Chapter Twenty #2
Hurt flashed across his face before it became apologetic. “Of course. Forgive me.” For a moment he looked as though he was about to leave, and she breathed a sigh of relief. Then his gaze fell on her book, and he picked it up. He flicked through the pages.
“You know,” he said, “the reason I enjoyed Emma was because of how well Mr. Knightly knew and loved the true her, flaws and all. Her crush on Frank Churchill was superficial. I hate superficial.”
The cognitive dissonance of talking about a romance novel with this man made her reach to the table for balance. “You’ve read Emma?” she asked, her pride desperate for him to leave but her curiosity caught by the unexpected turn of conversation.
“Is that a surprise?”
“Well, yes. I imagined your library to either be dominated by dull agricultural texts or be empty.”
His mouth dropped open; his outrage palpable. “You thought my library might be empty? I don’t know if I should be flattered that you thought of it at all or offended that you think it could be bare. Do you think so little of me?”
“Those who read novels choose to spend their time in other people’s shoes. It builds a level of empathy you lack.”
He flinched, and a muscle flexed along his jaw. “Unlike your friend, I take it, who is so empathetic he hasn’t shown up.”
He could have no idea how much his words hurt. “You are completely unlike him. He is kind. He is caring. The breadth of his worldview eclipses yours. He cares about others in a way that you do not. He would never exploit me the way you did.”
The duke went completely still. He swallowed, his throat working for a long moment before he replied. “Exploit you, Miss Wright? We have been on opposite sides of this situation, but I have acted honorably and I reject the assertion that I have done otherwise.”
For the first time that evening, she had made him angry.
Fine. So was she. “Have you forgotten your stunt at the warehouse, Your Grace? You invited my employers to watch me compete with your infernal machine without my consent. You manipulated me into getting myself fired. No honorable gentleman would do such a thing. Only someone truly without feeling could be so cruel.”
His face drained of color, and she could tell her words had landed just as intended. “Have you been fired, Miss Wright? My understanding was that you were still employed at all your many jobs.”
She sucked in a breath, hot with shame. She would be fired.
Her words would be a fact, but technically they weren’t now and she looked like a liar.
“No, I have not been fired. Not yet. But I might as well have been. The print room was my arena. I was the gladiator, and soon I will be forgotten bones gnawed on and discarded because the fight was not fair.”
That was what hurt. She was no longer incomparable.
She’d worked hard and earned her spot and now it was worth nothing, and neither was she.
It had taken years of sweat and diligence to be the best, and if she wasn’t that, then she was simply an odd creature who couldn’t bake a cake that rose, couldn’t dance in time, and couldn’t refrain from correcting boys who knew not what they spoke of.
Reading was the only thing that came as easy as breathing, and even her talent for that had impressed no one but her grandfather. My bright girl, he’d say when he came home from work with a misprint in his hands. Read this to me. Show me how smart you are.
It wasn’t until she’d brought home her first paycheck that her mother’s eyes had widened, and she’d looked at Eleanor with pride, the way other mothers did when their daughters were picked first to dance or lauded for comportment.
Had her mother been alive, there would be no such look now.
In fact, her mother might have just regarded her in the same way the duke did now—with pity and derision.
He rolled his eyes, and she had to fight back tears from hers. “You’ve spent too much time with your nose in a book, Miss Wright, if you expect life to be fair. The truth is, the fittest evolve. Or was Darwin not part of your reading list?”
His words stung. She fisted her hands in her skirts to avoid tossing her water in his face.
“I haven’t the skill. Your machine requires an entirely different art form, and evolution takes time.
There is none. It would take years to be anything more than ordinary, and there is no guarantee that I would get there. ”
She could hear it now. How could we have thought you so talented, Eleanor? It was clearly no more than a ruse. I see you now. Everyone will see you now.
The duke leaned forward, his stare binding her. “The decision not to try is your own. If cowardice makes you average, it is on your head, not mine. No one is doing anything to you. This is not personal.”
Oh, Eleanor. You might act brave in a print room; you might buy pretty things and convince yourself they’re proof that you’re excellent; but you are a coward, and you are a fool, and you are a liar. And now everyone will know.
“It is personal to me,” she said, her voice cracking.
“It is not just a job I’m losing, that I can pick up again as if it had momentarily slipped from my grasp.
It is my life and it is turning to dust that I cannot reshape.
But you couldn’t understand. Your eyes are fixed on your own interests.
You have no empathy. No feeling. You are not human; you are simply a duke. ”
If she’d thought him angry before, it was nothing compared to his fury now. His eyes turned hard and the skin beneath his fingernails whitened as he gripped his glass so tightly that she was shocked it hadn’t cracked.
“Do not mistake me, Miss Wright. I have feelings, though nobody thinks so. When my tenants need new machinery and I cannot provide it, I feel like a failure. When the farms I support bring in less money and young men choose to leave for the city, I feel hopeless. When my sisters turn their attention to men with questionable ethics, I feel fear. When I used you that day to get what I needed, I felt relief. When I think of all the books that will be published and the knowledge that would not otherwise have been shared, I feel joy. I feel pride.”
He slammed his glass on the table and she jumped, her throat catching.
“You’re correct, Miss Wright. This is very personal.”
As she grabbed her things and raced to the door, Peter acknowledged the emotion he had not shared—grief.
For a few short weeks, he’d thought a different version of him was possible.
He’d thought perhaps he was more than his title and that he could be a person as well.
Booklover, Eleanor, was the only one who’d seen him as such.
But thinking the Captain could be more than a fantasy had been foolish.
If he could never be such a man in the flesh, he could not continue to be that in any form.