Chapter Fourteen
The storm arrived on the third week of December, sweeping down from the north with a ferocity that made the servants mutter about omens and the older tenants shake their heads with grim satisfaction.
"Worst one in twenty years," Mrs. Crawford declared, watching the snow pile against the windows. "Remember my words, we'll be snowed in for a fortnight."
She wasn't far wrong. Within hours, the moors had disappeared beneath a blanket of white so thick that even the nearest outbuildings were barely visible.
The wind howled around the corners of Northmere Hall like a living thing, rattling the windows and sending drafts sneaking through every crack and crevice.
The household retreated to the warmest rooms, huddling around fires that had to be stoked constantly to combat the creeping cold.
Eliza watched the storm from the nursery window, mesmerized by its violence. She had experienced difficult winters before; she had lived through snowstorms and ice storms and the bitter cold that seemed to seep into one's bones, but this was something different. Something primal.
It was beautiful, in a terrible way. And it made her feel very small.
"Miss Harrow?" Henry tugged at her sleeve. "Are we going to die?"
She turned from the window, startled. "What? No, of course not. Why would you think that?"
"Thomas says that people die in storms like this. He says they wander out into the snow and get lost and freeze to death, and nobody finds them until spring when the snow melts and there's just a skeleton left."
"Thomas has a vivid imagination and a poor sense of appropriate conversation topics for six-year-olds." She knelt beside him, taking his hands in hers. "We're perfectly safe inside the house. We have food, firewood and warm beds. The storm will pass, and everything will be fine."
"Promise?"
"I promise."
He seemed satisfied with this, returning to his toy soldiers with the resilience of childhood.
But Eliza remained troubled, not by the storm itself but by what it represented: days, perhaps weeks, trapped inside this house with nowhere to escape.
Nowhere to hide from the feelings that seemed to grow stronger with each passing day.
Nowhere to hide from him.
"It's like being in a castle under siege!" Henry announced at breakfast the next morning, pressing his nose against the frost-rimed window. "We could be trapped here for months! We might have to ration our food!"
"We have enough provisions to last the entire winter," Alistair said dryly. "I don't think rationing will be necessary."
"But it would be more exciting if it were."
"Life is not required to be exciting, Henry. Sometimes it's simply required to be survived."
"That's a very gloomy way of looking at things."
"I prefer to call it realistic."
Eliza hid her smile behind her teacup. The banter between the brothers had become easier in recent weeks, more natural.
Alistair still retreated into formality sometimes because old habits were difficult to break, but more and more often, she caught glimpses of the man beneath the duke.
The man who could be warm, and witty, and unexpectedly playful when he forgot to be guarded.
The man who had touched her wrist in the firelight and told her he thought about her constantly.
They hadn't spoken of that night. In the days since, they had circled each other with careful politeness, maintaining the fiction that nothing had changed while both of them knew that everything had.
The air between them was charged with awareness, every accidental touch sending sparks through her body, every exchanged glance weighted with unspoken meaning.
It was exhausting, exhilarating and absolutely unsustainable.
Something was going to break. Eliza could feel it building, like the pressure before a storm. The only question was when, and what would be left standing afterwards.
***
The storm raged for three days.
By the second day, the household had settled into a kind of enforced intimacy. With outdoor activities impossible and even trips to the stables inadvisable, everyone was confined to the main house, thrown together in ways that normal life didn't allow.
Henry, predictably, grew restless. Lessons could only occupy so many hours, and a six-year-old boy was not designed for extended indoor confinement.
By the afternoon of the second day, he had exhausted the possibilities of his toy soldiers, grown bored of his books, and begun the kind of aimless wandering that inevitably led to trouble.
"Perhaps we could play a game," Eliza suggested, intercepting him on his third circuit of the library. "Something that requires thinking. Chess, perhaps?"
"Chess is boring."
"You only say that because you haven't learned to play properly yet."
"I say it because it's true. All you do is move pieces around a board. There's no adventure in it."
"There's tremendous adventure in chess. It's a battle, Henry. A war of minds. Every move is a strategy, every capture a victory."
Henry looked skeptical but allowed himself to be led to the chess table in the corner of the library. Eliza was setting up the pieces when she heard footsteps behind her and turned to find Alistair in the doorway.
"Am I interrupting?"
"Not at all." Her voice came out steadier than she felt. "I'm attempting to convince your brother that chess is not, in fact, boring."
"A noble endeavour." He crossed to join them, looking down at the board with an expression that might have been nostalgia. "My father taught me to play when I was about Henry's age. I remember thinking it was the most tedious activity imaginable."
"And now?"
"Now I recognise it as one of the few useful skills he imparted." A ghost of a smile crossed his face. "Though I confess I haven't played in years. There's been no one to play against."
"You could play against Miss Harrow," Henry said, with the transparent cunning of a child who sensed an opportunity to escape lessons. "I could watch and learn."
"I'm not sure that's…" Eliza began.
"An excellent idea," Alistair finished. "If Miss Harrow is willing."
She should insist on the original plan, on teaching Henry herself.
But Alistair was already pulling up a chair across from her, and Henry was settling onto the settee with an expression of profound satisfaction, and somehow, she found herself sitting down to play chess with the Duke of Northmere while the storm howled outside and the fire crackled in the grate.
"White moves first," Alistair said, gesturing to her pieces. "Ladies' privilege."
"I thought the privilege belonged to white, not to ladies."
"In this house, they amount to the same thing."
She moved a pawn forward, and the game began.
He was good. Better than good—he was excellent, with the kind of strategic mind that saw three moves ahead and planned for contingencies she hadn't even considered. Within ten moves, she was on the defensive; within twenty, she was fighting for survival.
"You're toying with me," she accused, watching him capture her bishop with infuriating ease.
"I'm playing the game."
"You're enjoying watching me struggle."
"I'm enjoying watching you think." His eyes met hers across the board, and something shifted in his expression. "You get a little line between your eyebrows when you're concentrating. Right here." He touched his own forehead, indicating the spot. "It's quite distracting."
"I'll try to concentrate less distractingly in future."
"Please don't. I find it…" He stopped, seeming to catch himself. "Charming," he finished, more carefully. "I find it charming."
The word hung between them, laden with meaning. Eliza felt heat rise in her cheeks and forced herself to focus on the board.
"It's your move," she said.
"I'm aware."
But he didn't move. He sat there, watching her with those storm-gray eyes, and she felt the weight of his attention like a physical touch.
From the settee, Henry's breathing had deepened into the rhythm of sleep. At some point during the game, he had dozed off, lulled by the warmth of the fire and the steady murmur of adult conversation.
They were alone. As alone as they had been in the nursery that night, with only a sleeping child as chaperone.
"Eliza." Alistair's voice was low, rough. "We need to talk."
"About the game?"
"You know what about."
She did know. She had known since she sat down that this moment was coming—that the careful distance they had maintained couldn't hold forever.
"We shouldn't," she said, but her voice lacked conviction.
"I know." He reached across the board, and for a moment she thought he was going to touch her, but he only moved his knight, capturing her rook. "Checkmate in three moves, by the way."
"What?"
"The game. You've lost. Or you will, in three moves."
She stared at the board, trying to see what he saw, but her mind was too scattered to focus on strategy. "I don't…"
"It doesn't matter." He pushed back from the table, rising to his feet. "The game doesn't matter."
"Then what does?"
He was standing over her now, close enough that she had to tilt her head back to meet his eyes. Close enough that she could see the rapid pulse beating in his throat, and she could feel the heat radiating from his body.
"You do," he said. "You matter. And I don't know what to do about it."
"Alistair…"
"I've tried to stop." His voice was strained, rough with emotion he couldn't quite contain. "I've tried to be sensible, to remember my position, to remember yours. I've told myself a hundred times that this is impossible, that I'm being unfair to you, that I have no right to…"
"To what?"
"To want you the way I want you." The words came out like a confession, torn from somewhere deep.
"To think about you every waking moment.
To lie awake at night imagining…" He stopped, his jaw tightening.
"It doesn't matter what I imagine. What matters is that I can't stop. I've tried, and I can't."