I have arrived at Ashford Manor safely. The house is vast and very quiet, though not unkind. The duke is … formidable, but his son is clever and spirited. I begin lessons tomorrow. I will write again soon.
She paused, then added carefully,
Please do not worry about me. I believe I have done the right thing.
She sealed the letter with care and set it aside.
Clara lingered near the washstand, folding linens with deliberate slowness. Charlotte watched her for a moment before asking gently, “May I ask—where is the duchess?”
Clara’s hands stilled.
For a moment, she said nothing. Then she drew a quiet breath. “Her grace passed two years ago, miss.”
“I am so sorry,” Charlotte said at once. “I did not mean to—”
“It was the smallpox,” Clara continued softly. “It came through Averleigh that winter. Took Lord Thomas first.”
Charlotte frowned slightly. “Lord Thomas?”
“The duke’s brother,” Clara explained. “He was the elder. Everyone thought he would inherit. He was well loved.”
“And Lady Eleanor?”
Clara’s voice softened. “She became duchess only days before her death. Smallpox took the late duke first. The title passed to his brother while he was away … and then she was gone too.”
Something tightened painfully in Charlotte’s chest.
“The duke—” she began.
“He was away,” Clara clarified. “Fighting in the war.”
For a moment, she imagined what it must have cost him to return to a house emptied of its heart. The thought unsettled her enough that she refused to follow it further.
Understanding dawned slowly. Charlotte’s thoughts leaped to the faint scar that marked Edward’s left brow—a thin, pale line she had noticed at once. Not a blemish, but a testament.
The war, then.
“How dreadful,” Charlotte murmured.
Clara nodded. “He came home to … all of this.” She gestured vaguely at the walls. “And a child who had lost his mother.”
Charlotte sank onto the edge of the bed.
So Edward Thornton had returned from war to bury his brother and his wife, inherit a title he never expected, and shoulder the care of a grieving child. No wonder he moved through the world as though braced for impact.
No wonder Ashford felt paused between moments—caught between what had been and what it did not yet know how to become.
Dinner arrived quietly—simple fare delivered by Clara with careful deference. Charlotte ate little, her appetite dulled by thought. She sat by the window afterward, watching dusk deepen into night, her mind circling back, again and again, to Edward.
His coldness no longer felt quite so sharp now that she understood its origin.
And yet—
She could not deny the way his presence lingered with her. The intensity of his gaze. The severity of his expression softened—paradoxically—by the scar that cut through his brow. It made him more real. More human.
More dangerous.
She frowned faintly at herself.
