Page 103 of The Scottish Duke's Deal

“What happened?” she asked, softer now.

Eleanor pressed her lips together then, “He’s leaving.”

Kitty frowned. “Who? The Duke?”

She nodded.

“When?”

“Last night.” Her voice cracked. “He said he had to go back to Scotland.”

Kitty stared at her. “What? Why?”

Eleanor laughed, but it sounded broken. “Private business.”

The words hung in the air, too heavy, too familiar.

“Oh, Eleanor…” Kitty’s voice gentled. She reached over and brushed a lock of hair back from Eleanor’s forehead. “Start from the beginning.”

So Eleanor did. She told her everything. About the letter. The change in his eyes. The way his voice had gone flat when he said her rules didn’t allow him to bring her. The way he’d accused her of trying to change him. Of trying to mold him into something he wasn’t.

“I don’t even know what I said,” she whispered. “One minute we were…” Her cheeks flushed. “And then suddenly he was cold. Like none of it meant anything.”

Kitty didn’t reply immediately. She sat still, elbow resting on the back of the settee, one hand curled beneath her chin as she studied Eleanor’s face with a kind of quiet sympathy that made Eleanor want to cry all over again. Her brow furrowed, not in judgment but in shared frustration, as if she too was trying to make sense of a man who refused to be understood.

Then Kitty exhaled softly and reached for the teapot. “It meant something,” she said, pouring carefully, her voice low but sure. “It meant everything. I’ve seen the way he looks at you.”

Eleanor’s stomach clenched.

“I don’t know what to do with how I feel about him,” she said, trying to keep her voice even. “I don’t know if I should stay here or take Penelope and leave. I’m not his hostage. I’m not really his wife since he’s leaving me like this. And if he’s going to vanish every time something frightens him—” Her voice cracked. “—then what are we even doing?”

Kitty handed her the teacup and sat back again, tucking one leg beneath her skirt and drawing her shawl closer around her shoulders. “Drink.”

Eleanor took it. Her hands shook slightly, but the warmth of the porcelain steadied her. It smelled like bergamot and safety, like childhood mornings before the world turned cruel.

Kitty leaned back, her fingers smoothing the folds of her gown, voice even. “I don’t pretend to know what’s in his head, but I know what it looks like when someone is afraid of losing control.”

Eleanor glanced up, startled.

Kitty didn’t look dramatic or overly grave. She wasn’t trying to make a point for the sake of it. She looked… tired.

“You said he’s changed,” Kitty continued, brushing an invisible speck of dust from her sleeve. “That he’s been gentle with Penelope. That he talks to you like you’re a person, not simply his wife who must obey him, right?”

Eleanor nodded slowly, chest pulling tight.

“Well,” Kitty said, folding her hands together in her lap. “That doesn’t happen by accident. But people don’t always know how to handle that kind of change. Especially when they’ve spent most of their lives surviving instead of living.”

Her voice was calm. No dramatics. No overstatement. Just… truth. Quiet and brutal and softly delivered.

Eleanor’s eyes stung again, but she didn’t look away.

She’d spent the entire night unraveling herself, trying to understand how they had gone from breathless kisses to him shutting the door between them with nothing but a few words and a shadowed look. And here Kitty was, untangling it in a single sentence.

He’d changed. Yes. She’d seen it. Felt it. The way he’d softened with Penelope. The way he’d looked at Eleanor when he thought she wasn’t watching. The way he held her like she was something precious, something he didn’t quite know what to do with.

Could he have run because he did care for her? But even if it was true, that didn’t make it hurt less. And it didn’t mean she could wait forever.

She clutched the teacup tighter, pressing the warm rim to her lips. Something in her braced—between pain and hope, between the ache of wanting him and the sting of knowing he might not come back.