My dearest Abigail,
Unlike the day before, you said very little yesterday. To others, that might have gone unnoticed. But I've learned to listen closely to the silences between your words these past few months. I recognized it again yesterday — the quiet reserve behind your polite smile, the invisible walls you hold fast behind your calm voice.
I know now what it means, when your eyes drift toward something far away. It is not the trees in the park you see, nor the color of a fabric at the modiste's. You are looking inward — toward something I cannot touch or glimpse.
I made choices for you before. I see that now. Not out of love, though I told myself it was. Not out of duty, though I cloaked it as such.
From the first time I saw you at your debut ball, I confess I fell in love with you. And I decided then — that you would be mine. I courted you. Proposed to you. Spoke of a beautiful future we would share, a future that I believed in.
Then I chose to believe my sister over your brother, and I used you. Instead of walking away, as I should have, when I decided your brother's supposed sin was something I could not forgive, I chose instead that you would pay the price. So, I married you — knowing what I meant to do once you said 'I do.'I married you with vengeance in my heart — then abandoned you without a word.
Each choice I made, I told myself was for the best, that my responsibility as the head of this household gave me the right, even obliged me, to make such difficult decisions. I convinced myself I was protecting someone — my sister, my very title, my own stubborn pride. Even you, I believed. But none of that excuses the truth: I took your choices from you. Again, and again.
You have every right to be wary. To keep your heart behind armor I may never again be permitted to breach.
Still — I wanted to write. Not because I expect anything. Not because I believe a letter slipped beneath your door can absolve me.
But because I see you, Abigail — and I want you to know that.
I saw you turn Emmeline's bonnet in your hands at the modiste's, steadying yourself with something small. I saw the ache behind your smile. I noticed your fingers barely grazing my arm when I offered it, and how you no longer return my smiles, pretending not to see them at all. You holding yourself apart from me is my doing. I want you to know I understand your reasons. You do not owe me anything — I do not deserve your effort or your care.
Yet you gave me yesterday. You gave our daughter a happy memory. And I will not forget it.
I see the woman you are — the mother you've become, the soul I once knew and wronged. And I write tonight only to say this: I no longer wish to make decisions for you.
I confess, contrary to the impression I gave when I left you at Greystone Hollow, I never wanted a cold, aristocratic marriage — the kind where husband and wife live apart, like strangers bearing titles.
I love you, Abigail. Not just in the passionate all-consuming urgent way I once did. But with patience. With humility. With stillness.
I love you with the knowledge that you owe me nothing — not even your forgiveness.
And I hope — dream — that one day, the walls between us will fall. Not because I tear them down, but because you feel secure enough to choose to lower them.
Yours, with quiet devotion,
Jasper
Martha Rigby read the letter once more. She had found it on the windowsill in the library the morning after the Duke and Duchess visited the modiste and took Emmeline for a picnic in the park — the day Abigail had gone nearly silent.
Jasper had begun writing to Abigail again, just as he had after first appearing at Bramblewick. Abigail never spoke of the notes, but she left them open and lying about the house—unread or forgotten, no one could say.
Upon finding the first letter, Mrs. Rigby cleared out a drawer in Abigails room and placed it inside — the same way she had done at Bramblewick.
Mrs. Rigby had found two more notes after the first- shorter ones that held brief reflections from Lord Jasper:
"I watched you carrying Emmeline around our garden, sharing with her the names of the plants and little facts about each one... you both looked so happy."
In another he spoke of Emmeline’s upcoming first birthday and shared his happiness that he would be able to be present for it:
"I know you said you wished I had never found you at Bramblewick. but I consider myself very lucky to have found both you and Emmeline before I missed out on more milestones and memories with both of you. I was not there on the date ofher birth, but I am blessed that I am able to be there for the first anniversary of it."
***
Two weeks after Matha had found the first note — after their first appearance at a London ball — she found another letter. This one lay on the closed lid of the pianoforte.
My dearest Abigail,
Last night, we attended our first ball together as the Duke and Duchess of Winterset. You looked breathtaking in silver. Your hair was twisted in elegant curls and adorned with tiny pearls, and I thought you more beautiful than any woman in that ballroom.
