“So that is the legacy of the Ashcombe women,” Helena said. “For generations since, every one of us who has loved has been made to suffer for it. Some lost their beloveds to war, to fever, to mischance. Others to scandal. None ever married. All bore daughters out of wedlock. Every child of our blood has been born beneath that same shadow — loved but never lawfully claimed, cherished but never kept.”
Eliza sat motionless, her eyes wide and stricken. “Then you believe it is inevitable.”
“I believe,” Helena said softly, “that curses endure only so long as we allow fear to give them power. But yes, child, I have seen it too many times to dismiss it as mere coincidence. The men we love die. Or we lose them before they can make us wives. That is the cruel truth of it.”
Eliza turned her gaze toward the glass where the mist clung thick and low, obscuring the world beyond. “And you think he — the Earl — is part of this? That he and I are destined to repeat the same pattern?”
Her grandmother hesitated only a moment. “I think fate has a long memory. And I think, whether you will it or not, you have stepped into its path.”
Eliza rose slowly, her voice breaking. “Then I am already lost.”
Helena reached for her hand. “No, my darling. The curse began with love corrupted by envy. Perhaps it can end with love redeemed by courage. Do not let fear make you turn away from it.”
Eliza looked down at her grandmother — wise, weary, and full of secrets — and felt tears burn at the corners of her eyes. “You speak of love as though it were salvation. But it feels like ruin.”
“Perhaps it is both,” Helena said simply.
Outside, the wind pressed against the glass, the vines trembling as though the story itself had stirred them.
And for the first time, Eliza understood why her grandmother feared and worshipped the forest in equal measure — because both life and death, blessing and curse, had always walked hand in hand along its shadowed paths.
Chapter
Sixteen
The fire in Gabriel’s study had long since burned down to embers, but he made no move to replenish it. The air was cool, faintly scented with the lingering smoke of cigars, the leather bindings of books, and the ink that had dried in the open ledger before him. He had not turned a page in over an hour.
Instead, he sat in silence, staring into the faint glow in the fireplace as his thoughts churned in a tangled knot he could not escape. Helena Ashcombe’s words replayed themselves in his mind again and again.
Though he had not meant to overhear them, it had been unavoidable, at least initially. The conservatory adjoined his study by way of a small, covered terrace — a pleasant feature of the house he’d often used since coming to Ravenswood. He’d stepped out earlier that afternoon to clear his mind, hoping the air might chase away the restless unease that had plagued him since morning. Instead, it had brought him voices — Helena’s low and measured, Eliza’s softer, more uncertain.
He might have turned back. Heshouldhave. But something in Helena’s tone — a strange solemnity — had rooted him where he stood.
And then he’d heard the wordcurse.
It had seemed absurd at first, the kind of superstition that clung to families and old houses like mold. But as Helena spoke, her words spun a tale so vivid, so steeped in sorrow and consequence, that he found himself unable to move away. The wind had carried each syllable through the open doors, and he had stood frozen on the threshold, unwilling to break the spell of it.
He’d listened as she told of Lenore and Lettice Ashcombe, of love turned to envy, of witch hunters and hangings and tragedy. Of the curse that condemned every Ashcombe woman to heartbreak and disgrace, to bear children out of wedlock, to live always on the fringes of respectability.
He did not believe it.He could not.
And yet…
He exhaled slowly, pressing a hand to his temple.
In the army, he had seen things he could not explain — men who claimed to see their deaths before they came, villages where the wind itself seemed to carry voices. He had learned to dismiss such tales for the sake of sanity. But here, in this place, withher… with this undeniable pull between them that seemed to be magical in and of itself, the line between disbelief and dread blurred.
He could not deny the strangeness of what had already transpired — the dream they had both shared, the unbidden familiarity of a kiss that neither could have imagined before it happened. He had never been a fanciful man. He was, by nature and by training, a creature of reason. But reason seemed a frail defense against the mysticism and otherworldliness that drew him toward Eliza Ashcombe.
Was it enchantment? Some lingering spell from her forebears? Or simply the madness of desire, sharpened by proximity and secrecy?
He did not know. What hedidknow was that it no longer mattered. Spell or no spell, curse or no curse, his feelings for her were real. She had taken root in him as surely as ivy claimed the stone walls of this house. And the more he fought against it, the deeper she grew.
He stood abruptly, pushing back from the desk. The chair skidded slightly on the carpet.
No. He would not be the kind of man who used a woman’s vulnerability for his own satisfaction. Whatever gossip might cling to her name, whatever stories the villagers told, he had seen the truth of her. Beneath the mystery and the whispers, she was innocent. Blameless. A woman of quiet strength and unyielding dignity. And a woman who had not yet surrendered herself t any man.
To seduce her under his roof — under the guise of protection — would make him the worst sort of scoundrel. He had spent a lifetime becoming a man his father would have despised: disciplined, measured, honorable. He would not undo it now.
