Chapter Nine #3
"And what is it you think you can offer?"
"A frozen house in the middle of nowhere. A man who spent years forgetting how to feel. A future full of…" He laughed, but there was no humor in it. "A future full of crop rotation and difficult pheasants."
"You could offer her love."
"Love destroyed my father."
"Your father destroyed himself." Lady Pufferton's voice was gentle but firm. "The love he shared with your mother was the best thing in his life. It wasn't love that killed him; it was his inability to exist without it. There's a difference."
"Is there?"
"Yes. Love makes us stronger, not weaker.
It gives us something to fight for, something to live for.
Your father's mistake wasn't loving too much—it was forgetting that he had other things to live for.
Henry and you. The people who needed him.
" She reached up and touched his cheek, a gesture so maternal that it made his throat tighten.
"You're not your father, Alistair. You never were. "
"I'm afraid I might become him."
"I know you are. But fear isn't a reason to refuse happiness. It's a reason to be brave." She smiled. "I believe a certain governess taught you that."
Alistair closed his eyes. "What if she leaves? What if she takes the position, goes to London, and I never…"
"Then you'll have lost her without ever really having her. Is that what you want?"
"No."
"Then do something about it." Lady Pufferton patted his cheek and stepped back. "You have time. I don't need her answer until spring. Use that time wisely."
"And do what?"
"Court her, woo her. Show her what she would be leaving behind if she goes." His godmother's eyes sparkled with mischief. "You're a duke, for heaven's sake. You have resources. Use them."
"I wouldn't even know where to begin."
"Then find out. You're supposedly the most intelligent man in Yorkshire—surely you can manage to make one woman fall in love with you."
She swept out of the dining room, leaving Alistair alone with the guttering candles and the weight of everything he didn't know how to say.
He had no idea how to do any of those things. He had spent years avoiding exactly this kind of situation, and now he was expected to suddenly transform into a romantic hero?
But the alternative was worse. The alternative was watching her leave, knowing he had done nothing to stop her, spending the rest of his life wondering what might have happened if he had been brave enough to try.
He was terrified. More frightened than he had been since those dark days after his parents' deaths, when he had stood at two gravesides and sworn never to let himself feel this way again.
But he was beginning to realize that the only thing more frightening than loving her was the thought of losing her.
And if that wasn't a reason to be brave, he didn't know what was.
***
In her room, Eliza sat at her window and stared out at the moonlit moors.
London. Lady Pufferton's offer would lead to a future full of possibilities.
She should want it, because it was exactly the kind of opportunity she had dreamed of during those lean years after her father's death, when she had taken whatever governess position she could find and told herself that someday, somehow, things would be different.
And now "different" was being offered to her on a silver platter. A life in London. A place in society, however peripheral. The chance to attend balls, concerts and exhibitions, to see the great works of art she had only read about, to hear music performed by masters instead of village amateurs.
The chance to meet eligible gentlemen and to marry, perhaps. The chance to have a home of her own, children of her own, a life that wasn't bound by nurseries, schedules and the whims of employers.
But when she closed her eyes, all she could see was gray eyes across a dinner table. All she could feel was the weight of a gaze that followed her even when she wasn't looking. All she could hear was a voice in a darkened hallway, rough with emotion: I can't stop thinking about you.
She thought about what Lady Pufferton had said. Your life is your own. Don't give it away to someone else's expectations.
But what if her expectations and her desires were pulling in opposite directions? What if the sensible choice and the choice of her heart were two completely different things?
She pressed her forehead against the cool glass of the window and tried to imagine leaving. She tried to imagine packing her things, saying goodbye to Henry and then never seeing Alistair again.
The thought made her chest ache with a pain so sharp it stole her breath.
When had this happened? When had she stopped thinking of him as "the Duke" and started thinking of him as "Alistair"? When had his happiness become tangled up with her own, until she couldn't imagine one without the other?
She couldn't make this decision tonight. There were too many variables, too many unknowns, but nothing concrete. Nothing she could build a future on.
Unless something changes, she thought. Unless one of us is brave enough to say the words.
But bravery was easier to preach than to practice. And the risk of being wrong, of baring her heart only to have it rejected, was almost too terrible to contemplate.
Spring was months away. She had time to realise what she wanted, what he wanted, what any of this meant.
They had time to be brave.
She just hoped it would be enough.