Despite being a modest town, Blissbury's ground-floor dining room housed an impressively long table—set with the kind of careful precision that suggested someone had taken great pride in the task.
At opposite ends of that table sat Eloise and Ryan, dining in the particular silence of two people who have not yet decided what to make of each other.
Mrs. Parker's cooking was exceptional.
Mrs. Severton considered desserts her one weakness, which meant that everything else she produced was nothing short of masterful. And since it had been quite some time since Eloise had last stayed in Blissbury for dinner, Mrs. Parker had cooked with unusual enthusiasm—resulting in a spread far more generous than any ordinary evening would warrant.
Yet Eloise's hands barely moved.
Not because she was unwell. Not because the food displeased her.
Because she couldn't stop watching Sergeant Thornton eat.
He had perfected a peculiar trick: his manners were impeccable, yet somehow he ate at a remarkable pace. The fork and knife moved only a handful of times before the meat was cleanly separated from the bone—and moments later, only pale bones remained on his plate. The fried vegetables in their glossy sauce vanished. The thinly sliced potato gratin, swimming in cream and butter, disappeared. Even the spiced meat patties were gone before Eloise had properly registered they'd been served.
He ate everything Mrs. Parker had prepared.
Every last dish.
He ate with such thoroughness that Mrs. Parker, convinced she hadn't made enough, rolled up her sleeves and returned to the kitchen—leaving Mr. Palmer to manage the table in her absence.
Eloise stared at his plate. Not a scrap of vegetable remained. Not even a smear of sauce.
"I heard you don't eat well," she said, unable to conceal her disbelief.
*Don't eat well?* He had eaten like a man with a gluttonous spirit living rent-free inside him. Even harvest workers, exhausted after a full day in the fields, rarely attacked a meal with such appetite.
"That's how it was," Ryan said.
"Then why are you eating so well now?"
"I don't know." He reached for the bread basket Mrs. Parker had set down with a pleased smile. "I'm surprised myself."
And he meant it. That very morning, he'd had no appetite whatsoever. Now it seemed he could consume anything placed in front of him—and yet he didn't *look* like a glutton. Even mid-conversation, his table manners remained perfectly composed. His body, long deprived, seemed to accept the sudden abundance not with rebellion but with quiet gratitude.
He spread butter thickly over a well-baked heel of bread, then added a generous layer of raspberry jam.
The first bite filled his mouth with the warmth of grain, the richness of butter, the bright sting of raspberry.
*How could anyone not eat something this good? I must have been out of my mind.*
He set the bread down and glanced at Eloise, who was still watching him with that peculiar expression.
"By the way—about that letter we discussed."
Her face, which had settled into mild astonishment, immediately contorted.
Ryan smiled. Teasing Eloise Severton, he was discovering, was surprisingly entertaining.
*Probably because it's rare to meet someone whose every thought appears directly on their face.*
---
He had always avoided anything unrelated to his duties.
But an officer's obligations included attending the army's charity balls—events Ryan had regarded with open contempt. He'd told his then-commander, Baron Stanford, plainly:
"I carry out many covert assignments. If I'm seen publicly announcing myself as Ryan Wilgrave, how am I supposed to maintain any cover at all?"
"Then attend under a false name," the Baron had replied, unbothered. "You spend too much time exclusively with military men. As you've pointed out yourself, you handle covert work—and a ball is as much a potential mission environment as any other. Consider it training. You will attend. That is an order."
"…"
Having raised the subject of his own missions, Ryan had no grounds to object.
He understood why the Baron persisted in sending him to these events.
Baron Stanford was one of the few men who knew the truth about his relationship with Earl Wallace—and, because of it, had long worried about him in ways that went unspoken.
The Baron believed that Ryan's complete indifference to women was rooted in Wallace. And to some extent, he wasn't wrong.
Ryan had no desire to build a family. He'd long since convinced himself that as the Earl's illegitimate son, he had no right to one.
Perhaps that was why, when his fellow officers devoted themselves to charming every eligible woman in the room, Ryan had watched from a distance with only vague, detached curiosity—as though observing a custom practiced by a culture entirely foreign to him.
The balls were no different.
Officers his age pursued introductions with barely concealed urgency. The women, in turn, surveyed the room with sharp, assessing eyes—and soon enough, they found Ryan.
"You're Sergeant Thornton, aren't you? Which Thornton family?"
"Sergeant Thornton, which regiment?"
He had no interest in them. That much was true. But it did not mean he lacked discernment. The women who approached him were, without exception, lovely and refined.
He simply felt nothing.
They were all entirely admirable. If not affection, then at least the pleasure of good conversation should have come naturally—or so he'd assumed. After several balls, he'd wondered whether his standards were simply too exacting, whether he was the problem.
Then he understood.
The women he met were *too* perfect.
Every step graceful, every smile precisely calibrated, every word carefully chosen for maximum softness. They never interrupted a gentleman's conversation. They agreed readily with whatever was said. They were, in essence, flawless.
And that was precisely the trouble.
Speaking with them felt less like speaking with people and more like admiring beautifully crafted porcelain figures—lovely to look at, untouched by anything real.
He was apparently alone in this opinion. His fellow soldiers called these same women *ideal.*
So he said nothing. And since it changed nothing either way, he let it go.
---
But Eloise Severton had puzzled him from the very first moment.
She'd been caught with a scandalous sketch—his likeness, rendered in far too little clothing. She'd extended an apple pie toward him with the expression of someone attending their own funeral. She wrote letters to him as though they'd known each other half their lives.
By any reasonable measure, Eloise Severton was a strange woman. Not a lady, by conventional standards. The sort of person one was supposed to keep a careful distance from.
And yet.
Looking at her now—brow furrowed, watching him with that deep, involuntary crease between her eyes—he felt no hostility.
*Perhaps it's simply because I've eaten.*
Mrs. Parker's food had settled warmly in his stomach and lifted his mood, and so Eloise's expression struck him as funny rather than irritating.
On impulse, he tried to imagine someone else sitting across from him, wearing that same look.
The first face that came to mind was Julia Ogilvy—a name he remembered only because they'd spoken twice.
If she were sitting opposite him now, looking at him exactly as Eloise was—
"…"
His appetite evaporated. Ryan quietly withdrew his hand from the bread basket.
Eloise, still frowning at him, folded her napkin and set it on the table.
"I apologize to Mrs. Parker—but I'm afraid I can't stay for dessert. If I linger much longer, I'll be walking home in complete darkness."
She glanced toward the window. It was partly an excuse, and she knew it—but not entirely. Stay too late, and the road back to Feltham would be unlit, and there were still whispers circulating about a deserter who moved through the area after dark.
Better to leave while there were still people on the roads.
"Please stay," Ryan said. "Finish your dinner."
She'd expected him to let her go—perhaps even to hold the door. Instead he gestured for her to sit back down.
"No matter how long the days are getting, walking alone at night isn't—"
"I'll walk you to Feltham." He said it simply, as though it required no discussion. "So please, finish your dinner."
At the offer, Eloise's face twisted again into that expression he was beginning to find very difficult not to smile at.
Ryan smiled anyway, and called across the room for Mr. Palmer.
It seemed tonight, for the first time in a long while, he would stay through dessert.