Chapter 23
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
ONE WEEK LATER...
“You came all the way here to Mayfair to see Euphemia and me simply because you have not seen your husband in a week?” Leonora asked, leaning back against the settee and tilting her head in disbelief.
Seraphina paused, her teacup hovering mid-air halfway to her lips. She looked down into the swirling liquid, unable to immediately construct a suitably rational reply.
She had no clue how her reality tilted so violently on its axis in the span of seven short days.
A mere fortnight ago, she had been actively engineering methods to avoid William altogether.
She had calculated his daily routine, mapping out his movements through the Manor, simply to ensure she did not cross his path.
She had sought to protect her nervous system from him.
Yet now? The situation had inverted into something far more dangerous, far more destabilizing.
Avoiding him by her own conscious choice was one matter; being systematically excluded from his presence was an entirely different trial.
Over the past seven days, it felt as though she had lost a vital piece of her own structure, as if an essential structural rib had been excised from her side, leaving her balance utterly compromised.
The absence of him was actively unraveling her.
He did not come down for breakfast. The head of the long table sat empty morning after morning, his silver cutlery lying untouched beside an unread copy of The Times.
He did not appear for lunch. He was absent from dinner, leaving Seraphina to pick silently at her roast fowl in a dining room that felt vast, cavernous, and devoid of warmth.
Even when she spent her afternoons with Alice, guided by a swelling sense of pride as the girl began to speak in clearer, more confident sentences, the victory felt hollow.
Seraphina had caught herself constantly glancing toward the door, desperately hoping to hear his footsteps in the corridor so she could share the news of his ward’s remarkable progress.
She could not find him anywhere. She had tiptoed past his private study at all hours of the night, only to find the room dark, the grate cold, and the air heavy with the scent of old leather and lingering tobacco, but no William.
She had walked past the library, the morning room, the stables, and even the manicured gardens where they had once shared that fateful afternoon.
Nothing. Not even a shadow of him remained in the spaces of the estate.
She knew he had not left the manor. The footmen confirmed his presence; papers were brought to his desk, trunks were not packed... He was simply existing in the periphery, executing an invisible, flawless campaign of absolute evasion. He was hiding from her within his own home.
It was driving her mad.
On one hand, she was utterly disgusted with herself for seeking him out.
Why did her feet naturally gravitate toward his quarters whenever she let her concentration slip?
Why did her eyes automatically scan every hallway, every doorway, every archway in search of his frame?
It was an embarrassing, involuntary compulsion.
On the other hand, the logic of it collapsed under its own weight because she was the one who had started this ridiculous game of avoidance in the first place! She had wanted distance. She had explicitly declared that her physical attraction was a transient phase that required management and space.
So why did the spatial distance feel less like a managed experiment and more like an open wound?
Seraphina set her teacup back down onto its porcelain saucer. She smoothed the folds of her day dress and looked up at her two sisters.
“It is not as though it is bordering on an obsession,” Seraphina stated smoothly.
“I merely find the circumstantial shift unusual. I have not seen William in a full week, and I naturally began to wonder if I had committed some unforeseen breach of social protocol, or if some grave matter of state had gone awry.”
She paused, shifting her gaze across the small tea table toward Euphemia.
Euphemia was sitting forward, her soft blue eyes wide with an expression that Seraphina recognized all too well. It was a look of intense, romantic speculation, a look that practically vibrated with the urge to weave a grand, dramatic narrative of star-crossed lovers and hidden longing.
Seraphina held up a hand, nipping the impulse in the bud before Euphemia could utter a single syllable.
“Effie, please,” Seraphina said firmly. “If you are preparing to deliver a lecture on the romantic notions of love, or if you intend to launch into a speech declaring that my heart is secretly aching for my husband, I must ask you to refrain. Now is truly not the time. I love you... I love you both more than life itself, but you are an utterly hopeless romantic, Euphemia. You live in a world of poetry, courtly devotion, and dramatic sighs, and I simply cannot allow your sentimental romanticism to rub off on me.”
Euphemia gasped softly, crossing her arms over her light pink bodice, a playful yet genuine pout settling on her lips. “Why, pray tell, should my romanticism not rub off on you? Is it really such a terrible fate to view the world with a bit of warmth, Seraphina?”
“For me? Yes, it is,” Seraphina countered swiftly. “It would compromise my entire analytical framework.”
“Oh, hogwash!” Euphemia declared softly, leaning across the table.
“You insist on viewing yourself as this rigid, cold, unshakable creature who is entirely immune to the human heart. You think you are the sister who must remain uptight, pragmatic, and fiercely focused at all times. The living reincarnation of Lady Byron! You wear her stoicism like a suit of armor.”
Seraphina tilted her chin up slightly. “Lady Byron is a woman of intellect and extraordinary discipline. I am proud to emulate her principles.”
“Lady Byron took in three girls out of the goodness of her soul,” Euphemia reminded her gently.
“She was not a stone statue, Seraphina, and neither are you. I am not trying to mock your logic. I am worried about you. I am terrified that if you do not allow yourself to open your heart to the possibility that your feelings are changing... that you are changing, you are going to end up profoundly heartbroken.”
Euphemia reached across the table, taking Seraphina’s hand and giving it a gentle squeeze.
“Consider the reality of your arrangement with William,” Euphemia continued.
“You entered into a business agreement, a transactional marriage designed to achieve specific goals for both of your estates. But time moves forward, Seraphina. What happens when your goals are achieved? What happens when the threat against your name fades, the time passes, and you are expected to part ways? If you spend all your time fighting what you feel right now, you are going to look back when he is gone and deeply regret that you never took the chance to see what this could have been.”
Seraphina pulled her hand back gently, straightening her spine even further as a wall of denial slammed down over her thoughts.
“I will regret nothing, Euphemia,” Seraphina asserted. “Because what I am experiencing is fleeting. It is a baseline impulse, a temporary biological surge that will pass in due time. I will not look back with regret because I am not operating under an illusion.”
Euphemia looked at her for a moment. She leaned back in her chair, folding her hands in her lap.
“Very well,” Euphemia said softly. “If you will not listen to poetry, then listen to the science you love so dearly. Let me offer you a factual observation, one that even you cannot debate.”
Seraphina narrowed her eyes slightly, instantly on guard. “Oh, dear.”
“Have you ever studied the natural phenomenon of heliotropism in botany?” Euphemia asked.
“You read every text in Lady Byron’s study on botanical biology, so you know precisely what it is.
It is the natural, involuntary orientation of a plant toward the sun.
Consider the common sunflower, Seraphina.
It does not possess a mind to calculate energy expenditure.
It does not draft a logical treatise on whether it ought to turn.
You can plant it in the richest soil, place it in a sheltered greenhouse, and shield it from every harsh wind, but the moment the sun rises in the east and moves across the sky, the plant’s stem, leaves, and face bend to track its trajectory. ”
Seraphina opened her mouth to interrupt, but Euphemia held up a hand, her gaze locked onto her sister’s.
“The plant does not choose to turn,” Euphemia explained smoothly. “It turns because it requires the light and warmth of the sun to sustain its biological structure. It is an instinctual, innate response to a vital external force.”
Euphemia leaned forward. “From all that you have said. Look at yourself over the past month, Seraphina. Every time His Grace steps into a room, you tilt toward him. Your eyes track his movement across the floor. Your focus shifts to his location without a single conscious command from your brain. You are seeking his warmth and his presence just as naturally as that plant tracks the sun. You call it a transient bodily phase, but I don’t think it is a temporary glitch in your system.
It is heliotropism of the heart. You are turning toward him because your nature recognizes that he has become your light. ”
Seraphina sat frozen, her mind working furiously to dismantle the analogy. It was an exceptionally accurate description of heliotropism, but the application was entirely flawed.
It had to be flawed.
“That... that is an entirely poetic misuse of a biological mechanism,” Seraphina finally sputtered. “Effie, I completely understand why you are so fiercely insistent on this narrative. You see me restless, you see me troubled, and you naturally want to help. I understand all of that.”