Page 39

The day had been quiet, uneventful in the way that made time feel almost tender. Eleanor was in her chamber with a book open but unread in her lap.

Nathaniel had left that morning for town with his father, some matter with the family solicitor, and though she missed him more keenly than she expected, there was a peace to her solitude … until the knock came.

Lucy entered in her usual quiet way, but there was something off in her expression. There was a tightness around her mouth as if her entire being was nervous at the edges.

“My Lady,” she said gently. “There is … a visitor.”

Eleanor looked up. “A visitor?” Her heart pricked, already uncertain.

Lucy wrung her hands. “He insisted it would only be for a moment. I … I couldn’t get him to go.”

Eleanor’s spine stiffened. “Who is it?”

Lucy hesitated, her eyes flicking towards the door behind her as though hoping the man in question had vanished in the time it took her to speak.

“Mr Pembroke.”

The name landed like a weight across Eleanor’s chest. For a long, breathless second, she couldn’t speak. Only stared.

She felt the chill before she registered it like something old and cold had crept beneath her skin. Her fingers curled around the edge of the blanket.

“I don’t want to see him,” she said, her voice sharper than intended.

“I know,” Lucy said quickly. “And I told him that he is not welcome here. But he said he only came to make certain you were well. He heard about the fall. He swore it would be brief.”

Eleanor swallowed hard. The memory of Arthur’s betrayal still lived in the corners of her mind like a bruise. She had no desire to grant him an audience. She had no grace left to offer him.

Their conversation had brought everything to an end. But the thought of Nathaniel returning to find Arthur Pembroke lingering in his house like some half-forgotten spectre … it set her teeth on edge. She could not let Nathaniel walk in and mistake her silence for invitation.

“Bring him up,” she said at last. “But stay with me, Lucy. Do not leave the room.”

Lucy dipped into a curtsy and turned quickly. Eleanor pressed a hand to her ribs, steadying herself. Her ankle ached dully beneath its wrappings, but the pain did not match the sharper twinge of unease curling in her stomach.

She had not seen Arthur since it all fell apart, since the accusations, the insinuations, the wedge that drove her and Nathaniel into something cold and hollow. And yet here he was. Of course, he was.

The door opened again. Arthur Pembroke stepped inside, looking not at all like the charming creature society had once adored. His coat was neat, but his hair was dishevelled. He looked pale, and his eyes were shadowed.

“Eleanor,” he said, stopping just inside the threshold.

She looked at him and felt nothing warm. There was no echo of the friendship they once had, no flicker of the affection he’d so thoroughly abused.

“You may say what you came to say,” she said coolly. “And then you will go.”

Arthur’s gaze flicked briefly to Lucy, still standing by the hearth with her arms crossed like a sentinel. He nodded faintly, accepting the terms.

“I heard what happened,” he said. “The accident. I was concerned. That is all.”

“Concern?” she said, her voice quieter, but harder. “That’s a generous word, given the last time we spoke.”

He flinched. “I never meant it to come to that.”

“You meant what you said,” she replied. “And I meant what I said when I told you we were finished.”

Silence stretched between them, taut and uncomfortable.

Arthur’s jaw flexed. “I just wanted you to know that I never wished you harm. Truly.”

Eleanor stared at him for a long moment, then inclined her head once, very slightly.

“Then wish me well and leave.”

He lingered a breath longer than he should have. But there was nothing left in her expression to misinterpret. Nothing soft.

Arthur turned. He bowed stiffly to her and cast Lucy a final, uncertain glance before retreating through the doorway.

When the door closed behind him, Eleanor released the breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding.

The locket still lay on her nightstand. She reached for it, running her fingers over the etched ivy leaves.

Some stories, she thought, weren’t worth reopening.

But others, like the one she was building now, deserved to be protected. Even from ghosts.

***

Nathaniel stepped through the front doors of Loxley House, with the afternoon sun at his back and the weight of town’s errands finally cast off.

His father had chosen to linger with an old friend near Hanover Square, but Nathaniel declined the invitation.

He wanted to be home. He needed to be near Eleanor.

He handed off his gloves and hat to a waiting footman and strode down the corridor with quiet purpose. His stride was instinctively angling towards the east wing, her rooms.

Then he heard voices. They were soft, hushed. Female.

He stopped just before the drawing room archway, his fingers brushing the edge of the wall and stilled.

“I told her it was a mistake letting him in,” Lucy was saying, her voice low but tight with nerves. “If the master had come home just a minute sooner … Lord, I thought he’d walk in on it.”

The other maid—Jane, if Nathaniel remembered correctly—made a tsking sound. “She didn’t ask for him. You said so yourself. And it was just a few minutes, Lucy. You said you stood there the whole time.”

“I did, but it’s the principle,” Lucy whispered. “Mr Pembroke should never have been here. After everything, after what he did, and the duchess …”

Nathaniel went still, every muscle pulled taut beneath his coat.

The duchess?

Jane’s reply was barely audible. “Well, he was only supposed to stir the pot just a bit … and he did, didn’t he?”

Stir the pot?

Nathaniel had no idea what they were talking about, and he hated not knowing what was going on in his own home.

“I shouldn’t have said anything,” Lucy interrupted, quickly. “I shouldn’t have even told her he was here. I should have been more persistent in telling him that he was not welcome here, but I was afraid that he might ask for the duchess.”

Nathaniel leaned back into the shadows, as the weight of the words turned to ice in his chest.

Arthur Pembroke.

His mother.

He knew it was wrong to listen, knew it was dishonourable, even cowardly, but still, he stayed, rooted to the spot, as the conversation blurred now into static. His mind raced ahead of the words.

He had suspected that, for some inexplicable reason, his mother had taken quite a liking to Mr Pembroke from the first moment she laid eyes on him.

And she was not a woman who was easily swayed into liking someone.

No. There had to be more to the story, and he still didn’t have all the pieces of the puzzle.

His mother was a woman of quiet manipulations. He had always known that, but this time, he couldn’t even begin to guess what her connection to Arthur Pembroke might be.

He had suspected his mother’s hand in Eleanor’s humiliation, but he could not have imagined his mother weaponizing Eleanor’s past in any manner to drive a wedge between him and a woman whom she obviously didn’t think was good enough for her son.

His jaw clenched. He straightened, stepping back from the door with measured calm, though his blood burned. He stood there for what seemed to be a small eternity, as the voices became muffled.

He considered turning back, summoning Lucy, demanding answers, but what good would it do?

The girl was loyal to Eleanor, not to schemes or shadows.

She had already said more than she meant to.

And besides, what he needed now was not confirmation of suspicions.

He needed the truth. He needed the shape of it drawn fully, not left to fill in the blanks with anger and inference.

And the one man who could give it to him was Arthur Pembroke.

He moved swiftly, heading out of the house before anyone noticed him. A passing footman offered a bow, startled by the urgency in Nathaniel’s stride, but he paid him no mind.

“Have my horse readied,” he said crisply to the stablehand. “Now.”

Within minutes, the horse was saddled. Nathaniel mounted without a word, heels to the flank, and the beast surged forward. The wind caught his coat as he galloped down the long drive, the trees flashing by in green and gold, the rhythm of the ride vibrating through his bones like a war drum.

Nathaniel had thought Pembroke dealt with: dismissed, disgraced. He had no business near Loxley. Certainly not near Eleanor.

And yet the man had returned. Uninvited, unwelcome, and likely emboldened by some manipulation Nathaniel could now only trace back to the woman who had raised him.

He clenched his jaw, teeth grinding. His mother’s games were always precise, her manipulations a quiet blade slipped between the ribs. But this … this was different. This was Eleanor. This was sacred.

The town came into view in a blur of slate roofs and cobbled lanes. He reined in hard near the solicitor’s office, the horse tossing its head in protest. Nathaniel dismounted in a fluid motion and stalked up the steps, throwing open the door.

Inside, the clerk looked up, startled. Beyond him, Mr Chilswell, his family’s solicitor, blinked over his spectacles.

“Lord Fairfax,” he said, rising hastily. “I thought you had left—”

“I did. I’ve returned,” Nathaniel said, with his breath short and his voice clipped. “I need a name. A location. Arthur Pembroke. You’re a man of town … where would he be staying?”

Chilswell blinked again, his features sharpening as he registered Nathaniel’s tone. “Mr Pembroke? He’s not a client of mine, My Lord, but I believe he took rooms at the Greenleigh Inn, near the north square. Temporary accommodations, I was told.”

“Good. That will suffice.”

“My Lord …” Chilswell hesitated. “Forgive me, but, is this a matter of legal importance?”

Nathaniel’s eyes narrowed. “No. It is a matter of honour.”

He turned on his heel without waiting for a reply. Within moments, he was back astride his horse, wheeling it towards the north square. He would find Pembroke.

And this time, the man would not walk away unscathed, not if he had dared to set foot in Nathaniel’s home, not if he had preyed again upon Eleanor’s grief, not if he had colluded with the duchess to reopen wounds Nathaniel was only just learning how to heal.

He rode even harder.