Chapter Five #2
He remembered his own childhood—his mother's arms around him after a bad dream, his father's voice telling him stories until the fear faded.
He had been loved fiercely, openly, without reservation.
His parents had never held back their affection, never rationed their tenderness, never made him wonder if he was wanted.
And he had given Henry none of it.
"I should…" His voice cracked, but he tried again. "I should go. Let you settle him."
"Yes." But she didn't look away from him. Her eyes remained fixed on his face, searching for something. "Your Grace?"
"Yes?"
"Would you like to sit with him? Just for a moment?"
The question caught him off guard. He stared at her, uncertain whether she was offering him absolution or a challenge.
"I don't…" He swallowed. "I wouldn't know what to do."
"You don't have to do anything." Her voice was soft, patient—the same voice she used with Henry when coaxing him past his fears. "Just sit. Let him know you're here. Sometimes presence is enough."
Presence. Such a simple thing. And yet Alistair couldn't remember the last time he had simply been present with anyone, without purpose or agenda, without the armor of duty and propriety between another human being and him.
He took a step into the room and then another, but his legs felt strange, as if they belonged to someone else.
Eliza shifted slightly, making room on the edge of the bed. Henry remained asleep, his breathing deep and even, his small face peaceful.
Alistair lowered himself onto the bed. He was close enough now to see the individual strands of Eliza's hair, close enough to smell lavender and something else, something warm and indefinably her.
"You can touch him," Eliza murmured. "If you want."
His hand trembled as he reached out.
He brushed the boy's hair back from his forehead. The lightest touch. The smallest gesture.
Henry sighed in his sleep and turned toward the contact.
Something broke open in Alistair's chest.
"He's so small," he heard himself say. "I forget, sometimes, how small he is."
"He won't be small forever. Children grow quickly." Eliza's voice was barely above a whisper. "The years you miss don't come back."
The years you miss don't come back, he repeated.
Alistair had missed all six years of his brother’s life.
Not physically—he had been here, in this house, managing the estate, maintaining the schedule and doing everything a responsible guardian should do.
But he had missed the moments that mattered.
The scraped knees, the bad dreams, the small triumphs and the questions about the world.
He had been so afraid of loving Henry that he had forgotten to know him.
"I don't know how to do this," he said quietly. "I don't know how to be what he needs."
"No one does, at first." Eliza's hand covered his where it rested on Henry's hair. The touch was brief, barely a second, but it sent a shiver through him. "You learn, you try, you fail, and you try again. That's what love is."
He looked at her and felt something shift in his chest. He felt a door opening, just a crack, just enough to let in a sliver of light.
"Thank you," he said. The words felt hopelessly inadequate. "For caring for him. For... for being here."
"There's nowhere else I'd rather be."
The simple honesty of it undid him.
He turned and left before he could do something unforgivable, like tell her that there was nowhere else he'd rather be, either, except that "here" had somehow stopped meaning his ancestral estate and started meaning wherever she was.
The door closed behind him with a soft click.
He stood in the dark hallway for a long moment, his back pressed against the wall, his hands shaking.
The image would not leave him. Eliza, in her white nightgown, hair streaming like fire, voice lifting in a lullaby that was slightly off-key and utterly perfect. The tenderness in her face as she held his brother. The way she had said my darling as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
The way she had looked at him with those knowing green eyes.
Alistair pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes and breathed.
He did not return to his study. The accounts and the correspondence could wait. Everything could wait, because he knew with terrible certainty that he would not be able to concentrate on a single word.
Instead, he went to his chambers. He undressed mechanically, his valet long since dismissed for the night. He lay in his bed, staring at the canopy, the same canopy his father had stared at, the same bed generations of Ravenshaw dukes had slept in, and did not sleep.
He thought about Henry, small and frightened, dreaming of empty houses and unanswered calls. He thought about the way the boy had turned toward his touch, seeking comfort even in sleep, as if some part of him knew his brother was there.
He thought about his father, dying of a broken heart because he had loved too much and too completely. He thought about his mother, who had loved with equal fervor, who had filled this house with laughter and warmth and the chaos of a life fully lived.
He thought about what they would say if they could see what he had made of their legacy. A house in mourning, a child raised by strangers and a son who had been so afraid of love that he had forgotten how to feel anything at all.
They would be ashamed of him, and that thought was a knife in his chest.
But then he thought about Eliza and knew that he was in far more danger than he had ever admitted.
He wanted her.
The admission, even in the privacy of his own mind, felt like a surrender, a defeat. The first crack in the armor he had spent years constructing.
He wanted things he had no right to want.
Love is a weakness, he reminded himself, the old refrain surfacing from habit. Attachment is dangerous. You cannot afford to feel.
But even as he thought it, he knew the words had lost their power. They had been his shield for so long—but shields, he was beginning to realize, kept things out and in with equal efficiency. They protected, indeed. But they also imprisoned.
And tonight, for the first time in years, Alistair wondered if the prison might be worse than whatever he was protecting himself from.
He thought about Eliza's words: That's what love is. You learn, you try. You fail, and you try again.
He thought about the way she had looked at him—without fear, without judgment, without the careful deference most people showed to his title. She had looked at him like he was a man. Just a man. Flawed and struggling and capable of change.
No one had looked at him like that in years.
He did not sleep that night.
And somewhere between midnight and dawn, he realised that the ice was beginning to crack.
***
Eliza did not see the Duke the next morning.
She had half-expected him at breakfast, or rather, she had half-dreaded him, uncertain how to face him after the intimacy of the night before.
But the morning passed without any sign of His Grace.
Blackwood informed her, in his usual neutral tone, that the Duke had risen early and ridden out and was not expected back until the afternoon.
Running away, Eliza thought, and was not sure whether to be relieved or disappointed.
She told herself the relief was dominant. What had passed between them last night had been too intimate, too dangerous. They had crossed some invisible line, and in the light of day, distance was probably wise.
But another part of her, a foolish, romantic part that she had thought she'd outgrown years ago, felt the Duke's absence like a physical ache.
She had watched him touch his brother for the first time. She had seen the wonder on his face, the way his rigid control had cracked just enough to let something vulnerable through. She had felt his hand tremble beneath hers, and she had wanted…
Stop it. She pressed her fingers against her eyes, willing the thoughts away. He is your employer. He is a duke. He is not for you, and thinking otherwise will only lead to heartbreak.
But her heart, it seemed, had stopped listening to reason.