“He complimented my voice,” Clara continued, almost breathless now. “Asked about the song. Said he loved music and wished to accompany me on the pianoforte. We spoke for a while. About childhood. About silly things.”
Charlotte forced a smile, though concern stirred beneath it. “You must be careful.”
“I know,” Clara said quickly. “I know what he is reputed to be.”
“Then you know how such attention ends,” Charlotte said gently.
Clara nodded, sobering. “I do. But it was … kind. Just that.”
Charlotte reached for her hand. “You deserve kindness. Just not at the cost of your heart.”
Later, when Clara had gone, and the room lay quiet again, Charlotte prepared for bed with deliberate calm. She extinguished the lamp and lay staring into the dark, her thoughts refusing to settle.
Edward’s face surfaced unbidden. The candlelight. The vulnerability.
She turned onto her side.
This was foolishness.
She had believed once in futures that vanished overnight. In promises that dissolved without explanation. In a man who had loved her—until he did not.
William’s silence echoed still.
She was not here for herself. She was here for Julian.
And when her purpose was fulfilled, she would go.
Charlotte closed her eyes and willed sleep to come, telling herself—firmly—that fairy tales had no place at Ashford Manor.
Even if, for a moment, she had wanted to believe otherwise.
Chapter 15
Edward had read the same line three times without absorbing a word.
The figures blurred together on the page—rents, yields, repairs—familiar territory that should have steadied him. Instead, his attention kept straying, drawn back again and again to the library the night before.
To candlelight and stillness. To the unexpected ease with which Charlotte had spoken of her pain, as though it were a thing long carried and no longer needing disguise.
He shut the ledger with more force than necessary and rose from his chair, crossing to the window.
Outside, winter pressed close to the glass. The gardens lay stripped and pale, hedges rimed with frost, the paths quiet but for the distant sound of work being done. Somewhere beyond the trees, Julian would be walking—learning names of things Edward had never thought to teach him. Learning, perhaps, how to breathe again.
Edward drew a hand through his hair and turned back to the desk.
This was absurd.
Charlotte was his governess. Nothing more. Gratitude, relief, respect—those were acceptable emotions. The rest were not. He had endured far worse temptations in war than a woman with kind eyes and a steady voice.
And yet.
When the knock came, he welcomed it for the interruption alone.
“Enter.”
Lady Amelia Carrington swept into the study with the usual grace of a woman long accustomed to being received. She wore dove-grey silk trimmed in pearl, her gloves immaculate, and her dark hair pinned with understated precision.
Eleanor’s world, Edward thought distantly. A world he had not stepped into for two years.
