Chapter 26
“The north pasture fence requires mending before the month’s end, my lord, else we risk the cattle straying onto Thornton’s land again.”
Tobias did not look up from the ledger. Could not look up, lest Pemberton glimpse whatever wreckage the past three days had wrought upon his face.
The numbers before him swam together in meaningless patterns—columns Edward had maintained with such meticulous precision, now rendered incomprehensible by Tobias’s singular inability to focus on anything beyond the memory of her lips against his.
“The fence,” he repeated, though the words felt distant, as though spoken by someone else entirely. “Yes. See to it.”
“Shall I engage the Miller boys for the work, my lord? They’ve experience with—”
“Whatever you think best, Pemberton.” He forced his pen across the page, a signature that looked nothing like his own hand. Too sharp. Too jagged. The writing of a man coming apart at the seams, whilst desperately pretending otherwise. “I trust your judgment in such matters.”
A pause stretched between them, weighted with all the things the estate steward was too polite to voice.
That Tobias had been locked in this study since before dawn.
That he had not emerged for meals. That the household whispered of their master’s sudden devotion to duty with the same tone one might use to discuss symptoms of madness.
“Very good, my lord.” Pemberton gathered his papers with methodical efficiency. “The timber merchant from Dover will call tomorrow regarding the oak stands. Your brother had been in negotiations before his passing, and Mr. Thornton is eager to finalise the contract.”
Tobias nodded without hearing. Pemberton departed. The door clicked shut with devastating finality, leaving him alone with ledgers and silence and the relentless echo of words he could not unspeak.
This shouldn’t have happened.
I know. But we both knew it would.
His hands clenched against the desk hard enough to make the wood creak.
Three days. Seventy-two hours since he had held her in his arms and tasted desperation on her lips.
Since he had walked away from the library and left her trembling in the firelight, since he had returned to his chambers and stood beneath his own roof feeling more exiled than he ever had in London’s most disreputable establishments.
Three days of throwing himself into estate business with mechanical precision, as though by drowning in tenant disputes and crop rotations, he might somehow restore the order that kiss had shattered.
It was not working.
Nothing worked.
He shoved back from the desk with enough force to send the chair scraping across polished floorboards.
The study felt suffocating—walls pressing in, Edward’s ghost hovering in every corner, judgment radiating from the very furniture.
This had been his brother’s domain. The ledgers arranged just so.
The correspondence filed with obsessive care.
Even the brandy decanter positioned at the exact angle Edward had preferred.
Tobias crossed to the window instead, desperate for air that did not taste of his predecessor’s disapproval.
The gardens stretched below, autumn sunlight painting them in shades of amber and rust. From this vantage, he could see the rose beds where Amelia had been working yesterday.
Where he had watched her for seventeen minutes—he had counted, God help him—before forcing himself back to the stables before she could sense his presence.
Seventeen minutes of observing the way sunlight caught in her loosely pinned hair. How her hands moved among the thorns with fearless grace. The smudge of soil on her cheek that he had wanted desperately to wipe away with his thumb, the way he had in the library when—
Stop.
He pressed his forehead against the cool glass. Exhaled slowly. Tried with complete futility to think of anything—anything at all—beyond the memory of how she had trembled in his arms. How her fingers had clutched his soaked shirt. How she had gasped his name like a prayer and a curse combined.
A knock at the door shattered his spiral.
“Enter.” His voice emerged rougher than intended.
Mrs. Boldwood appeared, her expression carefully neutral in that way servants perfected when navigating their employer’s evident distress. “Forgive the intrusion, my lord. Cook wishes to know your preferences for this evening’s menu.”
This evening. As though time continued its forward march despite everything. As though the world had not fundamentally altered three nights ago in a library during a storm.
“Whatever Cook prepares will be perfectly acceptable.”
“Of course, my lord.” She hesitated, and something in that pause made Tobias turn from the window.
The housekeeper’s gaze held concern wrapped in professional discretion.
“Might I suggest something more substantial than the tea and toast you’ve been subsisting on?
Cook is quite worried, and if I may be so bold—”
“You may not.” He softened the words with an attempt at his old charm, though it felt like wearing clothes that no longer fit properly. “But I appreciate the concern. Tell Cook I shall do justice to whatever she prepares.”
Mrs. Boldwood departed, leaving Tobias alone with the damning realisation that even the servants had noticed.
That his behaviour these past days had been remarkable enough to warrant gossip.
That he was doing a spectacular job of pretending everything was normal whilst simultaneously advertising his inner chaos to anyone paying attention.
Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant.
He returned to the desk. Picked up his pen. Stared at Edward’s neat handwriting in the margin notes—observations about crop yields and weather patterns, recorded with the dispassionate precision of a man who had never let emotion interfere with reason.
How had his brother managed it? That systematic coldness? The ability to live beside a woman like Amelia and feel nothing beyond duty’s pallid obligations?
The pen snapped between Tobias’s fingers.
Nothing seemed to matter anymore. Nothing except her. Who cared about crop rotations? What significance did timber contracts hold when her scent lingered in his memory like smoke after a fire?
Focus. You are a viscount now. You have responsibilities. She deserves better than this. Better than you.
The internal lecture achieved nothing beyond making his jaw ache from clenching.
A clock somewhere in the house chimed two. Afternoon, then. Hours yet before evening. Before, he would be required to emerge for dinner and face her across the table with polite distance, pretending the space between them was not charged with everything they could not acknowledge.
Assuming she even attended dinner. She had taken meals in her chambers the past two evenings, claiming exhaustion. Or perhaps—more likely—claiming anything that would spare them both the exquisite torture of proximity.
He could not blame her.
Would not blame her.
Though some selfish part of him wanted desperately to see her face, even if only to confirm she was equally undone. To know he was not suffering this particular madness alone.
Tobias forced himself back to the ledger. Picked up another pen. Attempted to salvage the page with strategic blotting, though Edward’s notes were irrevocably ruined. Much like everything else.
The following morning arrived with grey skies and drizzle that matched Tobias’s mood with depressing accuracy. He had slept poorly—three hours, perhaps, stolen in intervals between bouts of staring at his ceiling and reliving every moment of that kiss in excruciating detail.
“The drainage issue in the lower fields has worsened, my lord.”
Pemberton stood before the desk, rain dripping from his coat despite the short walk from the estate office. His expression suggested this was not the first time he had delivered this particular piece of information.
Tobias blinked, attempting to surface from the fog that had taken up permanent residence in his skull. “The drainage. Yes. You mentioned.”
“Yesterday, my lord. And the day before.”
“Of course.” He scrubbed a hand across his face, feeling the rasp of stubble he had neglected to shave properly. “What do you recommend?”
Pemberton launched into technical explanations involving ditches and water flow and soil composition. Tobias heard approximately one word in five, his attention fracturing despite every effort to remain present.
Because outside the study window, just visible through the rain-streaked glass, a figure moved through the gardens.
Amelia.
She walked alone, no shawl despite the weather, her mourning dress already dark with moisture. What was she doing out in such conditions? She would catch a chill, and Henry needed her, and—
“My lord?”
Tobias wrenched his gaze back to Pemberton. “Forgive me. You were saying?”
The estate steward’s expression suggested he was beginning to question whether his employer had suffered some sort of head injury. “I was saying that the work should commence immediately, before the autumn rains worsen the situation.”
“Then commence it.” Tobias stood abruptly. “Is there anything else requiring immediate attention?”
“Several matters, actually—”
“Compile a list. We shall address them this afternoon.”
He did not wait for Pemberton’s response before striding from the study. His feet carried him through corridors with unerring precision, as though his body knew where it was going even as his rational mind screamed at him to stop.
The library. Always the damned library.
He should not go there. Should return to his study and focus on drainage and fences and all the minutiae that comprised a viscount’s responsibilities. Should absolutely not seek out the room where everything had changed, where the ghost of their kiss lingered in every shadow.
And yet.
The door stood ajar, precisely as it had that night. Tobias pushed it open slowly, half expecting to find the space empty, abandoned, just another room in a house full of rooms he would spend his life avoiding.
But she was there.
Amelia stood before the window where he had found her reading three nights ago, her back to the door, rain streaming down the glass like tears. Her shoulders held a rigidity that spoke of composure maintained through sheer force of will.
She had not heard him enter.
He should leave. Should retreat before she noticed his presence. Should absolutely not speak the words forming on his tongue.
“You’ll catch your death, wandering the gardens in this weather.”
She went utterly still. A heartbeat passed. Two. Then she turned slowly, and the look on her face nearly drove him to his knees.
Not anger. He could have borne anger.
Instead, her eyes held exhaustion wrapped in something that looked desperately like a combination of hope and fear. Her lips—those lips he had tasted, had claimed, had marked himself upon irrevocably—parted slightly, as though she might speak.
But no words came.
They stood frozen in tableau, rain hammering against windows, the fire crackling in the grate, and between them stretched a chasm neither seemed capable of crossing.
“Tobias—” His name emerged barely above a whisper.
“Forgive me.” He was already backing toward the door, coward that he was. “I should not have... I merely saw you from the window, and I thought... that is...”
He thought what, precisely? That he might check on her welfare? Ensure she had not contracted pneumonia from her solitary wandering? Confirm that she was as wrecked by their kiss as he was?
All of it. None of it. Everything impossible and forbidden.
“I shall leave you to your reading.” He turned before his resolve could crumble. “Please. Take care not to overtax yourself.”
The door closed between them with a soft click that sounded obscenely loud in the library’s quiet.
Tobias leaned against the corridor wall, breathing hard, his heart thundering against his ribs with enough force to crack them. Four days now. Four days of this exquisite torture, and he was no closer to restoring the distance that had once seemed so easy to maintain.
If anything, he was drowning.