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Eleanor stepped into the blue salon like a woman approaching trial, with her chin lifted and her hands clasped tightly at her waist to keep them from trembling. The muted hues of the room felt at odds with the thrum in her chest. Lucy hovered just behind her, steadfast as ever.

Arthur rose immediately from the chair near the hearth, his expression caught between apology and worry. He looked very much the part of the concerned gentleman: handsome, composed, and quietly remorseful.

“Eleanor,” he said gently.

Lucy began to step back, murmuring, “I shall give you some privacy—”

“No,” Eleanor said, sharp and clear. She didn’t look at Lucy, only moved farther into the room, eyes on Arthur. “You stay. The door stays open. I won’t be alone with him. Not for a single moment.”

Arthur paled but gave a small, understanding nod. “Of course.”

Eleanor faced him fully now. “I hope you know what you are doing by coming here.”

“I do,” he said. “At least … I think I do. And I know it’s not enough. But I came to apologize.”

She tilted her head as if to take a closer, more introspective look at him. “Apologize for what, exactly?”

Arthur swallowed, glancing down at his hands before lifting his gaze to hers again. “For everything. For putting you in this position. For standing too close, for dancing too long. For letting people think … what they did.”

Eleanor felt as if this was not the man she had known almost her entire life. “That’s not an explanation.”

He sighed, the words visibly weighing on him.

“It started before you married Lord Loxley. The duchess came to me, she … said her son wouldn’t act on his emotions unless he had a reason.

That he respected you and admired you, but he would remain passive.

She wanted me to play the part of a suitor.

Not serious, just … enough to stir him. To make him see you properly. ”

Eleanor’s breath caught. She stepped back, shoulders rigid. “She used you.”

“I let myself be used,” he said quickly. “I was flattered. I thought it harmless. You were so poised, so self-contained, I didn’t think it could possibly cause damage. But after last night, after the paper …” He trailed off. “It’s clear now what she really meant to do. And I am ashamed.”

The silence that followed was cold and absolute. Eleanor stared at him, not allowing herself a single reaction to his words. Lucy stood still as stone.

When Eleanor finally spoke, her voice was low but steady. “Thank you for your honesty, Mr Pembroke.”

Arthur stepped forward slightly, remorse shadowing his features. “Eleanor, I … I know I’ve no right to ask, but if you could find it in your heart to forgive—”

She raised a hand, her palm facing him. “I will not speak of it now. And I do not know if the time will ever be right for that.”

Arthur stilled. Then, slowly, he inclined his head. “Of course,” he murmured. “I understand.”

The silence between them was no longer tense, but hollow. A space where something had once lived, now lay bare and barren. She watched him go silently, knowing that she might never see him again. And that was all right.

Lucy stepped forward tentatively. “My Lady, shall I—”

But Eleanor simply reached out and placed her hand on Lucy’s shoulder. No words. Just the smallest squeeze, symbolizing reassurance, gratitude, and a bit of weariness, and then she turned and hurried from the room before the weight in her chest gave way.

She climbed the stairs without pause. Her chamber door opened and closed behind her like a sigh, and she leaned against it for a long, breathless moment. She would not break. She would not cry.

Hastily but with as much precision as she could muster, she started to put on her riding habit. Her fingers trembled, but she managed to do it. She couldn’t bear to see herself in the mirror, for she was wearing green, and Nathaniel had once told her it made her look like something wild and rare.

She didn’t call for Lucy. She had no need of anyone.

Her gloves fought her, stiff at the wrists. Her boots felt too tight, though they fit perfectly last time she put them on. Everything was wrong.

Or perhaps it was simply her. She hadn’t touched a morsel of food since the ball, but the hollowness inside her had nothing to do with hunger.

Down the grand staircase, her footsteps echoed too loudly, like an intrusion. The portraits on the walls watched her descend with solemn, knowing eyes. Loxleys, all of them. None had wanted her here. She thought she could change that. She had been wrong.

In the front hall, a footman snapped to attention at her approach. “My Lady,” he greeted her with the utmost respect.

She paused, cleared her throat, then gave him an order in a voice that didn’t even sound like her own. “Ready my mare. Now.”

He didn’t question her. He knew better than to do that. He simply bowed and hurried off.

Outside, the wind whipped over the drive, sharp and cold. Eleanor stood at the threshold for a moment, breathing it in, letting it lash at the heat behind her eyes. It would not do to cry again.

She rushed to the stables, not wishing to remain inside the house for a moment longer. She needed to get away, as far away as she possibly could.

At the stables, the master looked up from the hay with a deep frown. “Beggin’ your pardon, My Lady, but the ground’s still slick from the rain last night. Best wait till it dries.”

“I’ll take her now,” Eleanor said, swinging open the stall gate herself.

The stablemaster hesitated, as his eyes flicked to her pale face, the drawn mouth, the eyes ringed in sleepless shadow. “My Lady, please. It’s not—”

“She needs the run,” Eleanor interrupted, more to herself than him. “And so do I.”

There was no defiance in her voice. Just devastation in motion.

Minutes later, she was mounted and flying across the damp fields, not caring how wet the earth was, how the hooves slipped at turns, how the brambles tore at her skirts. She rode like someone being chased, though nothing followed her but the ruin of her own heart.

She rode hard and recklessly, allowing the wind to tear away at her breath. Mud spattered her boots and skirts, the hem soaking through with each pounding stride of her mare’s hooves. The fields blurred past. Green, grey, slick with yesterday’s rain, but Eleanor didn’t stop. She barely steered.

Her chest burned with the weight of everything she couldn’t say aloud.

Nathaniel’s silence.

The duchess’ cruelty.

Arthur’s guilt.

They swirled inside her like a storm she couldn’t outrun.

She had tried. God, how she had tried. She had played every note of the duchess’ expectations, smiled through rehearsed greetings, and walked the corridors of that ancient house as if she belonged in its frame.

She had held her head high through the whispers. She had hoped because she wanted this marriage to become something real.

And now … now, it was nothing but a public failure, a name in a scandal sheet. She was a woman whose husband had walked away in shame, whose presence was tolerated but never truly wanted. Not by the duchess, not by the house, and perhaps, not even by Nathaniel.

The tears finally came in an onslaught. They were silent and furious, the kind of tears that blinded as they fell. That was why she didn’t see the mud-slicked hollow until it was too late.

The path was narrow and binding, but worst of all, it wasn’t familiar enough.

The mare’s front hooves struck a patch of sodden mud hidden beneath the fallen leaves.

In an instant, the animal slipped, her legs splaying in a desperate scramble for purchase.

She reared, screaming in a sharp, guttural sound that split the stillness of the woods.

Eleanor’s breath caught in her throat. Her hands tightened on the reins too late.

She flew into the air. The whole world started to spin, and for a moment, she hung in the air, suspended between gravity and fate. Then came the fall.

Her back struck the ground first, in a jarring and brutal fall.

The impact stole the breath from her lungs.

Her left leg twisted beneath her body, and there was a sickening crack, loud and final.

Pain exploded through her thigh. Her right wrist smashed against a jagged stone, and she cried out in anguish.

She lay there, gasping for air, blinking up at the grey sky peeking through bare branches. Distantly, she heard the thunder of hooves. It was her mare fleeing deeper into the woods, riderless.

She could feel the chill creeping into her bones. Her leg was a furnace of agony, her wrist throbbed in time with her heartbeat, and her ribs burned with every shallow breath.

She didn’t know how long she lay there. The canopy above first blurred, then it shifted and slowly, narrowed.

The realization struck slowly, even cruelly: no one knew where she was. She had told no one where she rode. She had wanted only to escape, to flee the walls of Loxley House before they crushed what remained of her.

And now she was alone. Broken. Lost in the woods.

A sob rose in her throat, sharp and bitter, but she bit it back. Her body trembled, not from cold alone, but from the truth she could no longer outrun.

And then, mercifully, everything went still. All the thoughts and the pain finally receded like a tide. Her eyes fluttered shut.

And the world went dark.