Despite herself, Beatrice smiled faintly. “You always were optimistic.”
“Realistic,” Charlotte corrected. “Children misbehave when they are lonely or bored. That is hardly monstrous.”
Beatrice studied her for a long moment. “You sound very certain for someone who has never taught.”
Charlotte’s mouth curved slightly. “Then perhaps it is time I learned.”
The room fell quiet again, the weight of the decision settling between them.
“At any rate,” Beatrice said gently, “if they are this eager, it means they need you.”
Or they will use me, Charlotte thought, but she did not say it aloud.
Instead, she stared down at her hands, at the faint white line hidden beneath the sleeve at her wrist.
“I cannot go as I am,” she said suddenly.
Beatrice tilted her head. “What do you mean?”
“My name,” Charlotte said. The words came more firmly now. “I cannot present myself as Charlotte Westbrook. Not now.”
Understanding dawned slowly in Beatrice’s eyes.
“You wish to disappear,” she said softly.
Charlotte nodded. “Just a little. Long enough to breathe. Long enough not to be looked at with pity—or curiosity.” Her voice tightened. “Long enough not to be remembered as the girl who lost everything.”
Beatrice reached for her hand. “And what name would you choose?”
Charlotte considered, gazing past her cousin to the window, where fog had begun to curl against the glass. “Fenton,” she said after a moment. “Charlotte Fenton.”
Beatrice tested it aloud. “Miss Fenton.”
Charlotte closed her eyes briefly.
“Yes,” she said. “That will do.”
Outside, winter gathered its breath across the hills. The fog thickened, softening the edges of the world beyond the window until everything looked distant, unreal.
Charlotte watched it in silence.
Tomorrow, she would step into a house she had never seen, serve a man she had never met, and place her future in the hands of strangers.
She drew in a slow breath and lifted her chin.
Whatever waited for her at Ashford Manor, she would face it.
There was, after all, nothing left behind.
Chapter 2
Edward Thornton had never trusted silence.
Not the kind that crept through Ashford Manor in the early hours of the afternoon, heavy and expectant, settling into corners where laughter once lived.
Not the kind that pressed against the tall windows of his study while the winter sky hung low and colorless beyond them. And certainly not the kind that followed him now—thick with duty, grief, and unfinished accounts.
He sat behind the broad oak desk that had belonged to his brother, shoulders stiff, jaw clenched, eyes fixed on a ledger he had read twice already without absorbing a single line.
