Page 38

Without preamble, Nathaniel reached into his coat and withdrew the small velvet pouch. He held it out to her, his hand steady, though everything within him trembled like a struck chord.

She looked at it for a moment before taking it, her fingers grazing his as she loosened the drawstrings and tipped the contents into her palm. The locket fell into her hand with a quiet weight.

The delicate etching of ivy leaves curled along its surface, worn smooth in places by time and touch. She turned it over slowly as if the truth might be read in the pattern alone.

“What is this?” she asked curiously.

“It belonged to someone very important to me,” he started cautiously. “Lord Henry Fairfax. My uncle.”

She looked up at that, her brow furrowing. He drew in a breath, not deep, but sharp. It was the kind one took before a blade met flesh, opening wounds that never truly healed, despite the passage of time, or perhaps exactly because of it.

“It was returned to him after a broken engagement,” he continued. “By the woman he loved.”

She said nothing.

“Your mother,” he finished.

The words dropped into the space between them like thunder into a still room. Eleanor stared at him, the locket unmoving in her hand. Her features did not twist or crumble, but he saw it, that quiet fracture behind her eyes, the shudder that never reached her shoulders.

He had expected questions. He was ready for disbelief. But she said nothing. He leaned forward slightly, with his elbows on his knees and his gaze fixed not on the locket, but on Eleanor.

He focused on her stillness, the tension that coiled in her shoulders, the way her fingers now curled protectively around the little golden thing that had somehow become part of her past as well.

“Years ago,” he began, with every word evoking painful memories he did not really live but felt as if they were his very own, “Henry fell in love with a baron’s daughter. She was … young. Genuinely kind. Bright. And far beneath what the family deemed acceptable.”

Her eyes didn’t leave the locket, but she was listening intently.

“My grandfather forbade it, in no uncertain terms … threatened to cut Henry off entirely. There was a scene, a great scandal among themselves, though none of it ever reached the papers.”

“And she ended it?” Eleanor asked, her voice uneven, almost disbelieving.

Nathaniel nodded once. “She returned the locket. No letter. No explanation. At least, that’s what Henry told them. But after he died, when I was at Loxley, sorting through his study … I found it.”

He hesitated.

“In the back of a drawer. It was wrapped in linen like something fragile. Inside it were letters. Not many. Just fragments … sentences, phrases. Bits she’d written and he’d kept, folded and hidden. They were …” his voice faltered, and for a moment, something haunted flickered behind his eyes, “… quiet. Intimate. The sort of words one never expects their uncle to have once clung to. But he had.”

Eleanor’s fingers tightened around the locket until her knuckles paled.

“I never knew this about her,” she said, not quite to him. Her brow furrowed, as though searching the air for memories she didn’t possess. “She never spoke of anyone before my father. Not like that.”

“Perhaps it was too painful,” Nathaniel said gently. “Or perhaps she thought it wouldn’t matter anymore.”

The room was silent save for the faint ticking of the mantel clock and the soft breath of wind through the open window. Eleanor finally looked at him, and her eyes were darker than before, not angry, but shadowed with pain.

“Why tell me now?”

His answer came without hesitation.

“Because I no longer wish to keep anything from you,” he said. “And because if we are to make anything of this, of us, then you should know all of it. Even what is uncomfortable. Even what casts my family in a poor light.”

She stared at him a moment longer, unreadable, then looked back down at the locket. Her thumb brushed the edge of it, slow and contemplative.

“He must have loved her,” she murmured.

Nathaniel’s voice was barely a breath. “He did.”

***

Eleanor sat very still, the locket resting in the cradle of her palm. For a long moment, she did not move. Then, with slow, careful fingers, she unlatched the delicate clasp and opened it. Inside, beneath a thin sheet of clouded glass, was a miniature portrait.

Her mother.

She wasn’t as Eleanor had always known her: regal, composed, forever upright in her silks. No, she was just a girl with chestnut hair loose around her shoulders, her eyes soft and unguarded.

There was laughter in that painted gaze. A sort of quiet, unspoiled joy. It caught Eleanor off guard and lodged something sharp and unfamiliar in her throat.

She did not speak at first. It was as if she had forgotten how to express her thoughts and emotions in words, and it was better to simply keep them to herself. When she did eventually speak, her voice was so soft it barely met the air.

“I’ve never seen her look like this.”

Nathaniel said nothing at first. He simply watched her. No apology lingered on his lips, no plea in his expression. He did not reach for her hand. He only sat, steady and present, his eyes clear and his silence patient.

Just when she lifted her gaze to meet his, he spoke. “I am not offering it as reparation,” he divulged.

“What are you offering it as then?” she asked.

He hesitated for a moment. “I’m offering it as a warning.”

He held her gaze, and there was something different in him now. A starkness. A clarity.

“Silence can destroy what pride disguises,” he said. “It happened to Uncle Henry. I’ve seen what comes of love left unspoken. It doesn’t go away, Eleanor. It simply … rots beneath the surface.”

The room fell very still. Even the wind outside the windows seemed to hush.

He went on, quieter still. “There’s no virtue in restraint when it comes at the cost of what we most need to say. I know that now. It was too late for him. But not, I hope … not too late for us.”

Eleanor looked down again at the locket, the painted echo of her mother’s younger face staring back at her. And in it, she saw not only the weight of a past untold but a future yet undecided.

She didn’t cry. She sat with the locket resting in her palm, its golden surface catching the light like a secret. The painted image inside, of her mother, impossibly young, impossibly soft, stared back at her, full of a life that no longer existed. Eleanor studied it not like a keepsake, but like a question. One she wasn’t ready to answer.

Its weight pressed gently against her skin. Not accusing. Not forgiving. Just there. She looked up at Nathaniel.

“I want to forgive you, but I’m not ready,” she said, feeling as if her voice would betray her. “Not yet. You distrusted me when I needed you to believe in me. You turned away, and I can’t pretend that didn’t matter.”

He didn’t flinch. He didn’t rush to defend himself. He only inclined his head, accepting it.

“But,” she continued, quieter now, “I don’t want this story to end the way hers did, in silence and heartache.”

She knew that he felt the same way.

“I will be patient,” he assured her. “You may take all the time you need, and I will be by your side, every single day, every time you need me.”

She felt her chest tighten not from pain, but from something warmer. Slower. Trust, perhaps, beginning its slow return.

She gave him a small smile, still cautious, still laced with ache. “Thank you,” she said. “For telling me the story. For sharing it with me.”

“I want to share everything with you, Eleanor,” he said quietly. “All of it. Whatever you’ll let me.”

Her fingers closed around the locket again. She nodded, the movement small but certain. “I just need time …”

A breath passed between them. And then he smiled in a way that was soft and grateful, not triumphant, but relieved in a way that ran deep.

“That,” he said, “is what I have more than anything else.”

He turned then as if the very air had changed weight around them. His hand touched the doorknob, and for a heartbeat, Eleanor thought he would slip away again and leave her to the quiet thrum of her thoughts and the press of the past against her ribs.

But before the space between them could close, she spoke. “Nathaniel?”

He paused, and turned halfway, the light catching the edge of his profile, the sharp lines softened. His gaze found hers.

“Do you … do you have time now?” she asked, her voice quieter than she meant it to be, though no less sure.

For a moment, his eyes searched hers. Then came the smallest smile, like sunlight through mist.

“I do,” he said. “Of course.”

Something in her, tight for days, eased. She leaned back slightly against the pillows, her hand still resting on the locket, its weight strangely reassuring.

“Would you read to me?” she asked.

He tilted his head. “What would you like?”

She let her lips curve into the faintest smile, not coy but unguarded. “Surprise me.”

Nathaniel nodded once, then crossed the room without hurry. He stepped to the shelf near the window, his fingers brushing the worn spines as though reacquainting himself with old friends. He pulled down a volume bound in faded green leather and opened it, flipping through pages with the quiet deliberation of a man not just reading, but choosing.

Eleanor watched him from the bed. The way he moved without his usual precision, not for performance, but for presence. No mask, no stiffness, just him.

When he returned and took the chair beside her, she didn’t speak. She only listened, with her head tilted slightly towards the sound of his voice. And as he began to read, she closed her eyes and let the rhythm of his melodious voice settle inside her like a tide returning to shore.