Chapter 2 #2
There it was. The steel beneath the civility.
She held his gaze without flinching.
“I desire only what is best for you, Eliza,” he continued, though his tone carried more frustration than tenderness. “A husband of means, a household of your own, security, safety…”
“And what about happiness? Contentment?” she asked.
“Contentment follows prudence.”
Does it?
A soft knock interrupted the charged silence.
The door opened a fraction, and Henry, Eliza’s younger brother, appeared around the edge. At fifteen, he stood at the threshold between boyhood and manhood, his limbs too long for his current tailoring, his expression perpetually caught between mischief and concern.
“Umm…Liza,” he ventured.
She rose at once.
“Henry,” she said brightly, as though nothing of consequence had transpired. “We must make haste to Aunt Octavia.”
Lord Hartmoor frowned. “What is this? An appointment with my sister?”
“The market, Papa,” she replied. “Aunt Octavia insisted.”
His brows drew together, suspicion flickering across his features. “You will return directly.”
“Of course.”
She crossed the room, seizing Henry’s hand the instant they reached the corridor. Only when the morning room door closed behind them did she allow her posture to relax.
Henry stared at her in awe. “You said that Shakespeare wrote the three little pigs?”
She laughed, the sound bubbling out before she could restrain it. “Did you see his face?”
“You are merciless.”
“I am strategic.”
They descended the stairs together, suppressing their laughter until they reached the gravel path beyond the front steps. The spring air felt cool against her cheeks, carrying the faint scent of budding lilacs.
“Well?” Henry asked. “Was he routed?”
“Entirely,” she declared. “Candidate number seven has fallen.” She bowed deeply as if making a curtain call.
Henry groaned softly. “Seven. Oh my days, Liza.”
“Yes,” she said triumphantly. “Though Papa has just issued an order for me to stop thwarting them and to start taking my future seriously.”
“We can all tell that Papa grows less patient…the staff even have a wager out on which number your final suitor might be.”
She waved a hand dismissively, though the gesture lacked its usual conviction. “He blusters.”
“He does more than bluster.”
They crossed into the garden, sunlight filtering through young leaves overhead. The house loomed behind them, solid and ancestral.
Henry slowed. “What happens when Papa ceases presenting hopeful merchants and instead selects someone himself?”
Her laughter faltered.
“He would not,” she said, though the certainty in her voice rang hollow.
“He might,” Henry replied quietly. “He spoke with Edward last evening about alliances and propriety.” He studied her face. “Better yet, what if the next man does not retreat?”
“And what did our older brother say to that? Did he stand up for me? Did he challenge our dearest papa about his only daughter’s happiness?”
“No, Liza. You know that Edwards loves us, but it is in his own way. He is bound by society to the barony…bound in such a way as you are. As all women of the peerage are.”
Her smile returned, though softer now. “Well then,” she said carefully, “I shall require a different tactic.”
“And if tactics fail?”
She looked back at the house, at the tall windows of the morning room where her father likely still stood.
For a fleeting moment, uncertainty crept into her thoughts.
What if one day he does not ask? What if he commands?
“You know, Henry…you are quite more astute than I gave you credit for.”
Her younger brother smiled widely. “Thank you, Sister. Coming from you, it means more than you know.”
Eliza smiled. “So tell me, dearest brother,” she began quickly, changing the subject so as not to dampen the mood, a smirk curving her mouth as they approached the iron gate.
Henry kept his gaze trained upon the gravel before them, stepping neatly over a rut in the path. “Anything, Liza.”
She leaned sideways to catch his expression. “You did place a wager, did you not?”
He did not answer at once. Then, without warning, his head tipped back, and laughter burst from him, unrestrained and bright. The sound echoed against the clipped hedges and startled a pair of sparrows from the shrubbery.
Eliza joined him, her earlier tension dissolving into the rhythm of his amusement.
When he finally caught his breath, he scrubbed a hand over his eyes and looked down at her with exaggerated solemnity.
“Oh, Liza,” he said.
Before she could step away, he hooked his arm around her shoulders and drew her firmly against his side. The movement was swift and familiar, more boyish than courtly.
“I would never wager against you,” he declared.
She studied him through narrowed eyes. “Surely you must have named a number.”
“I did,” he admitted at last.
Her brows rose. “And?”
“I wagered that you would outlive them all.”
She laughed again, but something in her chest tightened unexpectedly.
He swung open the gate and gestured for her to precede him. “Come. Aunt Octavia will wonder whether you have finally frightened away society entirely.”
Seven suitors dismissed with flawless intention. Triumph swirled in her veins, light and intoxicating. She lifted her chin and stepped onto the road beyond the gate, the gravel crunching beneath her slippers.
Because the moment she became a wife, the life she had built in quiet defiance would vanish.
No more remedies, no more work that mattered, no more independence carefully carved from expectation.
She would be managed, directed, diminished.
And she refused, utterly, to become something smaller than she already was.
As they walked toward the market and the freedom of Aunt Octavia’s domain, Henry’s question returned to her mind like a shadow stretching long behind them.
What if one day he does not ask? What if he commands?
She forced the thought aside and squared her shoulders.
For now, she was undefeated.
And she intended to remain so.
Chapter 2
Alistair Norcliffe sat upright in the high-backed leather chair that had belonged to his father before him.
At thirty years of age, he had grown accustomed to its weight and the greater weight of being the Duke of Blackthorne that the chair represented.
The Blackthorne Estate stretched across three counties.
The tenants depended upon him. The reputation of his house depended upon him.
So too did his two younger sisters upstairs.
He slit open the final letter in the stack before him, scanning the neat hand of his steward. Grain yields. Repairs to the south tenant cottages. A dispute over boundary hedges. All solvable. All orderly.
A soft knock interrupted the quiet precision of the room.
“Enter.”
His younger sister, Beatrice, stepped inside without waiting for further invitation.
At ten and seven, she possessed a brightness that seemed determined to resist the solemnity of the Blackthorne Manor.
Her dark hair was braided loosely down her back, and her eyes, so like their mother’s, carried both hope and mischief.
“Good morning, Brother…have you eaten?” she more so observed than asked.
“I shall soon, Bea.”
“You say that every morning.”
“And yet I somehow survive.”
She folded her arms. “Well, I do not think it is fair to take something that simple for granted when Lydia—.”
His hand stilled over the page.
“How is our sister?” he asked.
Beatrice’s expression softened. “Today, the headache began before dawn. Mrs. Granger says she has not even kept broth down.”
Alistair rose at once. “I will go to her, and then meet you downstairs to join you for breakfast.”
Lydia was nineteen and delicate in health, though not in mind; she had suffered these attacks since the winter after their parents’ deaths. The physicians called them nervous complaints. Some called them female weakness. He called them torment.
He crossed the hall and ascended the stairs two at a time.
Lydia lay propped against pillows, the curtains drawn to dim the light. Her fair complexion appeared almost translucent against the linen sheets.
“Alistair?” Her voice was barely above a whisper.
He approached the bed. “I am here.”
Her hand searched weakly for his. He took it without hesitation. “Has the laudanum eased you?”
She gave the faintest shake of her head. “Not really, Alistair…it makes the room swim.”
His jaw tightened.
Dr. Pelham, who had attended their family for years, insisted upon the tincture. Laudanum dulled sensation, he claimed. Laudanum restored balance, but it also left Lydia pale, nauseated, and detached from herself.
“I shall speak to the doctor again,” Alistair said quietly.
Lydia’s eyes closed. “Do not scold him. He means well. Laudanum is a sound choice.”
Meaning well does not suffice.
He adjusted her pillows himself, lowering them slightly so her head rested more comfortably. The gesture felt inadequate.
“All right, Lydia…if you insist, I will hold my tongue, for now. But if this persists without change, he will be hearing from me.”
Lydia smiled weakly, her eyelids heavy, and he leaned forward to plant a kiss on her forehead before Mrs. Granger stepped back in and tended to her.
When he returned downstairs, Beatrice waited in the dining room.
“Well?” she asked.
“She endures.”
Beatrice exhaled sharply. “Endures. That is not living.”
He resumed his seat at the table. “Dr. Pelham will call again this afternoon—”
“And prescribe more laudanum?”
Alistair did not answer, but continued his thought. “I told her I would not interfere with the good doctor, unless I do not see improvement.”
Beatrice laid the napkin in her lap, setting her breakfast plate full of fruits and a steaming pastry in front of her. “At Lady Templeton’s tea yesterday,” she began carefully, “there was discussion of another kind of remedy.”
He did not look up. “Society discusses many things. I highly doubt that those ladies are qualified in any way to—”
“This was not idle chatter, Alistair.”