Clara’s expression dimmed. “And you think it will forgiveyou?”
The words stung more than Charlotte expected.
“I am only saying—”
“That you have already decided it cannot end well,” Clara finished quietly. “That we should be grateful for scraps and call them dreams.”
Charlotte rose, shaken. “That is not what I meant.”
“It is what you believe,” Clara said, standing as well. Her voice trembled, frustration bleeding through. “You warn me because you are afraid. And I understand that. But do not ask me to give up hope simply because you have.”
Silence stretched between them.
At last, Clara turned toward the door.
Charlotte remained where she was long after the door closed behind Clara, the quiet of the room settling back around her like a held breath.
The candle guttered softly, its flame wavering as though uncertain whether to endure. Charlotte watched it, feeling much the same.
Her chest ached with too many emotions layered one atop the other—affection, fear, guilt, longing. Clara’s hurt lingered, sharp and unresolved, and beneath it lay the heavier weight of her ownconfusion. She had wanted to be happy for her friend. She was happy.
But happiness, she was learning, rarely arrived without consequence.
William’s words returned unbidden. Someone betrayed them.
The thought made her stomach turn. She tried—again—to imagine who could possibly wish her parents harm. They had not been powerful. They had not been cruel. They had been respected and kind.
Her mother’s laughter still echoed in her memory; her father’s quiet pride, the way he had always believed diligence enough to shield them from disaster.
And yet.
The accident replayed in her mind with merciless clarity: the crack of splintering wood, the horses’ sudden terror, the sickening lurch as the carriage veered. She had told herself for months that it had been chance. Bad weather. Poor footing. A tragedy, nothing more.
But William had spoken with confidence. Too much confidence.
Charlotte crossed the room and sat at the small writing desk beneath the window.
Her hands trembled as she drew paper toward her, as though the act itself were a kind of confession. She dipped the pen and began to write to Beatrice, the words spilling faster than she could neatly shape them.
Dearest Bea,
I do not know where to begin, only that I must speak to someone who knew us before everything shattered.
She paused, breath hitching, then continued.
He has appeared again. William. And not by chance. He knew where I was. He knew who I served. How? Why now, of all moments? And how long has he known that I am here working for his cousin, of all people?
The questions crowded her page as relentlessly as they did her mind.
He claims my parents’ deaths were no accident. That someone close betrayed them. I cannot reconcile this with what I knew of our life. And yet I cannot ignore the way the past keeps pressing forward, demanding to be seen.
She stopped, pressing the pen too hard against the paper until the nib scratched.
Charlotte leaned back, staring at the windowpane, where her reflection looked thin and tired. She thought of her parents—not as they had died, but as they had lived.
Of the warmth of their presence. Of the future she had once assumed would unfold in orderly steps. She thought of how colorless the world had become after their loss, how she had learned to survive by shrinking herself, by stepping into the margins and staying there.
And then she thought of Julian.
