Chapter Nine #2
"Because I do not know how to feel things safely.
Because every emotion I have ever witnessed has been destructive; it has been a weapon, wielded to wound and to control.
Because I am terrified that if I allow myself to care for you, I will become the very thing I have spent my life trying to avoid. "
Lillian absorbed this, her heart aching for the fear she heard beneath his words.
"And what is that?" She asked softly. "What are you trying to avoid becoming?"
"My father." The word came out like a confession. "My mother. Both of them, consumed by passion, destroying everything they touched. They loved each other, Miss Whitcombe, they loved each other with a ferocity that bordered on madness. And that love brought nothing but pain."
"Love does not have to be destructive."
"Does it not?" He laughed; a hollow, bitter sound. "I have seen no evidence to the contrary. Every love I have ever witnessed has ended in ruin."
"Then perhaps you have not witnessed the right kind of love."
She took a step toward him, then another. He watched her approach with wide eyes, but he did not move away.
"There is another kind," she said. "A quieter kind. It does not burn but it warms. It does not consume but it sustains. It is not a weapon, but a shelter."
"You speak of it as though you know."
"I do not know." Lillian stopped, close enough now to see the rapid pulse beating in his throat. "But I believe. And I think…..I think you might believe it too, if you allowed yourself."
Daniel's breath was coming faster now, his control visibly fracturing. "You ask too much of me."
"I ask nothing of you. I am simply telling you what I see.
" She held his gaze, refusing to look away.
"I see a man who has spent his life building walls because he was afraid of what might happen if he let anyone inside.
I see a man who has convinced himself that feeling nothing is safer than feeling anything.
And I see..." She paused, gathering her courage.
"I see a man who feels far more than he admits. Especially when it comes to me."
The words cut through the space between them.
For a long moment, neither of them spoke.
Then Daniel moved—not away from her, as she had expected, but toward her. He stopped when barely a breath separated them, close enough that she could feel the heat of his body, smell the sandalwood and leather that she had come to associate with him.
"You are dangerous," he said softly.
"Am I?"
"You make me want things I had sworn never to want. You make me feel things I had sworn never to feel." His voice dropped to a whisper. "You make me wonder if perhaps, perhaps, the walls I have built are not protecting me at all. Perhaps they are only keeping me imprisoned."
Lillian's heart was pounding so hard she was certain he could hear it.
"And if they were?" she asked. "If you were to tear them down? What then?"
He did not answer. But something shifted in his expression; a softening, a yielding, the first crack in a wall that had stood for decades.
"I do not know," he admitted. "I have never...I have no idea how to..."
The door opened.
"Your Grace! Miss Whitcombe! Excuse my intrusion but Lady Rosanne is most eager for you to join her and I have been looking in every room for you."
Daniel stepped back from Lillian, the moment shattering like glass.
"Of course," he said, his voice carefully controlled. "We should not keep her waiting."
Daniel walked past Lillian toward the door, and for a moment she thought that was the end of it—that he would retreat behind his walls once more, pretending that nothing had passed between them.
But at the threshold, he paused.
"Miss Whitcombe."
She looked up.
"Tomorrow." His voice was strange, almost tentative. "Rosanne mentioned you wished to ride. If you are still interested, I would be willing to…..I could..."
"Accompany me?" Lillian finished, when his words faltered.
"If that would be acceptable."
A pause. A heartbeat. An eternity.
"That would be most acceptable, Your Grace."
He nodded once, sharply, and disappeared through the door.
Lillian stood alone in the green sitting room, her heart racing, her mind spinning with the implications of what had just occurred.
He had invited her to ride with him. Alone. Without the buffer of Rosanne's presence.
Whatever walls remained between them, he was choosing, deliberately, consciously, to lower them.
Tomorrow.
***
From the gallery above the entrance hall, hidden in the shadows, Rosanne watched her brother walk away from the sitting room with a stride that was not quite steady.
She had not meant to eavesdrop. She had simply been passing through. What mattered was what she had seen through the partially open door: Daniel and Lillian, standing close enough to touch, speaking in voices too low to hear.
And then Daniel's face as he walked away. The expression of a man who had just stepped off a cliff and was not yet certain whether he would fall or fly.
Rosanne smiled; a small, private smile of profound satisfaction.
Finally, she thought. Finally, you stubborn, impossible man. You are letting her in.
She had worked for this moment for weeks.
The manufactured absences, the convenient headaches, the relentless observation and careful maneuvering.
She had seen what Lillian could do for her brother, she had seen the way he softened in her presence, the way his walls crumbled when she was near, and she had been determined to give them every possible opportunity to discover it for themselves.