Page 89 of The Scottish Duke's Deal

“And you think Ramsay doesn’t?” Lady Fraser asked sharply. “You think that boy—who was torn from his mother then sent back to bury his brother—doesn’t ache for that same safety? He’s just too proud to say it.”

Eleanor looked down at her cup. “I know. He’s… difficult. But kind.”

Lady Fraser huffed. “He’s a storm with a heartbeat. Always was. But after marrying you, I’ve seen a change in him. He’s steadier. Softer.”

Eleanor felt her pulse quicken. “I hadn’t noticed.”

“Yes, you have. You just won’t admit it. Tell me, would you follow him?”

Eleanor blinked. “Follow him?”

“To Scotland. Would you go?”

“That wasn’t part of the arrangement,” she said automatically then immediately regretted it.

Lady Fraser tilted her head. “But you would, wouldn’t you? If he asked?”

Eleanor looked at Penelope again. The child had moved closer, her head resting against Eleanor’s arm, eyes fluttering closed.

“I don’t know what he wants,” Eleanor said honestly. “But I know what I’d say if he did ask.”

Lady Fraser smiled, a real one this time. It transformed her face, lit her from within.

“Good.”

They sat in silence for a moment, watching Penelope breathe.

“She reminds me of Ramsay,” Lady Fraser murmured. “The way she latches onto you, as if she’s afraid you’ll disappear. That’s what he did, too, when he was her age.”

Eleanor’s heart tugged. “She asked me if I’d be her other mother.”

“And what did you say?”

“I told her I’d try to be. That we’d both have to try.”

Lady Fraser reached over and touched Eleanor’s hand. “That’s all any of us can do.”

Eleanor nodded, and for the first time since the wedding, she felt something small and steady settle in her chest. Not certainty but hope.

“I should be thanking you,” Lady Fraser said after a moment. “For what you’ve done for Penelope. And for him.”

Eleanor blinked. “For… Ramsay?”

“Aye.” The old woman smirked. “I ken he’s impossible. Stubborn as stone and proud as a damn rooster, but you’ve managed something I never could.”

“Which is?”

“You’ve made him soften.”

Eleanor gave a breath of laughter. “I hardly think he’s softened. He still barks at the footmen and scowls at the maids.”

“That is softened,” Lady Fraser said, as if that were the obvious truth. “Ye should have seen him before. When he first came to me, I thought he might crack the very walls of the house with that temper of his. Grief and guilt do strange things to a lad.”

Eleanor quieted. The image of a young Ramsay—untamed, perhaps angry, dropped into a foreign world and expected to become someone he had no instruction for—sat with her.

They sat in silence for a moment, the kind that asked nothing, pressed nothing. Eleanor felt the corner of her lip lift.

“If he asked me to go to Scotland with him,” Eleanor said softly, “I think I would go.”