He could still feel the trace of Gillian’s words in the air.
“Your continued bachelorhood is a dereliction of your duty.”
But what was marriage without affection? Without trust? A clinical transaction? A business arrangement?
He had seen it too often. And once—once—he had believed in something more.
And it had nearly broken him.
He heard the library door creak open.
Soft footsteps. Feminine. Familiar.
“Eliza,” he said without turning.
“How did you know it was me?” she asked, moving further into the room.
“I’ve yet to meet another woman who walks like a cat in slippers.”
Eliza laughed quietly and took the chair nearest the fire. “Mother looked like she was about to launch a Napoleonic war.”
“She already has,” Arthur said, rubbing the back of his neck. “And I am Waterloo, apparently.”
“You do look a bit battered.”
He finally turned to face her, and the sight of her—calm, clever, ever watchful—softened something in his chest. They were close, as siblings went. Too close for him to mask what he felt for long.
“She presented the list again,” he said.
Eliza rolled her eyes. “Lady Francesca? The Gresham heiress?”
“And a girl I’m fairly certain is still finishing her dancing lessons.”
“She means well,” Eliza said, gently now. “In her way.”
“I know,” Arthur admitted. “But I can’t marry someone for duty. I won’t go through the ritual of courtship. Not again. Not...”
“Not after Sophia.”
The name settled in the air like dust.
Eliza didn’t flinch.
“I thought I loved her,” Arthur said, leaning against the mantel. “She chose better, and I still don’t know what to do with that. I simply don’t know how to move forward with trust, and I can’t—”
“No. She chose differently,” Eliza corrected. “That doesn’t make every other woman the same. Some of us understand loyalty, and rate love and trust above wealth and status.”
He didn’t respond. The fire cracked softly.
Eliza stood and crossed to him. “Arthur... you’re allowed to want something for yourself. Not for the title. Not for the family. For you. Despite Mother’s insistence to the contrary, she cannot force you to wed someone with whom you do not see yourself having a good life.”
He looked down at her. “And what if I no longer know what that is?”
Eliza smiled sadly. “Then you start by figuring out what it isn’t. If your current expression is any indication, it is almost certainly not Millicent Longbourne. I’m sure she’s a lovely girl, but she is practically half your age and barely out of school. You need someone more mature, more refined. Someone who will challenge you in the art of conversation… as a bare minimum.”
Arthur laughed despite his deep-seated sense of misery.
She softened. “I want you to be happy, Arthur. And I don’t think you’re nearly as immune to that possibility as you pretend.”
