Charlotte’s chest tightened.
Edward looked up then, as if he had sensed them. The moment vanished at once. The faint curve of his mouth disappeared, his features settling back into careful restraint.
“Papa!” Julian called, waving eagerly. “Look what we learned!”
Edward hesitated—only for a heartbeat.
“Not now,” he said at last. “I have work.”
Charlotte caught the flicker of indecision before it vanished, the brief struggle between habit and something softer.
Julian accepted the answer with surprising ease, already tugging Charlotte’s sleeve, attention turning elsewhere. Edward closed the sketchbook and rose.
“What were you drawing?” Charlotte asked, the question escaping before she could think better of it.
Edward’s jaw tightened. “Nothing of consequence.”
He inclined his head stiffly and excused himself, walking away with abrupt finality, the sketchbook tucked firmly beneath his arm.
Charlotte watched him go, unsettled by the glimpse she had been given—and by how easily it had affected her.
That night, by candlelight, she wrote to Beatrice.
She wrote of Julian’s laughter, of frost-bitten gardens and songs made of nonsense. She wrote of a house heavy with silence, and a boy who had made her promise to stay.
She did not write of the duke’s smile.
But even as she sealed the letter, she knew the truth.
She would stay.
Not because she must.
But because something here mattered—and she was not ready to turn away from it yet.
Chapter 13
Edward read the letter twice before folding it and setting it aside.
Liam had always written as though the page were a stage and he the principal actor—grand turns of phrase, confident assurances, bold plans sketched with a man’s optimism and very little caution.
New ventures. Expanding interests. A request—carefully couched, politely phrased, but unmistakable all the same—for capital.
Edward leaned back in his chair, eyes lifting to the ceiling.
Liam was family. A cousin, yes, but close enough in age that they had grown up half-companions, half-competitors. He had always chased opportunity the way others chased pleasure, convinced that the next venture would be the one that settled him. Edward had indulged him before. He had refused him before. Tonight, he was not certain which impulse would win.
Perhaps, he thought, it was time to help him. Or perhaps he simply lacked the energy to argue.
The fire had burned low by the time he rose. The house had long since settled, the corridors hushed in that particular way of great estates at night—too large ever to sleep truly, too quiet to be entirely at ease.
He extinguished the lamp and retired, mind still turning over figures and obligations until exhaustion finally claimed him.
Sleep did not last.
He woke with a sharp intake of breath, heart pounding, his body already braced as though for impact. For a moment—always the same cursed moment—he did not know where he was. The dark pressed in. The air felt too thick. He could smell smoke that was not there, hear shouting that dissolved the instant he focused on it.
It took effort to remember Ashford. The bed. The walls. The silence.
