Chapter 36
Thirty-Six
“Mr. Caldwell, I need you to handle the northern property negotiations in my absence,” August said, holding out a stack of papers to one of his advisors.
Caldwell stared at the papers then at August then back at the papers as though one of them had suddenly begun speaking French.
“Your Grace?”
“The northern properties. The drainage dispute with Lord Fenton, the tenant leases requiring renewal, the matter of the boundary fence.” August reached for a second pile and turned to his steward.
“These are for Mr. Hewitt. The solicitor will need authority to act on my behalf regarding the settling of my father’s estate.
I have written a letter granting him temporary power of attorney.
It requires only my seal which—” He pressed the seal into hot wax and stamped it with a decisive thud. “There.”
The advisor and steward had not moved. His mouth hung open in a manner that would have been comical under different circumstances.
“Sir, I—forgive me, but you have never—”
“No. I have not.” August pulled a third sheaf of papers from the drawer and added them to the pile.
Notes on every matter that had crossed his desk in the past fortnight, annotated in his own hand with clear directions for resolution.
“But I am doing so now. You are more than capable, Caldwell. I would not have hired you otherwise.”
August stood while the men looked at his as though he had gone mad. Of course, he had gone mad. One woman had driven him to this, and it was time he relieved himself of estate burdens to show her what truly mattered in his life.
“Gentlemen,” he murmured with a sharp nod then walked around his desk and out of the study.
Two hours later, he was standing in front of Lady Hartwell’s Mayfair home. The butler admitted him into the drawing room. August stood in the center of the pale green room as rigidly as he could, waiting. His hands wanted to fidget. He clasped them behind his back instead.
Lady Hartwell entered, her cane preceding her, and her eyes sharp as she assessed him. “You look terrible.”
No greeting or pleasantries. Very like his aunt.
August did not smile. Did not summon a self-deprecating quip or a charming deflection. He had nothing left for performance.
“I need to find my wife.”
Lady Hartwell regarded him. The silence stretched, and under that gaze, he felt as though every pretense he had ever constructed was being methodically dismantled. She saw through him. She had always seen through him—it was a family trait Eliza had clearly inherited.
“Sit down,” Lady Hartwell said.
“I would rather—”
“Sit.”
He sat. The settee creaked beneath him, and he placed his hands on his knees like a schoolboy summoned before the headmaster.
Lady Hartwell lowered herself into the chair opposite and studied him for a long moment. Whatever she found in his face must have satisfied something because her expression shifted. Not softened, exactly. More like a door opening a fraction of an inch.
“She is at the orphanage. She has been spending most of her days there.”
His chest tightened. Of course. Of course, that was where she had gone. Not to parties or assemblies or any of the distractions London offered. To the children. To the place where she was needed and wanted and seen for exactly who she was.
“Do you know the way?” Lady Hartwell asked.
“I have been there once before.”
“Then you should have no difficulty finding it. It is the same building. Mrs. Everett will likely be at the door.” She paused, and something harder entered her expression. “Do not disappoint her again, August. She deserves better.”
The words landed like stones against his ribs.
“I know,” he said.
“Do you? Because knowing and acting upon that knowledge are rather different things, and thus far your actions have been severely wanting.”
He had no defense against this. None that would matter.
“I intend to do better.”
“Intentions are cheap currency. Results are what matter.” Lady Hartwell rose, indicating the interview was over.
“Go. And August—” She caught his arm as he moved toward the door.
Her grip was surprisingly strong. “If you hurt her again, you will answer to me. And I promise you, I am far less forgiving than my niece.”
He nodded and left.
The orphanage door was open when he arrived, propped wide to let in the afternoon air. He could hear voices inside—children’s voices, high and bright, and beneath them, a voice he knew better than his own heartbeat.
August stepped through the entrance and followed the sound down the narrow hallway. His boots were loud on the wooden floor, and he tried to quiet his steps though he was not entirely sure why. Perhaps because what he was about to walk into felt sacred in some way he could not articulate.
The parlor was at the end of the hall. Sunlight poured through two tall windows, flooding the small room with warmth and golden light. And there, in the center of it all, sat Eliza.
She was on a simple wooden chair, a book open in her lap.
Her hair was pulled back from her face in a plain style, no curls or pins or any of the elaborate arrangements her lady’s maid usually crafted.
She wore a dress he recognized—dark cotton, serviceable, one of the old ones she had brought from her life before him.
No silk. No lace. No jewels at her throat save her mother’s locket.
Children sat in a half-circle at her feet.
A dozen of them, perhaps more, their faces turned up toward her with the rapt attention that only a truly gifted storyteller could command.
A small boy leaned against her knee. A girl with red ribbons in her hair sat cross-legged directly in front, her mouth slightly open.
Eliza’s voice carried through the room, shaping the words of the story into something alive.
There was no duchess here, only Eliza.
His throat closed. He gripped the doorframe and watched her, memorizing the sight. The way light caught in her dark hair. The easy curve of her mouth as she read. The absolute rightness of her in this place, among these children, doing the thing she was born to do.
She turned a page, and her gaze lifted. Found him.
Her eyes widened. Just slightly—a fractional widening that someone who did not know her might have missed entirely. But he saw it. Saw the shock and the wariness and something else, something that made his pulse hammer against his wrists.
She did not stop reading.
Her gaze returned to the page, and she continued the story as though the Duke of Wildmoore were not standing in the doorway of an orphanage parlor looking like he had not slept in four days.
Her voice did not waver. Her hands did not shake.
She read to the end of the chapter with the same calm steadiness she brought to everything.
“And that,” she said, closing the book, “is where we shall stop for today.”
A chorus of protests erupted. “But what happens next?” “Does the prince find the treasure?” “You cannot stop there!”
“I most certainly can. The story will be here tomorrow, and so shall I.” She smiled at them—a real smile, unguarded and warm in a way that made August’s chest ache. “Off you go. Mrs. Everett has biscuits in the kitchen, and I believe there was some talk of a game in the garden.”
The children scattered. Several cast curious glances at August as they filed past him through the doorway, their small faces alight with speculation. The boy with the missing front tooth—Peter, August remembered—stopped and stared up at him.
“
“You look sad.”
“Peter.” Eliza’s voice, gentle but firm. “Biscuits.”
Peter gave August one last appraising look then darted away down the hallway. The sounds of children’s laughter and running feet faded, leaving the parlor quiet save for the dust motes drifting through the sunlight.
Eliza set the book on the windowsill. She stood and faced him, her hands folded at her waist, her spine straight. Composed. Independent. Every inch the woman who had survived poverty and grief and built herself a life from nothing.
“I should have known you would find me,” she said.
August did not cross the room. Did not close the distance between them though every muscle in his body strained to do so. He remained in the doorway, giving her the space she had chosen.
“I should have realized you would be here,” he said. “This is where your heart is.”
Something moved behind her eyes. She turned away, straightening the children’s chairs, collecting a stray ribbon from the floor. Anything to keep herself occupied.
“Why have you come, August?”
“Because you left, and I need to understand why.”
“I left you a note.”
“You left me a note that said nothing. A fortnight’s rest. Change of scenery.” He leaned against the doorframe, not trusting his legs entirely. “Eliza, tell me the truth.”
She stopped straightening chairs. Her back was to him, and he watched her shoulders rise with a breath that seemed to cost her something.
“Three nights before I left, I could not sleep.” Her voice was even, controlled. The voice of a woman who had decided exactly what she would say and how she would say it. “I walked the hallways and found myself outside the library. The lamp was still burning. You were speaking with your advisor.”
The cold started at the base of his spine and spread upward.
“I heard him congratulate you on your timely marriage.” She turned to face him. “A practical solution, he called it. Sensibly executed. The duchy required stability, and you provided it.”
August’s mouth went dry.
“And you agreed.” Her chin lifted. “You said the marriage had served its purpose well.”
The words hung between them. He could hear them echoing with his own voice confirming what his advisor had said. Confirming the lie he had been telling himself for months because the truth was too large and too frightening to hold.
“Eliza—”
“I understood, August. I had always understood the nature of our arrangement. But I had allowed myself to believe—” She stopped. Pressed her lips together. Started again. “It does not matter what I believed. What matters is what I heard.”
The space between them felt enormous. Ten feet of scuffed wooden floor, a few scattered chairs, dust motes turning in the light. He could cross it in four steps. Three, if he were desperate.
He was desperate, but he did not move.
“You are right,” he said. “I said those words. I will not pretend otherwise.”
Her expression did not change. She waited.
“I have spent my life confusing management with living.” The words came out raw, unpolished, nothing like the carefully constructed sentences he usually deployed.
“Every relationship, every obligation, every crisis—I managed them. Kept them orderly. Kept myself at a safe distance where I could see all the pieces and ensure nothing fell apart.”
He pushed off the doorframe and took one step into the room. Just one.
“I told my advisor our marriage was practical because I was afraid of the truth.” His hands hung at his sides, open and empty. “The truth is that I need you, and that terrifies me. I have never needed anyone before. Not like this.”
Eliza’s jaw tightened. Her fingers, laced together at her waist, pressed harder against each other.
He took another step. “I repeated that lie because admitting how essential you have become felt like another vulnerability I could not afford. I have been the one holding everything together since I was seventeen years old. If I needed someone—truly needed them—and they left…”
He stopped. The sentence would not finish itself because finishing it meant acknowledging the fear that had driven every decision he had made since his father first fell ill.
The fear that if he let go, if he needed someone, if he allowed himself to depend on another person, they would be taken from him.
As his father had been taken. As his carefree youth had been taken.
As everything good and easy and uncomplicated had been taken, one piece at a time, until all that remained was duty and performance and charm deployed like armor.
“I do not need you to make my life manageable, Eliza.” His voice dropped, and he took another step and another until he stood before her with barely a foot of space between them.
Close enough to see the rapid pulse at her throat.
Close enough to catch the faint scent of lavender that clung to her skin.
“I want you because you make it meaningful. You are not a convenience. You are the point.”
Her breath caught. He heard it—a small, sharp intake that she could not quite suppress.
Her gray eyes searched his face, and he let her look.
Let her see everything he had spent a lifetime hiding.
The exhaustion. The loneliness. The desperate, terrifying need for someone who saw him clearly and chose to stay.
“I am not here to persuade you or to manage this situation,” he said. “I am here to ask, not to tell. The decision is entirely yours.”
The silence that followed was the loudest thing he had ever heard.
Eliza looked at him. Her expression was unreadable—not cold, not warm, not anything he could interpret or respond to. The face of a woman who had learned, through years of hardship and loss, to guard herself against words that promised more than they delivered.
He stood before her and waited. Did not fill the silence with charm or humor or any of the thousand tools he had always used to smooth over difficult moments. He simply stood there, stripped bare, and let her decide what to do with what she saw.
When she finally spoke, her voice was calm.
“I need time.”
Three words. They landed in his chest like a fist.
“You have had months to reach this understanding, August.” She held his gaze without flinching. “I deserve the same courtesy.”
“Of course.” The words came out even. He was proud of that. Proud that his voice did not crack or waver, even as something inside him splintered. “Of course, you do.”
“I would like you to leave now.”
He nodded. His body felt heavy, as though gravity had doubled in the space of a heartbeat. He took a step back. Then another. The distance between them widened, and each inch felt like a wound.
He turned toward the door.
“August.”
He stopped. Did not turn. Could not turn because if he looked at her again, he might say something foolish, might beg or plead or try to convince her, and he had promised himself and her that the decision was hers.
“I will send word when I am ready to talk again.”
He closed his eyes. He could only wait and trust and sit with the same gnawing uncertainty he had forced upon her for months.