Chapter Three #3
He would be professional. He would be distant and cordial but cool.
He would treat her as he treated all his employees—with fairness and respect, but without warmth.
Without interest. Without any indication that the sight of her made his carefully constructed world feel suddenly, terrifyingly unstable.
Alistair straightened his coat, smoothed his expression, and walked back to the house with the rigid posture of a man marching into battle.
He was the Duke of Northmere. He was not the sort of man who lost his head over copper hair, green eyes and an unconventional governess who talked to horses about loneliness.
He was not, but…
He was in trouble.
Deep, complicated, entirely self-inflicted trouble.
He thought about what she had said in his study yesterday.
About courage, love and children who needed warmth rather than schedules.
He had dismissed it then, or tried to, but now, having seen her with Sovereign, having watched her gentle the beast that no one else could touch, he found her words echoing in his mind with uncomfortable resonance.
Everyone's afraid of him, so they keep their distance. But underneath all that, he just wants to be understood.
Was that what she saw when she looked at Alistair? A creature made vicious by isolation? A beast whose thorns were merely defenses against a world that had taught him that softness led to destruction?
The thought was unbearable. And yet he could not quite dismiss it.
Tomorrow, he would be better. Colder and more controlled.
Tomorrow.
***
That evening, Eliza sat in the nursery with Henry, their dinner trays balanced on the small table between them, and tried very hard to pay attention to the boy's excited chatter about Perseus's latest adventure.
"—and then he flew over the mountains, and there was a giant, Miss Harrow, a real giant, well not a real one but a story one, and he had a club as big as a tree…"
"That sounds very frightening."
"It was! But Perseus wasn't scared. He's never scared. He faced the giant, and he said…" Henry's voice dropped to what he clearly considered a heroic register. "'You cannot defeat me, for I have the heart of a warrior!'"
"An excellent sentiment." Eliza smiled, watching the animation in his face and the light in his eyes that had been absent when she first arrived.
Three days. Three days of stories, walks and gentle encouragement, and already the real child was beginning to emerge from behind the mask of the perfect little lord.
But even as she celebrated Henry's progress, her mind kept drifting back to the stables. To the Duke's unexpected appearance and to the offer that had left her speechless.
You may ride her. Astride, if you wish.
It made no sense. Everything she knew about the Duke of Northmere suggested a man who valued propriety above all else, who ran his household with military precision, who would never condone something as scandalous as a female servant riding astride on his land.
And yet he had offered it to her freely. Almost... warmly.
"Miss Harrow? Are you listening?"
Eliza blinked, pulling herself back to the present. "I'm sorry, sweetheart. I was woolgathering. Please, continue… The giant with the tree-club?"
Henry regarded her with the knowing expression of a child who was far more perceptive than adults gave him credit for. "You're thinking about His Grace."
"I…What? No. I was merely…"
"You looked at the stable doors. After he left. You looked for a very long time."
Eliza felt heat rise in her cheeks. "I was simply surprised by his kindness. The offer of the mare was unexpected."
"His Grace isn't usually kind," Henry said matter-of-factly, without bitterness. "He's fair. And he provides everything we need. But he doesn't... He doesn't give presents."
"The mare wasn't a present. It was a practical arrangement for exercise."
"He could have assigned a groom to exercise her. He didn't have to let you ride her yourself." Henry poked at his vegetables with deliberate focus. "And he definitely didn't have to say you could ride astride. That's against the rules. He never bends the rules."
No, Eliza thought. He didn't, did he?
So why had he bent them for her?
She pushed the question aside; it was too complicated to examine, too laden with implications she wasn't ready to consider, and reached across the table to ruffle Henry's hair.
"Enough speculation about His Grace. Tell me how Perseus defeated the giant."
Henry's face lit up, the mystery of the Duke's behavior forgotten in favor of heroic tales. "He found the giant's weakness! Every giant has one, you see. This one was afraid of singing. So, Perseus sang the most beautiful song, and the giant fell asleep, and then…"
Eliza listened, and laughed in all the right places, and pretended that she wasn't counting the hours until morning.
Until she could go to the stables again.
Until she could ride.
Until she could feel, for a few brief moments, as wild and free as the copper hair she could never quite contain.
And if her thoughts drifted, unbidden, to gray eyes, rigid shoulders and hands that flexed with suppressed impulse…well, that was her own foolishness, and she would master it.
She looked out the nursery window at the darkening moors and she pulled the curtains closed, blocking out the night and the temptation to wonder if the Duke was somewhere in that vast house, staring at the darkness and thinking of her.
He wasn't, of course.
Men like him did not think of women like her.