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The clock on the mantel had just chimed the hour when the door burst open.

Eleanor startled, her cup trembling in its saucer. Nathaniel stood on the threshold, wind-tossed and flushed. The moment her eyes fell on his face, she noticed that his expression was dark with turmoil.

He knows, she thought, about Arthur being here.

He looked at her, but not as he had looked at her in the garden or during their quiet mornings by the fire. This was something unravelled. He didn’t seem to know where to begin.

“Nathaniel?” she said gently, setting her tea aside. “Please … what’s happened? You’re worrying me.”

He blinked, his jaw tightening, then shut the door behind him with more force than necessary. He came to her bedside, then stopped, his hands flexing at his sides.

“Why didn’t you tell me you spoke with Arthur Pembroke?”

Eleanor froze. Her breath caught, her fingers tightening in the blanket across her lap. He sat at last, heavily, like the question itself had drained him.

“I … he came, catching me off guard, saying he simply wished to assure himself that I was all right after my fall …” She started to blurt out the first things that came to mind, which were all true.

She could only hope that he would see them as such.

“I swear, I told him that he was not welcome here, Nathaniel.”

“I didn’t mean today,” he clarified. “I meant before your fall.”

She swallowed heavily. That was the conversation she wanted to share with him but was simply waiting for the right moment, which never seemed to come. She didn’t want to go back to that, not now when everything was finally as it should be.

“Because I wanted to protect you,” she admitted. The truth was that she wished to protect herself as well, and again, she could only hope that he understood that.

“Protect me?” His voice was quiet but sharp. “From what?”

She met his gaze, her own steady, though the colour drained from her cheeks. “From the knowledge that your mother was arranging everything to separate us.”

He stiffened. The shadows under his eyes seemed to deepen. “You thought I needed protecting from that?”

“I didn’t know what else to do,” she said softly.

“It was all so ugly. And we were finally … finally finding each other again. I didn’t want to relive the days when we barely spoke.

When it felt like the whole world was conspiring to tear us apart.

” Her throat ached. “I wanted peace. Just for a little while.”

Nathaniel rose and paced the room, one hand dragging through his hair. “I’ve had enough,” he muttered. “Enough of people keeping me in the dark about my own life. First my mother. Then Pembroke. And now you.”

“I understand,” she said. “You’re right to be angry.”

He turned to her sharply, but her voice didn’t waver.

“I never meant to deceive you,” she said. “I should have told you the moment I knew. But I thought … foolishly, perhaps … that it was behind us. That what mattered now was us, here, now. That our healing didn’t have to include every wound from before.”

Nathaniel was silent, but his breath was ragged. Then he came back to her and sat down again, but slower this time.

“I want the truth, Eleanor,” he said. “Even when it hurts. No, especially when it does.”

She nodded. “Then I’ll give it to you. No more silence. No more protecting each other by hiding things.” She reached out, tentative, her fingers brushing his.

“Good,” he murmured, closing his hand around hers. “Because I don’t want peace at the price of truth. I want you. As you are. All of it.”

She smiled. “You have me, Nathaniel. All of me.”

His fingers tightened around hers, as she watched his shoulders slump under the weight of too many revelations. Still, the storm in him hadn’t passed, not fully. She could feel it thrumming beneath his skin.

“So,” she said softly, “what do we do now?”

He looked at her as if the question were too large to answer. His mouth parted, then closed again, and she saw the faintest flicker of helplessness in his eyes.

She shifted slightly, adjusting her wrist in its splint, her gaze never leaving his. “I know it’s difficult,” she said gently. “To find out something like this. About your own mother.”

His expression darkened. He looked away, towards the fire.

“But,” she continued, “you should speak to her.”

Nathaniel’s jaw tightened. “You think I should sit and listen while she justifies lying to me? Manipulating us?”

“I think,” she said carefully, “that if you want to understand why she did it … if you want to have any peace about it, you have to hear it from her. Ask her. Not as a duke, or a wronged son, or even as my husband. But as her son.”

He looked back at her. Some of the fire in his eyes dimmed, but it wasn’t gone. “Then we speak to her together. As husband and wife.”

The warmth of his words settled around her like a shawl, and for a moment she only held his gaze. “I’d like that,” she said. “But—”

He arched a brow, waiting.

“You and she are mother and child. That bond … it means something,” she said. “Even when it’s fractured. Even when it hurts.”

He said nothing, so she pressed on. “I don’t believe your mother is a cruel woman. I don’t understand her. But I don’t think she acted out of hatred. Whatever her reasons were, maybe she thought she was protecting you.”

Nathaniel gave a humourless laugh. “She nearly destroyed us.”

“Yes,” Eleanor whispered, her fingers tightening around his. “But here we are.”

He bowed his head, chest rising and falling in silence.

“Anger is easy, Nathaniel,” she murmured. “But forgiveness … that’s what frees us. That’s how we truly leave the past behind.”

For a long moment, he didn’t respond. But then, slowly, he brought her hand to his lips and pressed a kiss to her fingers.

“All right,” he said, voice low. “I’ll go to her. I’ll ask.”

She nodded as the weight of his decision settled between them, heavy but honest. He rose, paused only to press a tender kiss to her forehead, and without another word, stepped out into the hall.

The door closed gently behind him and Eleanor, left in the soft hush of the room, exhaled.

Her heart was heavy, yes, but not with dread … with hope.

***

Nathaniel’s blood pounded not with heat, but something slow and cold, with the kind of chill that spread from the heart outward.

He could still see his dear wife Eleanor humiliated before their guests, shattered on the hillside … how she had been reduced to a cautionary tale, a pawn in someone else’s game.

And he? He had stood silent in the very house where it happened. Blind. Loyal to the hand that had tilted the board.

He did not knock.

The drawing room was as it always was: precise, curated, and indifferent to the chaos it concealed. The fire crackled gently in its grate, casting a refined glow across damask and mahogany.

His mother was seated in her usual chair, with a book open in her lap. The angle of her chin was immaculate as always, as the pearls at her throat caught the firelight.

She looked up, poised. “Nathaniel. I thought you were staying in town with your father.”

He didn’t sit. “I returned early.”

She closed her book with unhurried grace. “I’m glad. You’ve been quite occupied of late.”

He took a step forward. “Did you orchestrate Arthur Pembroke’s attentions towards Eleanor at the dinner ball?”

The duchess didn’t even flinch. She set her book aside. “Is that what this is about?”

“Answer me.”

Her eyes held his. “Arthur Pembroke is a respectable young man. And your wife was … how shall I put it? Unsteady. Distracted. I thought she might benefit from a friend.”

“While you whispered in his ear? Fed him stories about my neglect?”

A flicker of irritation passed over her face. It almost made her appear human. “You were neglecting her, Nathaniel.”

“You meddled,” he said, feeling his voice tightening. “You manipulated.”

“I protected you.”

“No,” he said, louder now. “You tried to control me. And you nearly ruined my marriage.”

She rose then, composed as ever. “You don’t see it now, but one day you might. Eleanor is not fit to manage a house like Loxley. She’s emotional. She speaks too freely. She has no sense of restraint.”

“She has more sense than anyone in this family,” he said, stepping closer. “She has honesty. And kindness. And strength.”

“She is not a proper lady.”

“She’s my wife.”

They stood in the silence that followed, two opposing forces in the room’s fine symmetry. Nathaniel saw her clearly now: not protective, but possessive; not principled, but proud.

“I loved you for your guidance,” he said quietly. “But not for this.”

“You’re throwing everything away for a girl who doesn’t belong.”

He shook his head. “No. I’m fighting to keep the only thing that’s ever truly mattered.”

He turned to go, but something in him halted. A tether of years, of filial duty and buried hurt, pulled him back into the firelit hush of the room. He did not look at his mother yet. He let the silence stretch until it threatened to crack.

“You are a fool,” his mother said crisply behind him. “To let emotion drive your actions. To let that girl,” her voice faltered only slightly at those words, “unravel everything we’ve built as a family.”

Nathaniel turned slowly.

“No,” he said. “I was a fool before. When I believed that feeling nothing made me strong. That shutting everyone out was safer. That love made a man weak.”

She said nothing.

“I thought if I kept myself untouched by it all … if I stayed controlled, composed, removed, that I would be above hurt. But what I was really doing was carving out a hollow life. One that looked respectable but was empty.”

The duchess stood motionless, with her lips pressed into a line. Her pearls caught the firelight again, glittering like little teeth.

“I thought I was protecting myself,” he said, stepping closer. “But all I was doing was starving myself. Eleanor showed me that. She opened the door, and I shut it in her face. Again and again. Because of you.”

“I did what I had to,” she said coldly. “To keep you from making a mistake.”

“No,” he replied, his voice low but firm. “You did what you thought was right. For you. Because you’ve built a life of appearances, and you can’t bear to see a crack in it.”

She glared at him, but he saw it then. It was a flicker of something behind her composure. Was it fear? Regret? Or only the sting of losing control?

“A life without love,” he continued, softer now, “is a life not worth living. I’ve been living that way for years. I won’t anymore.”

He watched her a moment longer. Her stillness wasn’t dignity now. It was fragility.

“You may not understand what Eleanor and I have,” he said, “but I won’t ask your approval. I only ask that you stay out of our way.”

He turned once more, and this time, she didn’t stop him.

Her voice followed him as he crossed the threshold: “You are still a fool.”

He paused at the door but didn’t look back.

“Maybe,” he said. “But I’d rather be a fool in love than a ghost in my own life.”

Just as he turned the doorknob, he heard her speak again. “That … is what I’ve always been, Nathaniel. That is what it feels like to live with a broken heart …”