Chapter Fourteen #2
Rosanne stared at him. He could see the confusion in her eyes, the dawning suspicion that something had gone terribly wrong.
She had witnessed his return from the study yesterday, she had seen his face, he suspected, and she had drawn her own conclusions about what had passed between Lillian and him.
"Daniel, what is going on?" Her voice was quiet now, stripped of its usual lightness. "Yesterday you seemed... different. When you came out of the study, you looked like a man who had just received wonderful news. And now..."
"Now I have returned to my senses." The words came out harsher than he intended, and he saw her flinch. He forced himself to moderate his tone. "Yesterday was... an aberration. I allowed myself to be carried away by circumstances. It will not happen again."
"An aberration?" Rosanne's voice rose. "Is that what you call it? Lillian is not an aberration, Daniel. She is..."
"Lady Rosanne." He used her formal title deliberately, a reminder of the distance that should exist even between siblings when one of them was the Duke of Wyntham. "This conversation is finished. I will see you at dinner."
He rose from the table without touching his breakfast and strode toward the door. Behind him, he heard Rosanne's sharp intake of breath, the scrape of her chair as she rose.
"You are going to ruin this." Her voice followed him, trembling with barely suppressed emotion. "Whatever happened between Lillian and you, whatever you felt, you are going to destroy it because you are too frightened to let yourself be happy."
Daniel paused at the threshold, his hand on the door frame but he did not turn around.
"Happiness," he said quietly, "is not the purpose of life."
He left before she could respond, and the sound of the door closing behind him was like the sealing of a tomb.
***
The study was silent and cold. The study was everything that the chaos in his chest was not.
Daniel sat at his desk and stared at the papers arrayed before him without seeing them. The quarter accounts. The solicitors' letters. The endless accumulation of duties and obligations that defined his existence. None of it seemed to matter anymore.
All he could think about was Lillian.
She would come today. He was certain of it. After yesterday, after the declaration and the kisses and the promises, she would come to see him, expecting…...What? A continuation of what had begun? A conversation about their future? The first tentative steps toward something he could not even name?
She would come, and she would find him changed. Cold. Distant. Unreachable.
She would come, and he would break her heart.
The thought was agonizing. He could picture her face so clearly; the way her expression would shift from hope to confusion to hurt as she realized that the man who had held her yesterday had been replaced by a stranger.
He could imagine her voice, soft with bewilderment, asking what had changed, what she had done wrong, why he would not look at her.
She had done nothing wrong. That was the cruelest part. She had been exactly what she always was—steady, warm, generous, brave. She had offered him her heart without reservation, and he had taken it, and now he was going to hand it back to her in pieces.
It is better this way, he told himself. Better a small hurt now than a great devastation later. Better to disappoint her today than to destroy her over years of slow disintegration.
But the words rang hollow, even in his own mind. He was not protecting Lillian. He was protecting himself. He was protecting himself from the terror of loving someone, of needing someone, of giving another person the power to wound him in ways from which he might never recover.
He was a coward. He had always been a coward. All his talk of control and discipline and rational management of emotion, it was nothing but elaborate justification for his own weakness.
A knock at the door interrupted his spiraling thoughts.
"Your Grace." Simmons's voice was carefully neutral through the heavy oak. "Miss Whitcombe has arrived. She is asking to see you."
Daniel's heart lurched painfully in his chest. He pressed his palms flat against the desk, steadying himself.
"Inform Miss Whitcombe that I am occupied with urgent estate business. I cannot see her today."
A pause. "Miss Whitcombe was quite insistent, Your Grace. She says the matter is of some importance."
Of course it is. Of course she wants to see you. After everything you said, after everything you did, of course she believes...
"I am unavailable."
"Your Grace..."
"That will be all, Simmons."
Another pause, longer this time. Then: "Very good, Your Grace."
Footsteps retreated down the corridor, and Daniel was left alone with the weight of what he had just done.
He had turned her away. Lillian had come to him, hopeful and trusting, and he had refused to see her.
He had hidden behind his study door like the coward he was, and now she was standing in his entrance hall, being informed by his butler that the Duke of Wyntham could not be bothered to spare her a moment of his precious time.
He rose from his chair and moved to the window, looking down at the drive. From here, he would be able to see her when she left, he would be able to watch her walk away from him, confused and hurt, without having to face her directly.
It was the coward's way. But he had already established that he was a coward.
Several minutes passed. Then the front door opened, and Lillian emerged.
She paused on the steps, her face turned toward the house, and Daniel drew back from the window instinctively, though he knew she could not see him from that distance.
She looked... not angry, as he had expected.
Not even hurt, precisely. She looked bewildered; as though she had been presented with a puzzle whose pieces did not fit together, no matter how many times she rearranged them.
She stood there for a long moment, looking up at the house. Then she squared her shoulders, lifted her chin, and walked toward the waiting gig that would take her back to Hartfield.
She did not look back.
Daniel watched until she had disappeared down the drive, until even the sound of the wheels had faded into silence. Then he returned to his desk, sat down, and stared at the papers before him.
He did not see a single word.
***
Lillian had not known what to expect when she arrived at Wynthorpe Hall that morning.
She had dressed with care—not the elaborate care of a woman trying to impress, but the thoughtful care of a woman who wanted to look her best for someone who mattered.
She had chosen the blue muslin that Daniel had seemed to notice, she had asked her maid to arrange her hair simply but becomingly and she had added the small pearl earrings that had been her grandmother's.
She had felt hopeful. Nervous, indeed, terribly nervous, but hopeful.
Yesterday had changed everything. Yesterday, the man she had come to love against all expectation and all reason had told her he loved her back.
He had held her in his arms and kissed her as though she were the answer to every question he had ever asked.
Today, she had thought, they would begin to discover what that meant.
Instead, she had been turned away at the door.
"His Grace is occupied with urgent estate business," the butler had informed her, his expression carefully neutral. "He regrets that he cannot see you today."
Lillian had stared at him, unable to process the words. "Occupied? But I…...We had spoken of…...I had thought..."
"I am sorry, Miss Whitcombe. His Grace was quite clear in his instructions."
Quite clear. Yes. That was Daniel all over, was it not? Quite clear. Quite precise. Quite absolutely certain about what he wanted and what he did not want.
And apparently, what he did not want was her.
Lillian had stood in the entrance hall for several long moments, trying to understand. Yesterday, he had said he loved her. Yesterday, he had promised to face whatever came together. Yesterday, he had kissed her with a desperation that had made her knees weak and her heart soar.
Today, he would not even see her.
What had changed? What could possibly have changed in the space of a single night to transform the man who had held her so tenderly into the duke who refused to emerge from his study?
She had asked to see Rosanne, hoping for some explanation, but the butler had informed her that Lady Rosanne was indisposed. Whether that was true or whether Daniel had simply forbidden his sister from receiving visitors, Lillian could not say.
So she had left. She had walked out the front door of Wynthorpe Hall, climbed into the gig, and allowed herself to be driven back to Hartfield in a fog of confusion and hurt.
She did not cry. She was not a woman given to tears, and besides, she was not certain she had the right to cry.
Perhaps she had misunderstood everything.
Perhaps what she had interpreted as love had been something else entirely; a momentary weakness, a fleeting attraction, a lapse of judgment that Daniel had recognized and corrected.
Perhaps she had been a fool to believe that a duke could truly love her.
The thought was bitter, but Lillian forced herself to consider it.
She was a practical woman. She had always been a practical woman.
She had learned early that the world did not arrange itself according to one's hopes, and that the wisest course was to accept reality as it was rather than as one wished it to be.
The reality was that Daniel had declared his love for her yesterday and refused to see her today. The reality was that something had changed in the intervening hours; something significant enough to override the passion and tenderness she had witnessed in his study.
The reality was that she did not know what that something was, and she had no way of finding out if he would not speak to her.
When she arrived at Hartfield, her mother was waiting in the entrance hall, her expression anxious.
"Lillian! You are back so soon. I thought you would spend the morning at Wynthorpe..." She broke off, taking in her daughter's pale face and rigid posture. "What has happened?"
"Nothing." The word came out flat, empty. "His Grace was occupied. I was unable to see him."
"Unable to see him? But yesterday..."
"I know what happened yesterday, Mother." Lillian's voice was sharper than she intended, and she saw her mother flinch. She forced herself to moderate her tone. "I apologise. I am merely tired. The events of the past several days have been exhausting."
"Of course. Your father's accident, and the strain of nursing him..."
"Yes. Precisely." Lillian latched onto the excuse gratefully. "If you will excuse me, I think I shall lie down for a while."
She escaped to her room before her mother could ask any more questions, closing the door behind her and leaning against it with her eyes shut.
She would not cry. She would not cry.
But when she opened her eyes and saw the small gold earrings she had chosen so carefully that morning, the earrings she had worn because she wanted to look pretty for him, the tears came anyway.
***
Three days passed.
Lillian did not return to Wynthorpe Hall.
She told herself it was because she was needed at home; her father was recovering but still required attention, and her mother was exhausted from the strain of recent events.
She told herself it would be inappropriate to press, that a lady did not chase after a gentleman who had made his disinterest clear.
She told herself many things. None of them felt true.
The truth was that she was afraid. Afraid of being turned away again.
Afraid of the cold formality she might encounter if Daniel deigned to see her.
Afraid of discovering that everything she had believed, about him, about them, about the love she had thought they shared, had been nothing more than wishful thinking.
She had received no word from him. No letter, no message, no explanation for his sudden withdrawal. The silence was deafening, and Lillian found herself interpreting it in a dozen different ways, each more painful than the last.
Perhaps he had reconsidered. Perhaps the light of day had revealed the impracticality of their situation; the gap in rank, the inevitable scandal, the obstacles that would face any match between a duke and a country gentleman's daughter.
Perhaps he had decided that the cost was too high, the risk too great, and he had chosen to retreat before they went any further.
Or perhaps, and this was the thought that cut deepest, perhaps his feelings had never been as strong as she believed. Perhaps what she had interpreted as love had been merely attraction. Desire. The momentary confusion of a man unaccustomed to emotion, mistaking intensity for depth.
Perhaps she had been a fool all along.
Rosanne wrote, on the second day. A brief note, delivered by one of the Wynthorpe footmen, full of apologies and bewilderment.