Chapter 34
Thirty-Four
August pushed through the breakfast room doors and squeezed the bridge of his nose hard enough that spots danced behind his closed eyelids.
Sleep had not come. Again. He had spent the night staring at his ceiling, listening to the house settle around him, waiting for dawn.
Now dawn had come and gone, and he was late. Eliza would be waiting.
But when he lowered his hand and opened his eyes, only Denton stood by the sideboard. Mrs. Finch hovered near the door, her hands folded at her waist. No Eliza.
“Good morning, Your Grace,” Denton said.
August moved to his usual chair. The one across from him sat empty, the place setting untouched. Perhaps she had already eaten. Perhaps she was in the garden, or the library, or—
“Your Grace.” Mrs. Finch approached, extending a folded piece of paper. “Her Grace asked me to give you this.”
He took it. The paper felt ordinary in his hands—good quality, the sort Eliza used for her correspondence. His name was written on the outside. He broke the seal and unfolded the note.
Wildmoore,
I find I am in need of a brief respite from the demands of recent weeks. With your permission, I shall visit Lady Hartwell for a fortnight. I believe the change of scenery will do me good.
Please do not trouble yourself over my absence. I am certain you have more than enough to occupy your attention.
Eliza
He read it again. The words did not change. Brief. Formal. The sort of note one might write to a distant relative, not one’s husband.
With your permission. As though she needed to ask. As though they were strangers operating under some strict set of rules about propriety and distance.
He folded the note and looked up at Mrs. Finch. “When did she leave?”
“Early this morning, Your Grace. Before dawn. She took the small carriage.”
Before dawn. While he had been lying awake in his chambers, separated from her by a hallway and a lifetime of careful walls he had built around himself, she had been packing. Leaving.
“Thank you, Mrs. Finch. That will be all.”
The housekeeper curtsied and withdrew. Denton followed, closing the door with a soft click that seemed too loud in the quiet room.
August sat. The chair across from him remained empty. He stared at it for a moment then reached for the teapot. The tea was still warm. He poured a cup and added milk, watching the white cloud billow and dissipate in the dark liquid.
It is perfectly natural she would visit Lady Hartwell. A fortnight apart after the strain of recent weeks made perfect sense.
He lifted the cup and sipped. The tea had begun to cool, the temperature not quite right. He drank it anyway.
She needed space. Distance. After everything with Lady Wilhampton, after the maid’s betrayal, after the letters—
After he had accused her of things she had not done. After he had failed to trust her. After he had proven himself exactly the sort of man who would let fear poison what might have become real.
He set down the cup with more force than necessary. Tea sloshed over the rim and pooled on the saucer.
The empty chair stared back at him.
He forced himself to eat. Toast with marmalade. Two eggs. A rasher of bacon. Everything tasted like ash, but he ate it all because a duke ate breakfast and maintained his strength and did not allow his wife’s absence to affect his routine.
When the plate was empty, he stood and made his way to his study.
The ledgers did not care that Eliza had left.
They required his attention regardless of whether his wife sat in the morning room or in Lady Hartwell’s London townhouse.
The tenants needed decisions about crop rotation.
The steward required approval for repairs to the north fence.
A letter from his solicitor demanded a response about the settlement of his father’s remaining debts.
August settled behind his desk and pulled the first ledger toward him. His quill scratched across parchment. He worked through the morning accounts then moved to correspondence. A letter to his solicitor about the debts. Another to the steward about the fence repairs. A third to—
He paused mid-sentence, his quill hovering above the paper. Footsteps sounded in the hallway outside his study. Light. Quick. A woman’s steps.
He looked toward the door. It remained closed. The footsteps passed and faded down the hall.
Not her. Obviously not her. She is in London.
He returned to the letter. … regarding the matter of the north pasture, I believe we should…
What had he been about to write? He stared at the half-finished sentence. The north pasture. The fence repairs. Something about drainage, perhaps, or…
August set down the quill and pressed his palms flat against the desk. Focus.
He picked up the quill and started the sentence again.
The afternoon crept by. He signed documents, reviewed contracts, made notations in the margins of his steward’s reports. He was the Duke of Wildmoore, and dukes did not allow personal matters to interfere with their responsibilities.
When the light through the window began to slant toward evening, he set aside his work and stood. His back protested. He had been sitting too long.
A walk. He needed to clear his head.
He moved through the hallway without conscious destination. His feet carried him past the family portrait gallery, past the music room where someone had left sheets scattered across the pianoforte. Past the morning room.
Past Eliza’s chambers.
He stopped outside her door. His hand lifted toward the handle then fell back to his side.
She was not in there. She was in London, drinking tea with Lady Hartwell, probably relieved to be away from him and his inability to trust her.
But he stood there anyway, listening to the silence behind the door. No rustle of fabric. No quiet footsteps. No sound of pages turning as she read in the window seat she favored.
Nothing.
He continued down the hallway toward the library. Perhaps he would read. Distract himself with someone else’s words until his mind stopped circling back to the empty breakfast table and the note folded in his pocket.
The library was dark save for the last rays of sunlight streaming through the tall windows. He moved to the lamp on the side table and lit it then turned.
Her chair sat empty. The blue damask chair by the window where she always read in the afternoons. A book rested on the table beside it, a ribbon marking her place.
The manor was too quiet. That was the problem. Houses were meant to hold people, hold sound and movement and life, but Wildmoore Hall felt hollow tonight, every room larger and colder than it had been this morning.
Behind him, the door opened. He turned to find a footman standing in the doorway with fresh candles.
“Forgive the intrusion, Your Grace. Mrs. Finch asked me to refresh the candles.”
“Of course.”
The footman moved about the room, replacing spent candles with new ones. August watched him work then caught the way the man’s gaze darted from the empty chair to August standing beside it like a fool.
The footman finished and bowed. As he reached the door, he glanced back once more. Not at August this time. At the chair.
August was certain the entire staff knew by now that the Duchess had left. Knew that she had departed before dawn without telling her husband. Knew that the Duke had spent the day working in his study then wandered the hallways like a ghost searching for something he had lost.
The footman withdrew, and August sank into the chair opposite Eliza’s. Not her chair. He would not sit in her chair.
He stared at the empty seat across from him. At the book with its ribbon marking page one hundred and thirty-seven. At the indent in the cushion where she had sat just yesterday.
She had not even said goodbye.
The thought arrived unbidden, sharp, and unwelcome. She had written a note—polite, formal, everything a duchess should be. But she had not woken him. Had not knocked on his door. Had not given him the chance to ask her to stay.
Would you have asked her to stay?
He did not know. And that, perhaps, was the problem.
“My dear, I have known you since you were a child. You are not here for idle conversation.”
Lady Hartwell set her teacup down with a decisive click that made Eliza’s fingers tighten around her napkin.
The drawing room at Lady Hartwell’s townhouse was exactly as Eliza remembered. Pale green walls. Watercolor landscapes in gilt frames. The settee by the window where she had spent countless afternoons reading while Lady Hartwell attended to correspondence. Nothing had changed.
Except everything had changed.
Eliza smoothed the napkin across her lap and focused on the delicate floral pattern embroidered along its edge.
“I simply thought it would be pleasant to visit. The weather has been rather fine lately, has it not? And I heard that Lady Pemberton hosted a musicale last week that was apparently quite—”
“Eliza.”
The single word stopped her mid-sentence. She looked up to find Lady Hartwell watching her with those shrewd eyes that had always seen far too much.
“The weather is tedious, and I care nothing for Lady Pemberton’s musicale.
” Lady Hartwell picked up a biscuit from the tea tray, examined it, then set it back down.
“You arrived on my doorstep at an ungodly hour this morning with one small valise and circles under your eyes. Now, you sit in my drawing room making polite noises about the weather and gossip you clearly have no interest in.”
“I missed you,” Eliza said. “Is it so strange that I would wish to visit?”
“It is strange that you would visit without your husband. It is strange that you left your home before dawn. It is strange that you look as though you have not slept properly in days.” Lady Hartwell leaned back in her chair. “So, let us dispense with the pleasantries, shall we? What has happened?”