Chapter 24
Twenty-Four
Eleanor didn’t sleep.
She had undressed slowly, carefully, like it mattered. She’d folded her gown. Brushed her hair. Blown out the candles one by one. Anything to keep her hands moving. Anything to keep from collapsing into the hollow Ramsay had left behind.
But when she finally laid down—alone—something inside her gave way.
She hadn’t cried in years. Not since her father died. Not when Gifford spread those rumors about her. Not even when she learned of Norman’s debt scandal. But sometime around dawn, with the sky still ink-dark and her pillow damp beneath her cheek, the tears came. Hot, steady, humiliating.
He’d left. He hadn’t even looked back.
By morning, her eyes burned and her chest ached and her limbs felt like iron. She stared at the ceiling until the maid came with breakfast then waved her off with a brittle “no, thank you”. She didn’t want food. Or fresh flowers. Or the pale morning sun warming the edges of the rug.
She wanted him.
No, she corrected herself bitterly. She wanted answers. And comfort. And some explanation that made this feel less like a punishment.
By ten o’clock, she was pacing her room in the same nightdress she’d slept in, hair unbrushed, heart wrung dry.
Penelope had probably already been taken out to the gardens with Miss Bransby.
Lady Fraser must have been having tea in her room.
The entire house seemed content to carry on, as if nothing had happened.
As if the man she married hadn’t just vanished like a storm retreating to the hills.
Eleanor stood still for a long moment. Then, with sudden resolve, she grabbed her shawl, pulled on her slippers, and left the room.
She didn’t bother with gloves. She didn’t care.
She entered the main hall and asked Belson to prepare a carriage. By the time she reached Kitty and Norman’s townhouse, the world outside had brightened considerably, a cruel contrast to the low, numb weight inside her chest. She knocked once, and the door opened almost immediately.
She found Kitty in the drawing room, and she blinked at her from the sofa. Her expression shifted quickly—from surprise to alarm.
“My God,” she said. “You look like you’ve just fought a war.”
Eleanor tried to speak. Nothing came out.
Kitty got to her feet immediately. “Come in. Come in. Sit. I’ll get tea.”
Eleanor didn’t argue. She moved numbly into the drawing room and sank onto the settee. Her hands trembled as she wrapped the shawl tighter around her shoulders.
Kitty returned a moment later, giving orders to a footman in the hall before closing the door and joining her on the couch. She looked closely at Eleanor.
“What happened?” she asked, softer now.
Eleanor pressed her lips together then, “He’s leaving.”
Kitty frowned. “Who? The Duke?”
She nodded.
“When?”
“Last night.” Her voice cracked. “He said he had to go back to Scotland.”
Kitty stared at her. “What? Why?”
Eleanor laughed, but it sounded broken. “Private business.”
The words hung in the air, too heavy, too familiar.
“Oh, Eleanor…” Kitty’s voice gentled. She reached over and brushed a lock of hair back from Eleanor’s forehead. “Start from the beginning.”
So Eleanor did. She told her everything. About the letter. The change in his eyes. The way his voice had gone flat when he said her rules didn’t allow him to bring her. The way he’d accused her of trying to change him. Of trying to mold him into something he wasn’t.
“I don’t even know what I said,” she whispered. “One minute we were…” Her cheeks flushed. “And then suddenly he was cold. Like none of it meant anything.”
Kitty didn’t reply immediately. She sat still, elbow resting on the back of the settee, one hand curled beneath her chin as she studied Eleanor’s face with a kind of quiet sympathy that made Eleanor want to cry all over again.
Her brow furrowed, not in judgment but in shared frustration, as if she too was trying to make sense of a man who refused to be understood.
Then Kitty exhaled softly and reached for the teapot. “It meant something,” she said, pouring carefully, her voice low but sure. “It meant everything. I’ve seen the way he looks at you.”
Eleanor’s stomach clenched.
“I don’t know what to do with how I feel about him,” she said, trying to keep her voice even.
“I don’t know if I should stay here or take Penelope and leave.
I’m not his hostage. I’m not really his wife since he’s leaving me like this.
And if he’s going to vanish every time something frightens him—” Her voice cracked. “—then what are we even doing?”
Kitty handed her the teacup and sat back again, tucking one leg beneath her skirt and drawing her shawl closer around her shoulders. “Drink.”
Eleanor took it. Her hands shook slightly, but the warmth of the porcelain steadied her. It smelled like bergamot and safety, like childhood mornings before the world turned cruel.
Kitty leaned back, her fingers smoothing the folds of her gown, voice even. “I don’t pretend to know what’s in his head, but I know what it looks like when someone is afraid of losing control.”
Eleanor glanced up, startled.
Kitty didn’t look dramatic or overly grave. She wasn’t trying to make a point for the sake of it. She looked… tired.
“You said he’s changed,” Kitty continued, brushing an invisible speck of dust from her sleeve. “That he’s been gentle with Penelope. That he talks to you like you’re a person, not simply his wife who must obey him, right?”
Eleanor nodded slowly, chest pulling tight.
“Well,” Kitty said, folding her hands together in her lap. “That doesn’t happen by accident. But people don’t always know how to handle that kind of change. Especially when they’ve spent most of their lives surviving instead of living.”
Her voice was calm. No dramatics. No overstatement. Just… truth. Quiet and brutal and softly delivered.
Eleanor’s eyes stung again, but she didn’t look away.
She’d spent the entire night unraveling herself, trying to understand how they had gone from breathless kisses to him shutting the door between them with nothing but a few words and a shadowed look. And here Kitty was, untangling it in a single sentence.
He’d changed. Yes. She’d seen it. Felt it. The way he’d softened with Penelope. The way he’d looked at Eleanor when he thought she wasn’t watching. The way he held her like she was something precious, something he didn’t quite know what to do with.
Could he have run because he did care for her? But even if it was true, that didn’t make it hurt less. And it didn’t mean she could wait forever.
She clutched the teacup tighter, pressing the warm rim to her lips. Something in her braced—between pain and hope, between the ache of wanting him and the sting of knowing he might not come back.
Eleanor’s throat tightened. “He thinks he’s broken.”
“Maybe he is,” Kitty said. “But so is everyone. That doesn’t mean he can’t love you.”
Eleanor stared into her teacup.
“Sometimes,” Kitty added, voice quiet, “men like Ramsay don’t know how to receive love until it’s almost too late. Until they push it away and ruin it, and then they realize they’ve made a mistake.”
“What if he doesn’t come back?” Eleanor whispered.
“Then he doesn’t deserve you.” Kitty reached for her hand and squeezed. “But I think he will.”
Eleanor didn’t speak for a long time. She just sat there, letting the warmth of Kitty’s hand ground her, the weight of her heart pressing down like stones in her chest.
Finally, she whispered, “It hurts.”
“I know.”
The carriage wheels clattered over the uneven London stones, every jolt echoing through his skull. Ramsay sat rigid beside Lady Fraser, hands clenched so tightly in his lap that the gloves creaked.
His grandmother was watching him from the corner of her eye. She hadn’t said a word since they’d left the house.
“You might at least pretend you’re not being dragged to your execution,” she said finally, dry as bone.
Ramsay didn’t answer.
She huffed. “For heaven’s sake, you look like you’ve been sentenced. Is it because she didn’t come down to see you off?”
He flinched. “I told her not to.”
“Of course, you did,” she said coolly. “And you think that makes you noble?”
He didn’t respond.
The silence stretched.
Then, quietly, he said, “She won’t forgive me.”
Lady Fraser blinked, just once. “You don’t know that.”
“I do.” He leaned forward, resting his forearms on his knees, staring at the opposite bench like it might offer some kind of reprieve. “She let me in. I walked away anyway.”
“You’re a man,” she said. “It’s what you lot do. You’re hopeless.”
His mouth twisted. “It’s more than that. I told her I wasn’t the man she wanted. And maybe I’m not. But that doesn’t mean—” He stopped, jaw working.
“That you didn’t want to be?” she finished.
He looked at her.
Lady Fraser’s expression softened, just a fraction. “Do you think I didn’t see the way you looked at her at the ball?”
He swallowed hard. “This is the first time I’ve ever known where my home was. And I left it standing at the top of the stairs in a silk nightgown.”
Lady Fraser gave a quiet snort. “Well. That paints a picture.”
“I’m not trying to be glib.” His voice cracked slightly, and he hated it. “I just… I don’t know how to be what she needs. I don’t even know what I am anymore.”
“You’re a man who found a reason to stay,” she said. “That’s something.”
He looked away, out the window, watching London roll past in grey and gold. His mind turned over the letter again—the handwriting, the ink, the cruelty.
Does your duchess know what you did?
It had arrived three weeks after the wedding. Ramsay had assumed Callum had heard of the announcement and rushed off a second warning, but something about the timing gnawed at him now.
His fingers tapped restlessly against his knee. “The letter,” he murmured.
“What?” Lady Fraser asked.
“The first one I received. The one that started all this. It arrived three months after I inherited the title—blackmail, threatening to expose me to society. The second came less than three weeks after my marriage.”
“And?”
“Callum is in the Highlands. He wouldn’t have heard about the marriage the day it was announced.
It took you more than a week to hear about it and then two weeks to arrive here.
” He sat straighter, brow furrowing. “It would’ve taken him nearly a week to find a courier, and at least another week for it to arrive. ”
“Unless he used one of his own men,” she suggested.
“He probably did,” Ramsay said slowly. “But even so… it was too fast.”
Lady Fraser raised a brow. “Too fast for what?”
“For someone sending a letter from Scotland.”
He said it without meaning to. The words slipped out, quiet, half-formed, as his mind began to churn. He stared out the window, not really seeing the street beyond—just cobblestones and blur.
His pulse began to climb.
Not even three weeks. That’s how long it had been since the wedding. He’d assumed the letter had been written in haste. That Callum had heard the news and sent word immediately.
Unless…
Unless the letter hadn’t come from the Highlands.
He sat straighter, breath catching low in his chest. Unless Callum had already been—
His gaze narrowed. He blinked once. Then again.
Damn it. He hadn’t seen it before. Hadn’t wanted to see it. But now it unfurled slowly with sickening clarity. His heart stuttered.
The letter had arrived too soon.
He looked at his grandmother. His voice came rough. “He was already in England.”
Lady Fraser frowned. “You’re certain?”
Ramsay didn’t speak. He was calculating, replaying the details as his stomach twisted.
Callum had written that letter knowing Ramsay would think it came from Scotland. Knowing it would shake him just enough to make him leave Eleanor. It hadn’t been a warning. It had been a trap.
Ramsay’s breath went shallow. His eyes widened.
“Oh, damn,” he whispered.
He sat up and slammed his fist twice against the roof of the carriage.
The driver’s voice came muffled through the wood. “Yes, Your Grace?”
“Turn back,” Ramsay barked. “Immediately. Back to the house. Go as fast as the horses can manage.”
Lady Fraser clutched the side of the carriage. “What on earth—?”
“It wasn’t a warning,” Ramsay said. “It was bait.”
“What was?”
“That letter. That damn letter.”
He was already yanking off his gloves, breath coming too fast, mind racing through the implications.
Lady Fraser blinked at him. “You think Callum is here? In London?”
He pressed his palms to his eyes then dropped them and looked straight ahead. “He wanted me gone. And I played right into his hands.”
“What do you think he’s after?”
Ramsay didn’t answer.
He was already picturing Eleanor alone in that house. Unprotected. Heartbroken. And Callum—Callum watching from a distance, waiting for the perfect moment to make his move.
His pulse roared in his ears.
If anything happened to her—
He slammed his hand on the carriage wall again. “Faster!” he shouted to the driver.
Lady Fraser was still watching him, but this time, she didn’t say anything. She simply reached across the bench and put a hand over his, and for once, he let it stay there.