“He didn’t seem angry.”
“No,” Maribel said softly, staring at the reinforced wall that now stood considerably more stable than before. “He didn’t.”
That evening, long after Oliver had been tucked into bed with promises of continuing their siege warfare the following day, Maribel descended to the drawing room to restore order before the servants arrived to do it themselves.
The cushions had already been returned to their proper places.
Every blanket folded and draped precisely where it belonged. The ottoman back in position. Even her shawl had been retrieved from its post and laid carefully over the back of a chair.
But on the side table beside the tallest settee sat something that had not been there before.
A small wooden soldier.
Hand-carved, the paint worn from years of handling. The detail was extraordinary—she could make out the individual buttons on its tiny coat, the plume on its miniature helmet, the serious expression on a face no larger than her thumbnail.
Maribel picked it up with trembling fingers.
This was not one of Oliver’s soldiers. Those were newer, factory-made, purchased by Thaddeus when he’d taken guardianship. This was something older. Something that had been loved.
She thought of the Duke of Blackwood as a boy, small hands clutching this figure, inventing battles and sieges and victories in nurseries long since sealed away.
She thought of the man who had stopped to reinforce their fort, who had sorted cushions in the dark rather than summon servants to do it, who had left this offering where she would find it.
An apology for something he did not want to face.
She closed her fingers around the soldier and carried it upstairs to her chambers, where she placed it on her dressing table where she would see it each morning.
The rain continued through the night and into the next day. By afternoon, Maribel found herself restless in ways the nursery could not contain. Oliver was napping—finally, after wearing himself out reorganizing his troops for the fourth time—and the silence of the house pressed against her like a physical weight.
She thought of the east wing.
The locked doors she’d discovered weeks ago now. Thaddeus’s mother’s chambers. Eight years sealed away. Eight years of deliberate avoidance.
Before she could talk herself out of it, Maribel made her way to the housekeeper’s quarters.
Mrs. Allen looked up from her mending with surprise. “Your Grace? Is there something you need?”
“I was hoping to access the linen closet in the east corridor,” Maribel said, the lie sliding out with practiced ease. She preferred truth in all her dealings, but years of shadow under the Ashcroft name had given her ample opportunity to shade the truth in pursuit of her goals, “Lady Eleanor mentioned that I may consider storing some of my winter things there when the season changes, and I thought I might organize the space in preparation.”
It was plausible enough. Mrs. Allen’s expression cleared, and she rose to fetch her ring of keys. “Of course, Your Grace. Though I must warn you, that wing hasn’t been properly aired in some time. It may be rather close.”
“I shall manage.”
The key was smaller than she’d expected—delicate, almost decorative, the sort that might open a jewelry box rather than a door. Mrs. Allen pressed it into her palm with hands that trembled slightly.
“The second door on the right is the linen closet,” she said. “The others...” She trailed off, her weathered face troubled. “Best leave the others be, Your Grace.”
“Of course,” Maribel lied again.
The east wing corridor stretched before her, narrower than those in the main house, its faded blue wallpaper ghostly in the grey afternoon light. Maribel’s footsteps sounded too loud against the worn carpet, each one an announcement of her transgression.
Transgression.As though entering unused rooms in her own house constituted a crime.
But it felt like one nonetheless. Felt like crossing a threshold she had no right to breach, into territory Thaddeus had marked as forbidden not through words but through eight years of absolute avoidance.
The double doors with their carved roses stood at the corridor’s end, exactly as she’d seen them before. Dust had gathered in the decorative grooves.
Maribel fitted the key into the lock.
