“Tell me about Ashworth Hall,” she said. “I want to picture it—the place that will be my home.”
“It is… large.” His mouth curved at her look. “Everyone says so first. Large, old, and layered with history. Parts of it date to the sixteenth century; others have been added, altered, argued over. There are formal gardens, working farms, and a village that depends upon the estate.”
“It sounds like a great responsibility.”
“It is. But it is also—” He paused, searching. “It is home. I know every corridor, every view from every window. I know the paths my brother and I wore into the grass as boys, the tenants and their families, the bend in the river that always floods in spring. I know the land as one knows a friend.”
“You love it.”
“I do.” His voice gentled. “More than I ever say aloud. And I want you to love it too. I want to show you every corner, every foolish childhood hiding-place, every story in its stones. I want Ashworth to belong to you as truly as it belongs to me.”
“What if it does not feel like mine? What if it is simply another place where I do not belong?”
“Then we will make it yours. We will fill it with your choices, your books, your ideas—with memories we build together. It need not bemyhome, occupied bymywife. It can beourhome, shaped by us both.”
Something inside her loosened at that.
“Our home,” she murmured. “Yes. I like that.”
***
Later that evening, Helena found Cecilia in the small sitting room.
“I thought you might like company,” Helena said, taking a seat nearby. “Her Grace has retired, and His Grace is presently with Mr Reeve.”
“Mr Reeve?” Cecilia repeated.
“The Duke’s steward. He rode over from Ashworth earlier today with papers that required His Grace’s signature. He will return again at first light.” Helena’s tone was carefully composed—a fraction too composed, Cecilia thought.
“I see. You are well acquainted with him, then?” Cecilia asked, as though it were idle conversation.
A tiny hesitation—there and gone. “We have worked together on occasion.”
There was something in the way she said it—in the stillness of her posture, in the faint tightening at the corner of her mouth—that told Cecilia there was more left unsaid.
“Helena,” she said softly. “Is he… the man you spoke of?”
For a moment, Helena did not answer.
Then her composure wavered—not collapsing, but thinning, like silk held too close to flame.
“Yes,” she said at last. “He is."
Cecilia inclined her head, acknowledging the confidence without pressing too quickly. “Have you spoken with him since he arrived?”
“Briefly. In the corridor.” Helena’s voice was steady again, though her eyes were not. “The sort of exchange one has with a colleague—courteous, professional… devoid of anything that might be misconstrued.”
“And yet,” Cecilia said gently, “you would have wished it otherwise.”
“What I wish is immaterial.” Helena’s jaw tightened. “He sees me as the Dowager’s companion. Competent. Reliable. Useful.” A faint, bitter smile. “Invisible.”
“Invisible.” The word struck a chord deep within Cecilia. “Yes. I know that feeling.”
“I know you do. That is why I—” Helena stopped, shook her head. “It does not matter.”
“Tell me about him,” Cecilia said softly. “If you wish to.”
There was a long silence.
