Chapter Six #2
"What you intend and what you communicate are two different things.
" She was breathing hard now, her chest heaving, her hair escaping its pins in the heat of her anger.
A curl fell across her face, and she shoved it back impatiently.
"You are raising a duke, yes. But I am raising a boy.
And boys need to cry. They need to be held when they're hurt and comforted when they're scared and told that their feelings, all their feelings, not just the convenient ones, are valid and important. "
"You presume to lecture me on how to raise my own brother?"
"Someone has to!" The words burst out of her with all the force of weeks of frustration.
"Someone has to tell you that what you're doing isn't working.
That Henry isn't thriving under your precious schedules and discipline—he's withering.
He's learning to make himself small and quiet and invisible because that's the only way to survive in a house where emotions are forbidden. "
"That is not…" He stepped toward her, his voice rising. "I am trying to protect him. To prepare him for a world that will not coddle him, that will expect him to lead, command and maintain composure under pressure…"
"He is six!" Eliza threw her hands up. "He is six years old, and his world right now should be playing and learning and feeling safe enough to cry when he falls out of a tree.
The pressures of leadership can wait. The demands of the dukedom can wait.
What cannot wait is a child's need to know that he is loved; unconditionally, without reservation, regardless of whether he meets some impossible standard of emotional control. "
"You think I don't love him?" The words came out raw, almost wounded.
"I think you don't know how to show it." She held his gaze, refusing to flinch.
"I think you've spent so long burying your own feelings that you've forgotten other people are allowed to have them.
I think you look at your brother and see a future duke who must be molded and shaped, instead of a little boy who just wants his brother to hold him when he's hurt. "
The Duke went very still.
Something shifted in his expression, something that looked almost like pain breaking through the ice.
"You know nothing," he said quietly, "of what I have lost. Of why I…" He stopped and swallowed hard. "You have no idea what you're asking of me."
"I'm asking you to be human." Her voice softened despite herself. "I'm asking you to remember that you were a child once, too. That you had fears and hurts and tears, and that somewhere, someone loved you enough to comfort you through them."
His hands clenched into fists at his sides.
"My father," he said, and the word came out broken.
"My father loved like that. Openly, freely.
Without reservation or protection." He laughed, but there was no humor in it.
"And when my mother died, that love destroyed him.
He chose death over life without her. He abandoned me, abandoned Henry, because he couldn't bear to exist in a world where he had to feel the pain of losing her. "
Eliza's breath caught.
"So yes, Miss Harrow." His voice was ice over fire, control barely containing chaos.
"I know where unrestrained emotion leads to.
I have seen what happens when a man loves without walls or limits.
I watched my father waste away because he could not govern his heart, and I swore that I would never be that weak. "
"Love isn't weakness…"
"Love killed him!" The words exploded out of him, raw and anguished. "Love killed my father as surely as if someone had put a blade through his heart. And I will not...I cannot…" He stopped, his chest heaving, his composure in tatters.
For a long moment, neither of them spoke. The garden was silent around them: no birdsong, no rustling leaves, nothing but the sound of their breathing and the distant murmur of wind across the moors.
Eliza became suddenly aware of how close they were standing. Close enough that she could see the rapid pulse in his throat. Close enough to smell leather and horse and something else—something warm and male that made her stomach flutter despite her anger.
His eyes dropped to her mouth.
Just for a second. Just long enough for her to notice.
And then he looked away, his jaw tight, his hands clenched at his sides.
"You forget your place, Miss Harrow."
"My place?" She laughed, but there was no humor in it. "My place is with Henry. My place is making sure that the child knows he is loved, even when the people who should love him seem determined to keep him at arm's length."
"You know nothing of what I…" He stopped himself and took a breath. When he spoke again, his voice was controlled, distant, the walls fully back in place. "You are dismissed for the day."
"Your Grace…"
"That will be all."
He turned and walked away. His stride was rigid, his shoulders tight, every line of his body radiating tension. He did not look back.
Eliza stood alone in the garden, her heart pounding, her hands shaking. The anger was still there, burning in her chest, but beneath it was something else. Something she couldn't quite name.
She thought about the way he had flinched when she accused him of teaching Henry that love was conditional.
He was not heartless. That was the terrible thing. He was not cold by nature, only by choice; a choice made in pain, reinforced by fear, maintained through sheer force of will. There was warmth in him, buried deep. She had seen it, and she had felt it.
But he was so afraid of that warmth that he would rather hurt the people he loved than risk feeling it himself.
She pressed her hand against her stomach, where something was fluttering that had no business being there.
He looked at my mouth.
The thought surfaced unbidden, unwelcome. In the middle of their argument, in the middle of her righteous fury, he had looked at her mouth like a man who wanted to kiss her.
And Heaven help her, some treacherous part of her had wanted him to.
She shook herself. This was madness. She was angry with him, furious. He had just wounded his brother with careless words, and she should be focused on Henry, not on the Duke's gray eyes and the way they had darkened when they dropped to her lips.
"Get yourself together," she muttered, brushing off her skirts and heading toward the house. "Henry needs you. Henry is what matters."
She repeated it like a mantra all the way inside. But it didn't help as much as she had hoped.
She found Henry curled on his bed, facing the wall, his small body rigid with the effort of containing emotions he had been told were unacceptable. She sat beside him, not touching, not speaking, simply present.
After a long moment, a small voice broke the silence.
"Am I in trouble?"
"No, sweetheart. You're not in trouble."
"But I cried. His Grace said…"
"His Grace was wrong."
Henry turned his head slightly, one eye peering at her over his shoulder. "Dukes can be wrong?"
"Everyone can be wrong. Even dukes. Especially dukes, sometimes." She reached out and smoothed the hair back from his forehead. "Your brother loves you very much, Henry. But he's forgotten some important things about feelings."
"What things?"
"That it's safe to cry. That showing your feelings isn’t dangerous.
" She chose her words carefully, aware that she was walking a line between truth and loyalty.
"He learned those things when he was young, just like you're learning things now.
The difference is that after a certain point, he started not believing in the things he had been taught. "
Henry was quiet for a moment, processing this. Then, slowly, he uncurled from his defensive ball and turned to face her fully.
"Miss Harrow? Did you tell His Grace he was wrong?"
Eliza thought about the confrontation in the garden. About the things she had said, the lines she had crossed, and the way the Duke had looked at her when she'd finished.
"Yes," she said. "I did."
Henry's eyes went wide. "Weren't you scared?"
"A little. But being brave doesn't mean not being scared. It means doing the right thing even when you are scared."
"Like Perseus."
"Exactly like Perseus."
A small hand crept into hers. "I'm glad you're brave, Miss Harrow."
Eliza squeezed his fingers gently. "I'm glad you are too."
They sat together in the fading afternoon light, hand in hand, while outside the window the autumn sun began its descent toward the moors.
Eliza didn't know what would happen next; whether the Duke would dismiss her, whether her words had done any good at all, whether the fragile progress she had made with Henry could survive another blow.
But in this moment, holding this child's hand, she knew she had done the right thing.
Whatever came next, she would face it.
***
Alistair made it to his study before his composure shattered completely.
He slammed the door behind him, pressed his back against it, and let out a breath that felt like it had been trapped in his chest for years.
What on earth had just happened?
He had been returning from his morning ride, his usual escape, his desperate attempt to exhaust himself into something approaching peace, when he had heard Henry's cries. He had gone to investigate, expecting to find some minor crisis that the governess would have well in hand.
Instead, he had found Eliza Harrow on her knees in the grass, her arms wrapped around his sobbing brother, her face soft with a tenderness that had stolen his breath.
And he had ruined it.
He had seen Henry crying, and something had seized in his chest: some old, familiar panic, and before he could think, the words were out of his mouth.
Compose yourself. The same words his tutors had used on him.
The same words he had used on himself, countless times, when grief threatened to overwhelm him.
Control and discipline. The suppression of weakness.