Before Three Hundred Guests, the Duke Declared His Marriage Over, Certain His Wife Would Beg Him to Stay — She Placed Her Ring Beside His Glass, Bowed, and Thanked Him for Letting Her Serve His Family

 PART 4

Three weeks after Eleanor’s departure, Lady Constance Hail came to call.

She was received in the front sitting room with the slightly-too-formal air of a woman who has decided to say something she knows will be unwelcome.

“I’ll be brief,” Constance said, which meant she had rehearsed this. “I have been speaking with several women in our circle about the evening of the fourteenth.”

“Lady Constance, I am not here to argue the merits of your decision. That is between you and your own conscience. I am here because something was said to me last week that I believe you do not know, and which I think you have a right to hear.”

“The wording you used,” she said. “Incompatibility of character. Failure to provide a suitable environment. I understand those were the words provided to you in the initial legal consultation.”

“They were.”

“By whom?”

“My solicitor.”

“And who recommended that solicitor to you?”

He was quiet.

“Lady Victoria Harkort recommended that solicitor to you eight months ago,” Constance said, very carefully, “at the Whitmore reception. Before you ever formally consulted anyone about separating. I know this because she told three people herself. She told them you were unhappy in your marriage and that she had found you the right person to handle it quietly.”

The room was very still.

“She also told at least two of those same people that once matters were settled, she expected to be received at Ravenshire within the year.”

Sebastian did not move.

“She was planning this,” Constance said. “Not with you. For you. She decided what she wanted, and she arranged the conditions, and she left you thinking it was your own decision.”

She stood to leave. At the door, she paused.

“Eleanor Witcomb was one of the finest women in this county. She was kind when she did not have to be, and gracious when you gave her very little to be gracious about. I hope you understand what you have done. Because I suspect she already has. And she will not be waiting for you to figure it out.”

The door closed.

Sebastian sat alone in the room where Eleanor used to read in the evenings, in the chair that still held the slight indent of her presence.

He thought about a woman who had given him eleven years. Eleven years of quiet labor and unacknowledged effort and steadfast dignity. He thought about the night she had walked the length of his table in front of three hundred witnesses and set her ring down with a hand that did not shake.

He thought she had known she was leaving before she walked into that room.

And then, slowly, he thought something he had never allowed himself to think before.

She was right to go.

The rage that followed was not directed at Eleanor. It was directed at himself.

Six hundred miles southwest, in a small bright house in Dorset, Eleanor Witcomb was learning how to sleep.

This was not a metaphor. She meant it literally. She was learning to sleep through the night without waking at two in the morning to record something in a household ledger, without listening for the sound of footsteps in the hall.

Her cousin Margaret had asked no questions when Eleanor arrived at her door at two in the morning, dishevelled and quiet. Margaret had taken one look at her face and said, “Come inside,” and had not required explanations.

“What are you going to do?” Margaret asked one morning, setting a cup of tea in front of her.

“I am going to sell the Witcomb property in Kent,” Eleanor said. “It has been in my family’s name since before the marriage. The income from it is mine legally, whatever else is still unsettled between Sebastian and me. It is enough.”

“Enough for what?”

“Enough for a school.”

Margaret was quiet for a moment.

“There is a building in Kingsford,” Eleanor continued. “It was a grain store. The owner is willing to sell. It is large enough for forty students.”

She wrapped both hands around her teacup.

“There are women in this county, Margaret, who have no education past the age of twelve. Who have no legal recourse when their husbands decide they are inconvenient. Who have no name of their own once they marry.” She paused. “I was one of them. Except that I happened to come from a family with property. I want to change what that means for other women.”

“You have been planning this,” Margaret said.

“For three years. I did not know when I would need it. I hoped I would not. But I made sure it was ready.”

Sebastian had held the name. Eleanor had built everything underneath it.

She set her cup down. She picked up her pen. She began the letter that would initiate the purchase.

That is where I am going.