Chapter 13
Morning came far too soon.
Eleanor had barely slept, drifting in and out of restless half-dreams until dawn finally pushed pale light through the curtains. By the time Bessie entered with fresh water and the morning tray, Eleanor was already awake, sitting at the edge of the bed in silence.
Bessie stopped the moment she saw her.
“Well,” she said carefully, setting the tray down. “That does not look like the face of a lady who hosted the most successful ball this estate has seen in years.”
Eleanor let out a quiet breath.
“Good morning to you too.”
Bessie folded her arms at that, and Eleanor was grateful that her maid was not the sort to simper meekly and never question anything.
“Do not say good morning to me like that. You look dreadful.”
Eleanor gave a tired, humorless laugh.
“Thank you. I appreciate the compliment.”
Bessie moved closer.
“You ought to be pleased with yourself this morning.”
“I know.”
“The guests adored everything.”
“I know.”
“The servants have been talking about little else.”
Eleanor rubbed at her temple. “Yes, Bessie. I know.”
Bessie narrowed her eyes slightly.
“Then why do you sound as though someone has died?”
That pulled a longer silence from Eleanor. Bessie said nothing this time, waiting as she always did when she sensed Eleanor was resisting something.
Finally, Eleanor spoke. “It should have felt different.”
“Different how?”
Eleanor stared at the floor.
“I worked for weeks for that evening, weeks.” Her voice grew quieter. “For the first time since arriving here, I felt as though perhaps I had done something right, something meaningful.”
Bessie sat beside her.
“You did. Everyone is in agreement about that.”
“But for a while, it felt,” Eleanor hesitated. “It felt like I belonged here.”
Bessie studied her.
“But?”
“But it all became tangled in nonsense before the night was even over.”
Bessie was quiet for a moment.
“Your guest.”
“Yes. I know that everything happened a long time ago, but that does not make it easier to see him again. I thought that he was long gone.”
“And now?”
“Now he is here, stirring up things that ought to have stayed buried.”
“You were unsettled when that gentleman arrived, yes,” she nodded, pausing as though she needed to ensure she said the right thing. “But that is not when you looked most miserable. You looked most miserable after you went to the balcony.”
Eleanor’s chest tightened.
“Bessie—”
“No.” Bessie shook her head. “You do not have to explain anything you do not wish to. But do not lie to yourself. You are not upset simply because that man arrived.”
Eleanor swallowed. She had hoped that nobody would notice how she felt if she hid it well enough, but it seemed she was not as good at hiding it as she thought. She did not want to see him, not after what he had done.
She dreaded seeing him every time she left her private rooms, but it was not as though she could tell her husband about that. He would ask why she felt that way, and there was enough distance and division without her making it worse.
“You do not know what you are talking about,” she protested, even though her lady’s maid clearly did. “Nothing happened.”
“That is not true.”
“You were not there.”
“No,” Bessie said calmly. “But I know what you look like when you are angry. I know what you look like when you are hurt, and I know what you look like when you are frightened by something you do not wish to feel. You care what His Grace thinks, and given that he is your husband, I understand why.”
Bessie held Eleanor’s gaze, and it was Eleanor who looked away first.
“That is absurd.”
“Is it?”
“Yes.”
“Then why are you so upset when you could be out in the gardens? Is it not because he often finds you there?”
Eleanor felt her breath catch. It was true that her husband had a tendency to seek her out, or if he did not, then it was an incredible coincidence that he so often found her. It had always felt as though he had been watching her, and not in an unwelcome way either.
“I do not know what he wants from me,” she sighed. “One moment he is distant and cold. The next…The next moment he looks at me as though I matter to him. We enjoy our time together, and I allow myself to believe I could truly matter to him, and then everything changes again.”
“Perhaps he does not know what he wants either.”
Eleanor gave a small, humorless smile. The room fell quiet again, and at last Bessie touched her arm lightly.
“For what it is worth,” she said, “last night was still yours. Do not let two impossible men steal that from you.”
***
Eleanor managed to avoid Julian for most of the morning.
It was not especially difficult at first. There were still lingering matters from the ball to oversee regarding the dismantling of decorations, and so she had the excuse to avoid her husband, too, which meant there was no chance that he would notice that something was wrong.
She moved from one task to another, keeping herself occupied enough to avoid being cornered.
Even so, she could feel his presence in the house. Twice she caught sight of him at a distance; once in the corridor near the drawing room, and once through the window overlooking the front drive. Both times, she changed direction before he could approach, though she suspected he noticed.
By midday, Bessie had already given her a look that clearly said running forever was not a strategy. Eleanor hated that Bessie was right, because she could have hidden forever, but she knew what she had to do.
And when Julian finally found her a third time near the terrace and asked, with maddening calm, if they could walk in the gardens and speak properly, she hesitated only briefly before agreeing.
The gardens were quieter than usual, the remnants of the previous night’s decorations still visible in scattered lanterns and ribbons waiting to be cleared away. They walked in silence at first, the sound of gravel beneath their shoes the only interruption.
“You have become remarkably skilled at avoiding me,” Julian said with a sigh.
Eleanor kept her eyes on the path ahead.
“I have been busy. There is nothing more to it.”
“You have been hiding, from both myself and your husband.”
That made her stop. She turned toward him slowly.
“Be careful.”
“With what?”
“With assuming you still know me well enough to say such things.”
“I know enough to see when you are running.”
“I do hope that you did not ask me here to provoke me.”
“No,” he said quietly. “I asked because we cannot continue like this. You and I have a history, and you may pretend otherwise if it helps you, but the past still exists.”
“Yes, and the past is exactly where it belongs.”
Julian stepped closer, not enough to touch her but enough to make it known that he was not going to leave her alone until he had gotten what he wanted.
“Is it?” he asked. “Then answer me honestly. Do you regret the way things ended?”
Eleanor looked away immediately, her throat tightening. For several moments she did not answer, not knowing what to say, and when she finally spoke, her voice was quiet.
“Yes. I regretted it for a very long time.”
“Well, you may not believe me, but so did I.”
Her head snapped toward him.
“No.”
“Eleanor—”
“No,” her tone sharpened. “Do not do that.”
“I am telling you the truth.”
She gave a hollow laugh.
“Now?”
“I made mistakes.”
Her anger rose so quickly at that that she barely contained it.
“Mistakes?” she repeated, louder. “Is that what you call it?”
“I know I hurt you.”
Eleanor stared at him, something breaking loose inside her at last.
“Hurt me? You left me.”
Julian said nothing.
“You left me,” she repeated, the words shaking as they came. “You stood there and spoke of promises and futures and everything we would become, and then you vanished as though none of it had ever mattered.”
“Eleanor—”
“No. You will listen to me. You wished to speak with me on this matter, and so we shall.”
He fell silent. She stepped closer, anger and hurt spilling over too violently to contain.
“You left me for another woman. You did not fight for me. You did not explain yourself. You did not even give me the dignity of hearing it from you. I heard it from other people. Do you understand that? Other people knew of it before me, and you will never understand how that felt.”
Her voice cracked on the last words. She willed herself to stop, for he did not deserve her words, but she could not.
It had been so long, and in that time she had ruminated on it so much that it was bound to come out eventually, and despite how mortifying it was, she knew it was a good thing for her to say.
“They whispered about you. About her, and how quickly you moved on.”
“It was not what you think.”
Eleanor laughed bitterly through rising tears.
“It does not matter what it was. Do you know what it felt like? It felt like being erased. One day you loved me, and the next day I was nothing.”
Julian looked at her, but she could no longer bear it.
“I waited,” she said, tears finally spilling despite every effort to stop them. “I waited for you to come back and tell me it was a lie. I waited for a letter, or an explanation, anything that might have redeemed you. There was only silence.”
The garden fell utterly still around them. When Julian finally spoke, his voice had lost all trace of its earlier ease.
“I never stopped—”
“Do not. Do not stand here now and speak to me as though any of that can be undone.”
Her breathing remained uneven, her chest aching with the force of everything she had finally said aloud. For years, she had carried the wound quietly, burying it beneath pride and silence and duty. Now it stood between them in the open.
Eleanor’s breathing remained uneven, her anger and hurt still too raw to contain cleanly.
The tears she had fought so hard against had already betrayed her, and standing before Julian now felt like standing before every wound she had spent years trying to bury.
She looked away from him, swallowing hard before speaking again.
“Do you know what was worse? When I last heard of you, I did not even know if you were alive. That is the cruelest part of it all. After everything, after you left me humiliated and broken, I still heard the whispers that you had gone to war. I did not know whether you were breathing or dead somewhere, and I hated myself for caring.”
Her voice cracked.
“Do you understand that? You had already shattered me, and still I lay awake wondering if you were cold, or starving, or bleeding somewhere with no one to help you. I prayed for a man who had destroyed me. You walked away without looking back, and somehow I was still the one left carrying all of it.”
The words left her feeling hollow, as though speaking them aloud had carved something raw open inside her. She did not feel better for it like she had hoped. Instead, she simply felt exposed. Julian finally moved closer.
“None of that matters now. What matters is that I am here. I can see it, Eleanor. This marriage, you cannot tell me this is real.”
Eleanor’s heart hammered painfully.
“You do not know anything about my marriage.”
“I see the way he watches you,” Julian said. “I see the distance between you both. Tell me honestly. Do you love him?”
She froze, not knowing what to say. Julian pressed on.
“Does he love you?”
Her silence stretched too long, for of course he did not. Julian’s voice softened, becoming dangerously familiar.
“That is what I thought. You do not belong here. You do not belong in this cold house with a man who barely understands what stands in front of him.”
“Stop.”
“You deserve more than duty.”
“Julian—”
“Come with me. Leave with me.”
Her pulse thundered in her ears, and Julian’s gaze never left hers.
“We can leave this place, leave all of it behind.”
Eleanor shook her head immediately, though her emotions were too raw to steady her voice.
“No.”
“Eleanor—”
“No.”
He reached for her hand. This time, when his fingers closed around hers, she did not pull away immediately, not because she wanted the contact, and certainly not because she wanted him, but because she was exhausted, emotionally stripped bare, vulnerable in a way she hated.
Years of grief and confusion and unresolved hurt sat heavily in her chest, leaving her momentarily too overwhelmed to react.
Julian tightened his hold slightly.
“You loved me once. You can tell yourself whatever you wish, but some part of you still does.”
That was what broke the spell. Her hand finally pulled free.
“No,” she said, her voice raw but firm. “No. Whatever I felt for you died the day you left me.”
The words landed between them with finality. She turned away before he could answer. Her feet carried her quickly across the gardens, faster and faster until she reached the greenhouse, slipping inside and shutting the door behind her with trembling hands.
Warm air wrapped around her instantly, thick with the scent of earth and leaves. Eleanor braced both hands against the nearest wooden table, breathing hard.
She closed her eyes, and to her surprise, it was not Julian she thought of. It was Alexander. Not Julian’s touch, but Alexander’s; his hands at her waist during the dance, his fingers steady against hers.
The quiet warmth of his hand on the small of her back.
The memory came with startling clarity, grounding her in a way Julian’s touch never had.
Her breath slowed, though her heart still raced.
She stared down at her hands, shaken by the truth settling heavily in her chest. When Julian had held her hand, all she had felt was pain, but when her husband had, she felt safe for the first time in years.
Eleanor remained in the greenhouse until her breathing finally steadied, though her thoughts refused to do the same. The truth sat heavily in her chest, impossible to ignore. She needed to tell Alexander, but the thought came with immediate resistance.
Every instinct urged caution. She had already seen the shift in him, the growing distance between them and the scrutiny in his gaze whenever Julian was near. He noticed more than he let on. He suspected more than he said.
Would telling him the truth ease that tension, or would it only confirm every suspicion already forming in his mind?
Worse still, Julian was not merely a man from her past. He was Alexander’s friend. Revealing everything would not only alter what stood between her and her husband, but it could also shatter a friendship built long before she entered either of their lives.
And yet keeping silent felt increasingly dangerous.
The fragile understanding she had begun to build with Alexander suddenly felt precarious, balanced on a truth he did not yet know. Her hand tightened around the edge of the worktable. She wanted to protect whatever was growing between them, and she also feared honesty might destroy it.
That contradiction sat painfully within her, made worse by one truth she could not understand, no matter how hard she tried. Julian had once been the man she loved. She had mourned him, hated him, and carried the wound of his betrayal for years.
So why, when she closed her eyes now, was it Alexander who haunted her instead?