WebNovels

Chapter 14 - The Duke Gets Audited

Eliza was a woman possessed. For the first time in months, the words flowed faster than her fingers could type. She ignored the clock, the demanding burble of Larry, and the meticulous schedule Caleb had left pinned to the fridge with color-coded magnets. All that mattered was the transformation happening on her screen.

Duke Alistair, formerly the sterile, emotionally withdrawn accountant-turned-Viscount, was finally real.

Eliza typed furiously, glowing with creative satisfaction.

The Duchess, her heart pounding with an unprecedented volatility, realized that the Duke's rigidity was not a flaw, but a fortress built against the cruel metrics of his childhood. He had been raised on the cold data of educational asset allocation, every gesture of affection tied to a performance report.

He reached out, his precise fingers trembling slightly as they brushed the soft, frayed edge of the lopsided, blue yarn she carried. "You are objectively wrong, Eloise," he murmured, his voice thick with unquantifiable longing. "You are chaotic, and you cannot be measured. You are the opposite of my entire life's work."

"I'm the thing you kept," she countered, her hand finding his. "The terrible knitting that reminds you warmth doesn't require a receipt."

In that moment, the Duke's fortress crumbled. He was no longer a perfectly optimized financial instrument; he was a man holding onto a piece of unoptimized chaos, terrified of what it meant to finally feel something illogical.

Eliza leaned back, triumphantly snapping her laptop shut. She had done it. Caleb Vance hadn's just fixed her business; he had fixed her art. She smiled, already anticipating his professional, backhanded compliment on her improved narrative structure.

The moment of artistic triumph ended abruptly when Caleb walked in.

It was 7:00:00 AM, precisely. He wore a fresh, pressed shirt and carried a new, high-efficiency air purifier—apparently, he'd decided the air quality in the kitchen was also a high-risk variable.

"Good morning, Eliza," he stated, his voice professional, but his eyes held a lingering tenderness from their shared moment yesterday. "I've cross-referenced the yield data from Reginald's offspring. We need to discuss the optimal moisture content for The Tragic Rye—I suspect its melancholic narrative is being diluted by poor hydration."

He walked past her to the Fermentation Rack. Eliza, feeling playful, nudged her laptop open just enough for him to see the title of her manuscript: The Duke and the Decibel.

Caleb paused mid-stride. He frowned, recognizing the word 'Duke,' and stepped closer to her desk—a voluntary proximity that pleased her greatly. He intended to offer an objective critique, she knew.

He leaned over and began reading the new passage she had written.

Eliza watched his face, expecting the professional nod of approval, perhaps a comment on the improved IPE (Internal Plot Efficiency).

Instead, his posture went rigid. His eyes scanned the text once, then a second time, slower, with a terrifying, mounting horror. The warmth vanished instantly, replaced by a cold, hard glare that could audit a national bank.

He read the line: "He had been raised on the cold data of educational asset allocation..."

Then the line: "He reached out, his precise fingers trembling slightly as they brushed the soft, frayed edge of the lopsided, blue yarn she carried."

Caleb slowly straightened up, towering over her. He didn't speak for ten long seconds. When he finally did, his voice was dangerously quiet, stripped of all humor or metrics.

"You didn't just write about me, Eliza," he said, his eyes narrowed. "You lifted the most personal, unquantifiable confession of my life and inserted it, verbatim, into a fictional narrative for mass consumption."

Eliza's chest tightened defensively. "Caleb, I'm a writer! Everything is research! You told me that story yesterday, and it fixed my Duke. It gave him the depth he needed. You are my muse!"

"A muse," Caleb repeated, the word tasting like ash in his mouth. "Or an unauthorized data source? You convinced me to disclose a high-risk emotional variable, only to immediately commercialize it in your novel. You monetized my trauma."

"That's an overreaction!"

"Is it?" he challenged, his voice rising slightly. "I was vulnerable with you. I shared the one thing that was safe from judgment. And within twelve hours, you've turned it into a plot point to increase your qualitative returns. You were never looking for connection, Eliza. You were just looking for content."

Eliza stood up, meeting his angry gaze. The argument was no longer about bread or money; it was about the fundamental clash of their worlds.

"And what about you, Caleb?" she shot back, stepping closer. "You've been tracking me in a file called 'E. Copley—Qualitative Risk Assessment'! You literally reduced me to a series of metrics and observations! You tried to solve me like a problem!"

"Yes, I did!" Caleb shouted, the volume shocking them both. He looked suddenly devastated. "I tried to categorize you to understand the risk! But then I got to the blue thread, and I confessed something real, something that proved I wasn't just metrics! I was trying to stop categorizing you! I was reaching for something outside the spreadsheet, and you used it to make a better product!"

He ran a hand over his face, shaking his head. "The only thing you've proven is that everything—even the near-kiss—is just research. Is any of this real, Eliza? Or are we just two characters in your latest, most complex plot?"

The silence that followed was suffocating. The joyous burbling of Larry suddenly sounded like mocking laughter.

Caleb picked up his air purifier, not making eye contact. "We will continue the business relationship, Eliza. The fiduciary duty remains. But I suggest we maintain strict adherence to the Professional Proximity Mandate from this point forward. You have breached my trust, and that is a metric that cannot be easily reset."

He walked out, leaving the kitchen feeling cold, sterile, and utterly devoid of the chaotic warmth that had grown between them.

The conflict is real! Eliza used Caleb's vulnerability, and now the business partnership—and the budding romance—is on thin ice.

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