Chapter Sixteen #2
Something flickered across his face: frustration, disappointment, the struggle to accept what she was saying.
"You're right. I'm sorry. I just…" He exhaled heavily. "I can't bear the thought of him near you. It makes me want to be violent."
"I know." She squeezed his arm. "But violence won't solve this. Patience will. In a few days, he'll be gone, and we can forget he was ever here."
"I won't forget." His voice was dark with promise. "I'll remember everything. And someday, when I have proof, when I can act without risking you or Henry, I'll make him pay for every look, every touch, every moment of fear he's caused you."
"That's a long time to carry a grudge."
"Some grudges are worth carrying."
***
After that night, everything changed.
Alistair began avoiding her.
At first, she thought it was a coincidence; he was busy with estate matters, occupied with correspondence, and engaged with the endless demands of being a duke.
The year-end accounts needed review. The tenants required attention before the holidays.
There were a thousand legitimate reasons for a duke to be occupied, and she told herself that his absence was simply the natural consequence of his responsibilities.
But as the days passed, the pattern became unmistakable.
He no longer appeared at lessons—those precious hours when he had sat in the corner of the nursery, pretending to read while his eyes found hers across the room.
He took meals in his study rather than the dining room, sending his apologies through Mrs. Crawford with increasingly thin excuses.
He rose early and retired late, arranging his schedule to minimize any chance of encountering her.
When they did cross paths, in a corridor, in the entrance hall, in the brief moments between one obligation and another, he was polite but distant.
His eyes slid away from hers as if the sight of her caused him pain.
His voice was courteous but cool, stripped of the warmth that had grown between them over the past months.
It was as if the man who had cupped her face in his hands, who had spoken of marriage and love and future, had been replaced by a stranger wearing his face.
It hurt. More than she had expected, more than she wanted to admit.
"His Grace has been very busy lately," Mrs. Crawford observed one afternoon, in the careful tone of a servant who sees everything and says nothing. "The year-end accounts, I believe. They always put him in a dark mood."
"Yes," Eliza agreed, knowing it for a lie. "The accounts."
She wanted to confront him and demand an explanation, to understand why he had retreated just when she needed him most. But every time she tried to seek him out, she found his study door closed, or she was told he was with his steward, or she discovered he had gone for a ride across the moors despite the bitter cold.
He was running from her. And she didn't know why.
Was it something I said? Something I did? Have I taken too long to answer, and he's changed his mind?
The questions tormented her at night, when she lay alone in her room listening for footsteps that never came.
She replayed their last conversation, searching for some clue, some moment when everything had shifted.
But she could find nothing; only his anger at Thornton, his fierce protectiveness, his desperate desire to claim her publicly.
And then, suddenly, nothing.
Meanwhile, Thornton grew bolder.
Without Alistair's protective presence, he had free rein to pursue her.
He appeared at her elbow during meals, full of solicitous attention.
He "accidentally" encountered her in the hallways, blocking her path with his body until she was forced to brush past him, feeling the heat of him through her clothes.
He sent her gifts: a ribbon, a book of poetry, a bottle of French perfume, each accompanied by notes that walked the line between flattery and proposition.
A token of my admiration.
I thought of you when I saw this.
Something to sweeten your solitary evenings.
She returned every gift, refused every overture and avoided every trap.
But it was exhausting. The constant vigilance, the unending awareness of his presence, the knowledge that he was watching her, waiting for her to slip. She could feel his eyes on her even when she couldn't see him.
And through it all, Alistair remained absent. Unreachable. As if he had abandoned her to Thornton's pursuit.
By the third day, her nerves were frayed to breaking.
"You look tired," Henry observed during lessons. "Are you not sleeping well?"
"I'm fine, sweetheart."
"You don't look fine. You look like Alistair did last year when he was ill." Henry cocked his head, considering. "Is Lord Thornton still bothering you?"
The directness of the question startled a laugh out of her. "What makes you think Lord Thornton is bothering me?"
"Because he follows you around like a bad smell. And because Alistair has been hiding in his study instead of eating with us. He only does that when something is wrong." The boy's eyes were too knowing for his age. "Is something wrong, Miss Harrow?"
"Nothing you need to worry about."
"That means yes." Henry set down his pencil with the air of someone coming to a decision. "I'm going to tell Alistair."
"Henry, no…"
But he was already gone, darting out of the nursery before she could stop him.