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“It must be very hard for you. The uncertainty, I mean. I lost my parents when I was just eleven years old. They died in a carriage accident. But at least I knew the truth. I saw them buried. I have a grave to visit. There was a sense of finality. But for you… it must be very hard.” He sat down on the stone bench next to her, though still keeping a respectable distance.
Eloise nodded. He had expressed her feelings perfectly. If Alice had died, Eloise would have mourned. She would miss her sister, and her heart would remain broken forever, but such certainty could bring healing, given time. But for Eloise, her sense of loss was the same this day as it had been ten years before. Where was Alice? What had happened to her? Those were the questions she asked herself every day, the questions she never had answers to.
“It’s certainly not easy. I just wish I knew where she was,” Alice mumbled, and she began to cry.
She had not meant to cry in front of the Duke. But the events of the evening were overwhelming, and now Eloise could not hold back the tears. She put her head in her hands and sobbed.
“You poor thing. How terrible.” Jackson pulled out a handkerchief and offered it to her.
“Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to cry. It’s just that… oh, that awful Lord Crawford! He was beastly to me, and his sisters were, too. My father means for me to marry him. He’s issued me an ultimatum. If I don’t find a husband by the end of this season, then he’ll choose one for me, and it seems he’s already done so in that wicked rake.” She gulped, glancing back towards the assembly rooms, from where the distant sound of music floated in the air.
Jackson looked horrified at this revelation. Eloise wiped her eyes and sighed. She had stopped sobbing now and felt somewhat foolish at such an outburst in front of a duke
“He wants to force you to marry this man. But why?” he exclaimed.
“Don’t such marriages occur all the time? Aren’t women often pawns in the games of their fathers and their father’s friends? I don’t know why my father chose Lord Crawford, or why Lord Crawford should favour me. After tonight, I’m not sure he will,” Eloise reckoned.
She could imagine her father’s wrath at her behavior that night. He would fly into a rage and remind her it was her duty to marry. Eloise would retort with her remarks on duty – the duty of a father towards his daughter, the daughter who was lost. Her father would grow angrier, and a stalemate would ensue.
“That’s good, isn’t it? You don’t want to marry him, do you?” Jackson asked.
Eloise looked up at him and shook her head.
“I’d never even met him until this evening. But one dance with him was enough to make me know for certain I don’t want to marry him. But that won’t be the end of the story. My father won’t let the matter rest. He’ll find someone else, someone worse, perhaps,” she sighed.
A sense of inevitability hung over her, and for an awful moment, she considered what it might be like to run away herself. To do so would mean freedom, even as the thought was terrifying. But Eloise had nowhere to go, and no one to flee to. She was not like her sister. Alice was a survivor, the elder sister whom Eloise had always looked up to. Alice was alive and well, of that, Eloise was certain. And it was that hope she clung to, even as she could not bring herself to follow in her sister’s footsteps, however awful life seemed.
“Unless you find someone first,” Jackson suggested, raising his eyebrows at Eloise and smiling.
“But I won’t. The men at this ball see me as a wallflower. This is my third season, and even if I wanted to get married, which I don’t, none of them would want me,” she said, folding her arms and sighing.
The matter was hopeless, and Eloise could see no way out of her predicament, save marrying the man she already detested.
“I’m the same, really. When my parents died, I became my uncle’s ward. The terms of my inheritance are complicated. I’ve got to get married to receive it. Until then, I rely on my uncle and my allowance. It’s a pitiful situation. But why are you so against getting married? You’re… beautiful,” he said, and Eloise blushed.
She did not think of herself as beautiful, even as she was grateful for the compliment.
“It’s not that I don’t want to get married. I do. But I don’t want to get married until I know where my sister is,” she clarified.
That was her ultimatum. Eloise could not imagine standing at the altar and making her vows without her sister’s presence. She could not be happy in that supposedly happiest of moments without the person she loved most in the world at her side. She did not expect anyone else to understand that, but to her surprise, Jackson nodded.
“I’d feel the same if I were you. There’d be something missing, someone missing,” he murmured.
She wiped her eyes and smiled at him.
“You’re right. I couldn’t make those vows without her there. Or without knowing the truth…” Eloise said.
If Alice was dead, she wanted to know, and if Alice was alive, she wanted to know. It was not knowing which pained her so, and she found it remarkable how readily she had opened her heart to the Duke.
“It’s such a tragedy. I feel very sorry for you. I can’t imagine the pain of losing someone like that. I don’t have a brother or a sister, but to have someone you’re that close to… it must feel as though a part of yourself is missing,” he sympathised.
Again, Eloise nodded. He seemed to understand her suffering perfectly, and for this, she was grateful.
“But I won’t have a choice over marriage. I’ll be forced to marry Lord Crawford, whatever my feelings,” she sniffled, shaking her head sadly.
“Unless you find someone else to marry before the end of the Season,” he reiterated.
Eloise nodded. It was an impossibility. There was no one else save Lord Crawford – if he still wished to pursue the match after her behavior towards him that evening.
