle and slipped out into the hallway, her bare feet silent on the carpet runner. The house felt different at night, larger somehow, as though the walls had expanded to accommodate all the shadows.
She had nearly reached the staircase when she saw him.
August stood in the hallway, one shoulder pressed against the wall, his head tipped back as though he had been studying the ceiling and found it wanting. He wore only his shirtsleeves and breeches, and his hair stuck up at odd angles, as though he had been running his hands through it repeatedly.
He looked utterly lost.
“Your Grace?” The words came out softer than she intended, and he started, his head snapping toward her.
“Eliza.” He straightened, seemed to catch himself, and ran a hand over his face. “Forgive me. I did not mean to startle you.”
“You did not startle me. I only thought—” She moved closer, holding the candle higher, so she could see him properly. “Are you well?”
“I am perfectly well.”
“You are a terrible liar.”
His mouth lifted at one corner, but the smile did not reach his eyes. “So I have been told.”
She should leave him to his brooding. Should make some polite excuse and continue on to the library. But something in his posture, in the way his hands hung loose at his sides, made her feet root themselves to the carpet.
“What are you doing out here?” she asked.
“I could ask you the same question.”
“I asked first.”
He looked at her for a long moment, and she watched something shift in his expression.
Like a decision being made. “I had the oddest dream,” he said at last. “I was seventeen again, standing in my father’s study while he explained all the ways I would need to manage the estate when he was gone.
Every tenant’s name, every field rotation, every debt and obligation.
And I kept trying to write it all down, but the ink would not take.
The quill just scratched across the paper, leaving nothing behind. ”
He paused, his jaw working. “When I woke, I could not remember where I was. For a full minute, I thought I was fifteen or sixteen and that my father was yet to fall ill. That I still had time to prepare.”
Eliza’s throat tightened. She had never heard him speak like this, without the armor of wit or charm to deflect. “But you are not seventeen.”
“No. I am thirty, and my father is dead, and I have no more time at all.” He pushed away from the wall and stood there, looking as though he did not quite know what to do with his hands. “Forgive me. You should not have to bear the burden of my maudlin thoughts.”
“They are not maudlin. They are honest.”
“That may be worse.”
She set the candle on a side table and folded her arms across her chest. The hallway was cold, and the thin wrapper offered little protection, but she found she did not want to leave. “Would you like to take a walk?”
He blinked. “Now?”
“Why not? Neither of us can sleep, and the house is beginning to feel rather oppressive.”
“It is the middle of the night.”
“I am aware. But I find the middle of the night is often the best time for walks. No one about to disturb one’s thoughts.”
He looked at her as though she had suggested they strip naked and run through the village, but after a moment, something in his face softened. “Very well. A walk. But if we are accosted by footpads, I shall hold you personally responsible.”
“I shall accept that burden with appropriate gravity.”
They returned to their rooms long enough to make themselves presentable—Eliza exchanged her wrapper for a proper dress and shawl, August gathered his coat and boots—and met again at the top of the stairs.
The house remained silent around them, the servants all abed, and they descended together without speaking.
The gardens were bathed in moonlight when they stepped outside, the air cool and sharp with the scent of new growth. Eliza pulled her shawl tighter and started down the main path, August falling into step beside her.
For a while, neither spoke. They simply walked, their footsteps crunching on the gravel, the night wrapping around them like a cloak. It should have been awkward, this silence, but somehow it was not. It felt almost companionable.
“Why did you never marry?” August asked suddenly.
Eliza nearly stumbled. She caught herself and kept walking, buying time to arrange her thoughts. “That is rather a personal question.”
“We are married. I should think that entitles me to some personal questions.”
“Does it? I was under the impression we had an arrangement, not an inquisition.”
He did not rise to the bait. “You are what, five and twenty? Six and twenty?”
“Five and twenty.”
“And yet you were still unmarried when we met. That seems… unusual. For a woman of your intelligence and bearing.” He paused, then added, “And before you accuse me of flattery, I am being perfectly sincere.”
She looked down at the path, at her feet moving one in front of the other. “Lady Hartwell wanted to give me a proper season. She offered more than once, but I refused.”
“Why?”
“Because she had already done so much for me. Continued to care for me after my uncle died, gave me employment, treated me as family when she had no obligation to do so. I could not ask her to spend a fortune launching me into society simply, so I could be paraded about like livestock at a fair.”
“That is a rather dim view of the marriage mart.”
“Is it inaccurate?”
“No,” he admitted. “But surely you must have wanted to marry. To have a home of your own, a family.”
Eliza stopped walking. They had reached the edge of the rose garden where a stone bench sat beneath an arbor heavy with climbing vines. She turned to face him, and the moonlight threw his features into sharp relief.
“I did not want to marry unless it meant something,” she said.
“Not to my aunt, not to society, not to anyone but myself and the man I married. I saw too many women accept proposals from men they barely knew, barely liked, simply because it was expected. Because the alternative was to become a burden on their families or to fade into obscurity as maiden aunts and companions.” She wrapped her arms around herself.
“I thought I would rather be a companion by choice than a wife by obligation.”
“And yet you married me.”
“I married you because the alternative was ruin. That is rather different.”
“Is it?” He moved closer, and she found herself backing up until the bench pressed against the backs of her knees. “You had a choice, Eliza. You could have refused me. Weathered the scandal. Lived quietly with your aunt and let the gossips say what they would.”
“And be forever marked as the woman who was compromised and abandoned? Who could not secure even a forced proposal? That is not a choice. That is merely a slower form of ruin.”
“So, you married me out of necessity.”
“Yes.”
“Nothing more.”
Her heart began to beat faster. She could feel the warmth of him, could smell the faint scent of soap and something else, something indefinably August. “What are you asking me?”
He did not answer immediately. Instead, he reached up and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, his fingers brushing against her cheek. The touch was so gentle it made her breath catch.
“Does our marriage have meaning?” he asked.
The question hung between them, heavy with implications she did not dare examine too closely.
She thought of breakfast, of the way he had asked if she would be home when he returned.
Of dinner, of his confession that he did not know if he was ready.
Of all the small moments that had accumulated between them, building into something she could no longer ignore.
“I believe,” she said carefully, “it is starting to have a purpose.”
His hand stilled against her cheek. She watched his eyes darken, watched his gaze drop to her mouth and linger there. Her pulse thundered in her ears.
“Eliza,” he said, and her name sounded different in his mouth. Not a title, not a formality but something else entirely.
And then he kissed her.
His mouth was warm and sure, his hands coming up to frame her face as though she were something precious. The kiss was not gentle. It was not tentative or questioning. It was a claim, a demand, a question and answer all at once.
Eliza’s hands found his chest, fingers curling into the fabric of his coat.
She had been kissed before—a fumbling attempt by a neighbor’s son when she was seventeen, a too-wet offering from a curate at a Christmas party—but this was nothing like those awkward encounters.
This was heat and hunger and a wanting that terrified her with its intensity.
He deepened the kiss, and she made a sound in the back of her throat that she would be mortified by later.
His hands slid into her hair, scattering pins, and she did not care.
Could not care. Could think of nothing but the way his mouth moved against hers, the way his body pressed close, the way her heart threatened to pound straight through her ribs.
And then, quite suddenly, sanity returned.
She broke away, gasping, her hands coming up between them. “I cannot—we should not—”
“Eliza—”
“No.” She stepped back, nearly stumbling over the bench. Her hair had come loose, tumbling around her shoulders in complete disarray. Her lips felt swollen, her face hot. “This was a mistake.”
“Was it?”
She could not look at him. Could not bear to see whatever expression he wore. “I should return to the house.”
She was already moving, her feet carrying her back down the path at something just short of a run.
She reached the house, slipped inside, and climbed the stairs to her room. Only when the door was safely closed and locked behind her did she allow herself to lean against it, her breath coming in short gasps.
Her fingers came up to touch her lips, still tender from his kiss.
What had she done?