Chapter Seven
Eliza rose before dawn.
She told herself it was because she wanted to ride—that the gray mare deserved exercise and the morning air would clear her head.
She told herself it had nothing to do with avoiding the Duke, with the confrontation that still burned in her memory, with the way he had looked at her mouth before walking away.
But she was not a very convincing liar, even to herself.
The truth was simpler and more complicated: she couldn't sleep.
She had lain awake for hours, staring at the canopy of her modest bed, replaying their confrontation in the garden over and over.
The words she had spoken, the fury in her voice.
The way his face had gone pale when she'd accused him of teaching Henry that love was conditional.
And that moment. That terrible, wonderful moment when his eyes had dropped to her mouth, and she had felt something spark between them that had nothing to do with anger.
She had wanted him to kiss her.
Standing there in the garden, furious and trembling and completely out of line, she had wanted the Duke of Northmere to grab her by the shoulders and press his mouth to hers.
The realization had kept her awake half the night, wrestling with the impossibility of it, the impropriety, the absolute certainty that nothing good could come from wanting her employer.
By the time the first gray light crept through her window, she had given up on sleep entirely.
The stables were quiet at this hour, lit only by the pale gray light that preceded sunrise.
Thomas wasn't yet stirring in the groom's quarters; the horses were still drowsy in their boxes, ears pricking with lazy curiosity as she passed.
Only Sovereign was fully alert, his dark eyes tracking her movement down the aisle with that imperious attention she had come to expect from him.
"Good morning, Your Majesty," she murmured, pausing to stroke his nose. "Your master and I had words yesterday. I don't suppose he told you about it?"
Sovereign huffed, which might have been agreement or dismissal.
"No, I didn't think so. Men never talk about these things." She scratched behind his ears, that spot he loved, and felt some of the tension ease from her shoulders. "He was wrong, you know. About Henry. About controlling emotions. About all of it."
The stallion bumped her hand, demanding more scratching.
"But he looked at me, at the end. Before he walked away." She could still feel it. "He looked at me like he wanted to…"
She stopped herself. This was madness. She was standing in a stable at dawn, confessing her confusion to a horse.
"I'm losing my mind," she told Sovereign. "Completely and thoroughly losing my mind."
Sovereign seemed to agree.
She left him with a final pat and moved to Misty's box. The gray mare was as gentle and willing as the Duke had promised, and within twenty minutes, Eliza had her saddled and ready—sidesaddle, because she couldn't quite bring herself to ride astride when there was any chance of being seen.
The moors stretched before her as she emerged from the stable yard, vast and gray-green in the early light.
Mist clung to the hollows, and the air smelled of heather and peat and the distant promise of rain.
It was wild country, beautiful and unforgiving, and Eliza loved it with a fierceness that surprised her.
She urged Misty into a trot, then a canter, following the path that wound along the edge of the estate toward the higher ground.
The wind caught her hair, pulling strands free from her hastily constructed braid.
The cold bit at her cheeks, but she felt alive in a way she rarely did; free from the constraints of propriety and position, just a woman on a horse in the vast wild world.
She didn't hear the hoofbeats behind her until they were almost upon her.
"Miss Harrow."
Her heart seized. She pulled Misty to a halt and turned in the saddle to find the Duke of Northmere approaching on Sovereign, the great black stallion moving with fluid grace across the uneven ground.
He was dressed simply for riding; no cravat, no perfectly pressed coat, just a white shirt open at the collar and dark breeches tucked into boots.
His hair was windswept, disheveled in a way she had never seen it, and the effect was...
Devastating. The effect was absolutely devastating.
"Your Grace." She was proud of how steady her voice sounded. "I didn't expect to see anyone at this hour."
"No." He brought Sovereign alongside Misty, close enough that their horses' breath mingled in the cold air. "I imagine you didn't."
They sat in silence for a moment, the only sounds the soft blowing of the horses and the distant call of a curlew across the moors.
Eliza's heart was pounding. She knew she should say something and maintain the professional distance that their positions required, but all she could think about was the last time they had spoken.
The things she had said and the way he had looked at her.
"I owe you an apology."
The words were so unexpected that she nearly fell off her horse.
"I beg your pardon?"
"An apology." His jaw was tight, his hands rigid on the reins, but he met her gaze steadily. "For yesterday. For what I said to Henry. For…" He stopped and took a breath. "For many things."
Eliza stared at him. In the weeks she had been at Northmere Hall, she had never heard the Duke of Northmere apologize for anything. He issued commands, he made pronouncements, and he maintained his position with the unshakeable certainty of a man who had never been told he was wrong.
And now he was sitting on his horse in the gray dawn light, telling her he was sorry.
"You were right," he continued, the words coming slowly, as if each one cost him something. "About Henry, about what I was teaching him. About…" Another pause. Another steadying breath. "About my fear."
"Your Grace…"
"Please." Something flickered in his gray eyes, something that looked almost like desperation. "Let me finish. I have been... rehearsing this in my head all night. And if I don't say it now, I may never find the courage again."
Courage. He was using her word. The word she had thrown at him in the garden, the word she had used to describe what Henry needed, what children needed, what frozen men hiding behind walls needed.
She nodded silently and let him speak.
"My parents died when I was twenty-five.
" His voice was steady, but she could see the effort it took to keep it so.
"It was a carriage accident. A bridge collapsed in a storm.
My mother was killed instantly. My father survived the initial impact, but he was…
" He stopped. His hands tightened on the reins until his knuckles went white.
"He was not the same. The injuries were severe, but the physicians said he should recover.
They didn't understand that his wounds were not entirely physical. "
Eliza's heart clenched. She had heard whispers, of course; the servants' careful references to "the tragedy," the closed-off rooms, the estate that had been in mourning for years. But she had never known the details.
"He stopped eating." Alistair's voice had gone flat, distant, as if he were reciting facts about a stranger.
"Stopped drinking. Stopped... living. He would lie in his bed and call for her, call for my mother, as if he expected her to walk through the door at any moment.
When he was lucid, which was rarely, he would look at me and say… "
He stopped. The mask of control was cracking, and beneath it, Eliza could see something raw and wounded: a grief that had never healed, but had only been buried.
"He would say that he couldn't live without her.
That there was no point in going on. That the pain of existing in a world where she no longer was…
" His voice broke for a moment. Then the control was back, fragile but intact.
"He died a few days after the accident. The physicians called it complications from his injuries, but I knew better.
He had simply... stopped. He had chosen not to live.
He had chosen to leave Henry and me because he couldn't bear to feel the pain of living without her. "
"Alistair." The name slipped out without permission, without the proper title, and she didn't even try to correct herself. "I'm so sorry."
He looked at her then, and in his eyes, she saw the boy he had been. Twenty-five years old, standing over two graves, holding an infant brother he had no idea how to raise, learning the lesson that would shape the next years of his life.
Love destroys. Attachment kills. The only way to survive is to feel nothing at all.
"I was alone," he said quietly. "I had no one to help me, no one to guide me.
I had a dukedom to manage and an infant to raise and a grief so vast I thought it would swallow me whole.
So, I made a decision that day at the graveside.
I decided that I would never let myself love the way my father loved.
That I would never let anyone close enough to matter.
That I would build walls so high and so thick that nothing could ever hurt me the way losing them had hurt him. "
"And Henry?"
"Henry was..." He closed his eyes. "Henry was the hardest part.
Because I loved him from the moment that I first held him.
This tiny, squalling creature who had no idea that his world had just collapsed…
I held him at the graveside, and I loved him with a fierceness that terrified me.
And I knew that if I let myself feel that love fully, it could destroy me just as completely as my father's love had destroyed him. "
"So, you kept your distance."