Eliza tilted her head. “Unexpected?”
“Yes.” He paused. “In the sense that one expects little, and receives rather more than anticipated.”
She considered this. “That may be the most Arthur-like compliment I’ve ever heard.”
He gave her a faint smile.
“I only ask,” she went on, more softly now, “because I like him. Very much, I think. And not merely in the way one likes pleasant conversation or an agreeable dinner partner. There’s… something else. Something real.”
Arthur turned his gaze to her then, properly. Eliza, his younger sister, who had always possessed a quick wit but rarely betrayed her heart—now looked back at him with open hope in her expression.
“He sees me, Arthur,” she said, almost in a whisper. “As I am.”
The honesty of it stirred something sharp and protective in him, though he offered no immediate reply.
Instead, he looked back toward the window, and the knot in his chest twisted tighter.
He sees me, as I am.
Was that not, in truth, the very thing Abigail had offered him too? Not in words, but in the steady way she looked at him—without pretense, without demand. She did not treat him as a future title or a duty-bound bachelor, nor as the disappointment his mother feared he would become. She sawhim—his silences, his guarded behaviour, even his reluctance to belong anywhere too deeply—and treated none of it as failure.
And now, he was beginning to fear that what had begun in jest, in artifice, had become something far more dangerous.
For he had not meant to fall for her.
He had not meant to care.
But he did.
Every glance lingered too long. Every conversation left some trace that echoed long after it ended. When she laughed, she did it with her whole body, and he felt the sound in his chest. When she frowned, he wanted to smooth it away. And when she looked at him with those quiet, thoughtful eyes, it took every ounce of restraint not to reach for her hand and abandon the entire charade—not because it had become unbearable, but because it had becomereal.
“Arthur?” Eliza prompted gently.
He turned his attention back to her, startled by how far his thoughts had carried him away.
She smiled faintly. “You’re elsewhere tonight.”
“I am,” he admitted, running a hand through his hair. “Forgive me.”
She reached across and took his hand briefly, a gesture so familiar and unpretentious it unraveled something in him.
“Youloveher,” she said.
He went very still. “Do I?”
“I think so.”
Arthur exhaled slowly and looked down at their joined hands.
“I’m afraid,” he said quietly.
“Of what?”
He hesitated. “That it will not be enough. That what I feel will ruin what we’ve carefully constructed. That if I reach for more, I’ll destroy even what little I’ve been allowed to have.”
Eliza’s voice was soft but firm. “You have never been a coward, Arthur. Do not start to become one now. It doesn’t suit you at all.”
He looked at her—really looked—and gave a small, reluctant smile.
