Chapter 17
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“Iam Thaddeus, Duke of Stonehaven,” Thaddeus said, offering an impeccably executed bow that managed to be entirely respectful while carrying an undercurrent of playfulness. “It seems as though His Grace here has been keeping you away from me.”
Nathaniel let out a loud breath.
Do not look at her. Do not look at her.
Euphemia smiled as she took in his appearance. “It is a pleasure to meet you, Your Grace,” she replied. “It is also the first time I am meeting any of Nathaniel’s friends.”
Nathaniel looked away, a sharp prickle catching him entirely off guard. He cleared his throat forcefully after Thaddeus took his place in front of them.
Across the drawing room, near a sunlit corner, Cordelia and Georgianna were comfortably seated with Leonora and Seraphina, the sound of the girls’ laughter carrying easily over the space as they played together.
Nathaniel kept his gaze fixed firmly on the mantelpiece, his jaw tightening.
Euphemia stood directly by his side, her posture perfectly composed, radiating the very distance he had spent the last week enforcing. It was exactly what he had wanted, what he had intended when he retreated behind a wall of absolute formality.
He had established the rules of this marriage long before they stood at the altar.
He could not afford to make mistakes now.
He could not let himself get attached, nor could he allow the ordered boundaries of his life to dissolve into something unpredictable.
Distance was safety. It was the only way to keep things as they were.
Thaddeus, entirely unbothered by the tension, turned his full, charming attention toward Euphemia, asking her a series of light, polite questions about her transition to the estate and her impression of the grounds. Euphemia answered him, smiling.
He forced himself to stare straight ahead, his mind a battleground of forced indifference.
‘Do not look at her,’ he repeated, a mantra against the ridiculous urge to interject himself between his wife and his best friend.
“—though I suppose it is a marvel he has managed to keep a secret this lovely for so long,” Thaddeus was saying, his laugh rich as he turned a knowing look back toward Nathaniel.
“Then again, Nathaniel has always been a creature of tight locks and closed doors. Has he told you about the former duchess?”
The casual words struck the room, instantly withdrawing Nathaniel from the dark cage of his own thoughts.
The blood in his veins seemed to turn to ice. His eyes snapped over to Thaddeus, flashing with a dangerous intensity.
“Perhaps...” Nathaniel said. “... we should let Euphemia return to keep her sisters’ company.”
Euphemia froze, her eyes darting between the two men. “What about the former duchess?” Euphemia asked.
Nathaniel said nothing. He did not offer an explanation, nor did he look her in the eye. Instead, he abruptly turned away from her, his hand gripping Thaddeus’s shoulder.
“Excuse us,” Nathaniel murmured, his voice clipped and entirely devoid of warmth as he steered his friend toward the drawing room doors.
He didn’t wait for a response from Euphemia. He escorted Thaddeus out of the room, keeping his pace brisk as they walked down the long hallway toward the privacy of his study.
The moment they crossed the threshold into the room, Nathaniel closed the door and turned on his heel. He walked straight to the tall window, staring out at the manicured grounds with his jaw locked tight.
“What is the matter with you, Thaddeus?” he asked, turned to look at him.
“Of all the things to talk about, why was Eleanor the very first thing that had come to your mind? This is precisely why I never introduce you to anyone. You possess absolutely no filter, no sense of discretion. What could possibly have brought that particular conversation about?”
“You have not talked to her about Eleanor?” Thaddeus asked, as he stepped further into the study. He shook his head. “You have been married for months, Nathaniel. It is a conversation the two of you should have had and had out of the way long before now.”
“The only reason I even brought her up...” Thaddeus continued, defending himself as he crossed his arms. “...was because she was the stark opposite of Euphemia. Eleanor was so incredibly rigid. It was obvious to anyone with eyes that I did not like the late Duchess. I only brought her up to make a light joke, to point out that I clearly prefer Euphemia’s company.
I had no idea I was actually right, or that you had kept her completely in the dark about Eleanor. ”
“It is absolutely none of your business,” Nathaniel snapped. “You should never have brought it up. Never.”
“I did not know that,” Thaddeus clapped back.
Thaddeus sighed, running a hand through his hair as the tension in the room remained thick enough to cut.
“Nathaniel, you have been different. Entirely different. The only reason I was so insistent on coming to visit today was because I wanted to figure out what was going on with you, and why I have not seen you in a while.”
He stepped closer to the desk, his expression softening.
“Also, I wanted to make friends with your wife. You and I spend a great deal of time together, which means she and I will likely cross paths more often than not. I simply wanted to make peace, to build a friendship with the woman who shares your life. I had no idea that I was stepping directly into what looks like a complete minefield.”
Thaddeus went quiet for a moment. “If it is not entirely obvious to you, Nathaniel, it is glaringly obvious to me that you are being cold toward your wife. Are you doing that on purpose, or are things truly that strained between you and Euphemia?”
Nathaniel shut his eyes tightly, the muscles in his jaw working as he swallowed hard.
“I do not know how to deal with Euphemia,” Nathaniel admitted, the confession tasting like ash in his mouth.
He opened his eyes but didn’t look at his friend, choosing instead to stare blankly at the polished mahogany of his desk.
“I am still thinking of what to do. I am still trying to figure her out, and figure out what it is we are doing entirely.”
He turned back to Thaddeus. “I would deeply appreciate it if you did not make things worse between us. Like bringing up Eleanor for instance.”
“You should tell her,” Thaddeus insisted.
“That’s my business,” he countered. “If you are to talk to Euphemia, you must restrict yourself to light things. Do not speak of my past, do not speak of Eleanor, and do not speak of me.”
Thaddeus squinted his eyes, his gaze sharpening as he looked at him. “What is actually the problem?” Thaddeus asked. “What is it you are not saying?”
Nathaniel was quiet for a long, heavy beat. Slowly, he moved away from the window and sank into the leather chair at his desk, rubbing a hand across his face as the absolute exhaustion of the past week finally caught up to him.
He looked up at Thaddeus and sighed. “I have a problem.”
“I know. What is it?” Thaddeus asked, sitting across from him.
“I do not love her,” Nathaniel said, as if he needed to convince the walls of the room as much as his friend. “I do not love Euphemia. But what I feel for her is... concerning.”
Thaddeus remained entirely still, waiting.
Nathaniel rubbed the back of his neck, staring down at his blotter, struggling to give form to the chaos that had possessed him for the past weeks.
“Whenever she is near, my mind goes completely blank. Everything I am supposed to be focusing on simply vanishes. If she stands close to me, I find myself entirely consumed by the ridiculous urge to touch her. The other day...” He hesitated, his jaw tightening as the memory rushed back.
“The other day, she asked me a question. A question about making love, and ever since that moment, my mind has been an absolute mess.”
He stood up abruptly, pacing a short line behind his chair.
“She... flusters me, Thaddeus. No normal person can exist in such a constant state of emotional disarray, yet she is somehow managing to fluster me almost half of the time. I do not like that kind of effect. I do not like it at all, and it annoys me.”
Nathaniel stopped, turning his eyes toward his friend, frustrated.
“You know me. You know me well. I have work to do. I am simply not at a stage in my life where I want feelings, or where I want to deal with love. I have plans... grand plans, big plans for this estate and my political standing and I need to accomplish all of that first. I do not need the distraction. Euphemia has slowly become exactly that. A distraction. I did not even think it possible for her to be one at the start, but for some inexplicable reason, she has become it anyway. I just want order to return.”
He ran a hand through his hair, his voice dropping slightly.
“I am perfectly all right with her being with my children. I have made my peace with that. Cordelia and Georgianna love her, and she does remarkably well with them. But between the two of us, I just want something normal. Perhaps we could be friends. That is the most we should ever be. But I cannot even manage that, because every time I am around her, I do not think like a normal person. The only solution I have figured out, the only way to regain my sanity is just to avoid her entirely. Avoiding her is the only thing helping me concentrate on the work we have to do.”
Nathaniel threw his hands up slightly, effectively putting all his cards on the table, and sank back into his chair.
Thaddeus watched him in silence for a long moment. Finally, he let out a soft breath and straightened up from the desk.
“It sounds to me like you love her, Nathaniel.”
“I do not,” Nathaniel argued instantly, his voice cracking like a whip across the study.
“If you say so,” Thaddeus replied smoothly, raising his hands in a brief gesture of surrender.
“If that is what you wish to tell yourself, Nathaniel, that is perfectly fine. However, you are not handling it well. From the very little I have seen today, you are not handling this situation, or her, well at all. Euphemia does not look all right. She looked a little pale out there in the drawing room. Perhaps avoiding her is entirely the wrong course of action for both of you. You might want to actually sit down and talk to her about what you are feeling.”
Nathaniel’s expression hardened. “Never. That is absolutely not an option. I am not talking to her about it.”
Thaddeus squinted his eyes, looking down at his friend in frustration.
“Fine. You say it is not love, and I will let you have that. But how do you intend to solve this if the two of you are completely estranged in your own home? I remember what you told me a few days after your wedding. You said you wanted Euphemia to feel at home on this estate. But did you stop to think for even a single second that what you are doing right now is making her feel less comfortable in what is supposed to be her home?”
“I just want a normal situation,” Nathaniel answered, shaking his head as he stared at the ceiling. “A perfectly normal arrangement. I do not want a life where I am constantly worrying about whether she has eaten, or what she is thinking, or what she is doing. I do not like it.”
Thaddeus let out a short, incredulous laugh. “What precisely did you expect to come out of a marriage, Nathaniel, if you did not want any of that?”
“It is a vast manor,” Nathaniel argued immediately, gesturing vaguely toward the walls of the estate.
“It is an enormous estate. I thought, perhaps, that we could all simply disappear into our quiet wings and our separate corners. I believed we could coexist without ever having to deal with any of this complicatedness.” He paused.
“But this has become far too complicated. I will admit that a part of it is my fault. But how do I go back? I want to go back, Thaddeus.”
He stood up again, his movements restless, almost frantic.
“I am not avoiding her to spite her or to be cruel. I just want to return to the time when we could talk about books, or argue over some trivial matter, without me feeling this constant, overwhelming urge to kiss her. I want to go back to when I wasn’t so impressed by how her mind works...
how she thinks... how understanding she is with the girls...
the kind of books that interest her... why they interest her. ”
Nathaniel stopped, his breath hitching slightly as he spoke the truth aloud for the first time.
“Because that is the stranger that has been bleeding into my thoughts these days. This constant urge to just kiss her anytime we are near. I do not want it. It is not good. Love is not my domain. I did not grow up with it, I know nothing of it, and I am not ready for anything that will come and cost me my comfort and my focus. I do not want it.”
“You’ve said that,” Thaddeus answered. “I hear you. As sad and as stubborn as you sound right now, Nathaniel, I hear you. I understand what you are trying to say.”
Before Nathaniel could offer any reply, a sharp knock rattled the door of the study. The door burst open, and the butler stood on the threshold, his face entirely drained of color, his breathing ragged.
“Your Grace,” the butler gasped out, his voice trembling with panic. “It is the Duchess. She is unconscious. She has passed out in the drawing room.”
“What?” Nathaniel blurted, temporarily forgetting how to breathe.
“She is not responding, Your Grace. We have tried —”
Nathaniel was in the corridor before the butler could finish his sentence.
His boots slamming against the floorboards as he ran faster than he ever had in his entire life.
He couldn’t hear Thaddeus calling out after him.
He couldn’t hear the panicked murmurs of the servants diving out of his way as he barreled down the hall.
The only sound left in the universe was the deafening, erratic hammering of his own heart against his ribs, and the violent, rushing roar of blood pumping furiously through his ears.
His chest tightened, a suffocating, icy grip seizing his lungs as he lunged toward the drawing room doors, the terrifying thought of a world without her voice crashing down upon him.
“Effie!” he called out to her, barreling into the room.