Chapter Twenty
There was no talk of Emma coming down to breakfast that morning, nor would Neil have permitted it if there had been. The household seemed to have reached an unspoken agreement: this morning was not one for the presence of a child.
In truth, Neil had half a mind to forgo breakfast himself.
He could have taken his tea and a crust while out with Simon, or in his study, with only the rain-streaked windows for company.
But that, he decided, would have been cowardly.
A duke did not retreat from his own table.
And besides, if he absented himself, they would whisper—that he was ashamed, that he regretted the previous day’s scene at the fair.
He would allow no such suspicion.
So he came.
Neil entered the dining room with the careful poise of a man walking onto a battlefield. His anger had cooled since the fair, but it had not subsided; it sat just beneath the skin, simmering like water that would not quite come to boil.
Everyone was already seated—Aunt Harriet at her accustomed post at the far end of the table, composed and formidable as ever, and his own chair at the head waiting, conspicuously empty.
Lord and Lady Farendale occupied seats midway down, side by side and unspeaking, their eyes fixed studiously upon their plates.
Lady Constance had taken a place near his aunt—not beside him, as had once been her habit, but at the farthest possible remove. She was rigid in her chair, her spine as straight as the line of her jaw. She did not look up when he entered.
The silence was so complete that Neil could hear the faint sigh of the floorboards beneath his boots, the soft scrape of his chair legs against the polished wood as he sat. Even the faint rattle of the teacups sounded indecently loud.
In the past few days, the Farendales had filled the breakfast table with chatter—empty pleasantries, self-satisfied laughter, and the careful orchestration of Lady Constance’s charm. This morning, blessedly, there was none of that.
Neil was not hungry. He took only a slice of bread and butter, the motion deliberate, and waited while Crawford filled his cup.
The butler’s composure was immaculate; his expression betrayed nothing of what he must have felt, standing amid that frozen tension.
Crawford had been in service long enough to sense discord and ignore it entirely.
Aunt Harriet, of course, did not share that discipline.
“You have dark circles under your eyes, nephew,” she observed, her tone perfectly conversational but carrying far too clearly through the hush. “Did you sleep poorly?”
Neil lifted his gaze to her and smiled thinly. “Indeed I did.”
Her shrewd eyes narrowed, calculating. He could almost feel her probing for the reason—whether he’d spent the night tormenting himself over the scene with Lady Constance.
He had not.
He had spent the night awake because of Maggie.
He could still feel the ghost of her lips against his, still see the way she had looked at him—startled, tender, unguarded. He had not meant to touch her. He had meant only to listen, to thank her, perhaps even to reassure her. And yet his hand had moved of its own accord, his body betraying him.
And when she had leaned into him—
Neil closed his eyes briefly, forcing the thought away. The memory was perilous. Miss Winter was a woman with secrets, a woman cornered and vulnerable. She needed safety, not desire.
He, of all men, should have known better.
And worse—he had not told her the truth.
He had not told her that he knew her real name, nor that Lord Bramwell had been asking questions about her in London.
She thought herself hidden. He had allowed that illusion to stand.
Was it mercy, or deceit? Was withholding the truth a lie, if it was done to protect someone?
A discreet clearing of the throat broke through his thoughts. Neil looked up. Lord Farendale was staring at him with the resigned determination of a man about to do something unpleasant.
“We shall be departing your house very soon, Your Grace,” he announced, in the solemn tone of a man delivering a verdict. “It seems to me our welcome is… rather worn thin.”
“If it was ever truly extended,” Lady Constance interjected sharply, her gaze flashing up at Neil at last.
Her mother reached out, as if to touch her daughter’s arm and quell her, but Lady Constance was not to be quieted. She rose, every inch of her quivering with affront.
“Why did you invite us here, Your Grace?” she demanded, her voice trembling between fury and humiliation. “Was it your intention to make a spectacle of us? To humiliate me?”
Neil set down his cup with a calmness he did not feel. “I never intended to humiliate you, Lady Constance,” he said, his tone level. “If you feel wronged, I am sorry for it—but you would do better to direct your anger at my aunt. She, if I recall correctly, was the architect of this visit.”
Aunt Harriet went very still, her expression cooling a degree but not breaking. Lady Constance, however, turned away from both of them, her face blotched with colour.
“My father may wish to stay,” she said in a high, tight voice, “but I do not. There is no future for me here.”
Neil studied her face for a long moment. He tried, truly, to summon dislike—to remember every petty slight, every cruel word she had spoken about others when she thought no one was listening. But what rose in him instead was something closer to pity.
She had been raised for this, after all—bred to hunt and be hunted in drawing rooms, taught that her worth began and ended with the ring on her finger. The fault was not entirely hers. How many women of her class had been told the same thing, had been ruined by the same narrow measure of value?
“No,” Neil said quietly, “there isn’t. I am sorry, Lady Constance. I should have been clearer from the start. But the truth is this—we are not suited, and we never will be.”
“This is hardly breakfast conversation,” Lord Farendale sputtered, his face reddening. Neil ignored him, keeping his gaze on the young woman before him. He owed her that much.
“In time,” he continued, “you may look back on this and be glad it ended as it did. You’ll see how ill-matched we were—how wretched we might have made each other. I wish you well, truly. But I cannot marry you, Lady Constance. I am sorry.”
Her mouth worked soundlessly for a moment. Then, to his surprise, she sank back into her chair with a single, decisive motion.
“Very well,” she said at last. Her voice was composed now, the hysteria gone. “Thank you for your honesty, Your Grace.”
Neil inclined his head once, gravely, then rose. He felt the eyes of everyone in the room following him as he walked the length of the table—the steady creak of the floorboards, the faint clink of porcelain marking his retreat.
At the door, he paused only long enough to address Crawford, who waited, as ever, at silent attention.
“Send for my cousin Simon,” he said. “Tell him I wish to see him in my study at once. The matter is urgent.”
And without another glance behind him, the Duke of Burenwood strode from the room, leaving the heavy silence to settle once more—this time fractured, but oddly clean.