“Trois mois?”Eleanor interrupted, frowning. “You have waited three months for a fence repair?”
Pierre nodded miserably.“Oui, madame—Your Grace. We wrote letters, but no one…” He faltered into hesitant English. “No one answer. We think perhaps our writing not good. Our English is…”
“Your English is entirely sufficient,” Eleanor said firmly. “The fault was not yours.”
She turned to the correspondence she had been sorting—the accumulation of untranslated French letters that had lain unread in a desk drawer.
It did not take long to locate the Marchands’ appeals. Three letters, each more urgent than the last, each written in careful, perfectly comprehensible French.
It appeared that no one at Thornwood Park possessed even rudimentary knowledge of the language.
“I shall attend to this personally,” Eleanor told Pierre, setting the letters aside. “A carpenter will be dispatched withinthe week to repair your fence. And please—” She met his gaze steadily. “If you have concerns in future, you may write directly to me. In French. I will ensure your letters are read and answered.”
Pierre’s expression transformed. Anxiety dissolved into something that resembled hope.
“Merci, Your Grace,”he said, gratitude thick in his voice.“Merci beaucoup. Vous êtes très gentille.”
“Ce n’est rien,”she replied.“It is only what ought to have been done long ago.”
She escorted him to the door, repeating her assurances that repairs would be made, that his family’s concerns mattered, that they had not been ignored—merely overlooked by a household that had forgotten how to see.
When she turned back toward the office, she discovered Benjamin standing in the corridor.
He had been watching.
Eleanor could not determine for how long—she had been too absorbed in conversation with Pierre to notice anything beyond the young man’s anxious countenance and hesitant speech. But the Duke stood there now, his scarred profile half-shadowed by the dim corridor light, his expression unreadable.
“Your Grace,” she said, proud of the steadiness of her voice despite the sudden quickening of her pulse. “I did not realise you were—”
“Three months.”
The words were flat. Toneless. Yet something in his dark eyes suggested a storm held carefully in check.
“I beg your pardon?”
“The Marchands have waited three months for a fence repair.” He stepped closer—once, then again—until he stood near enough that Eleanor observed the tension in his jaw, the rigid set of his shoulders. “Three months of letters no one read. Three months of a family struggling because my household could not be troubled to find someone who speaks French.”
Eleanor hesitated. She had not intended to expose the estate’s failings. She had meant to correct them quietly, efficiently, without drawing attention to the neglect that had allowed them to accumulate. But he had witnessed her exchange with Pierre, and denial was no longer possible.
“The letters were not… prioritised,” she said carefully. “There is a backlog of correspondence requiring attention. I have been working through it.”
“A backlog.”
“Yes.”
“How extensive a backlog?”
Eleanor considered softening the truth. Considered shielding him from the full extent of her discoveries. But he hadasked plainly, and she had promised herself—had promised him, though never aloud—that she would be honest.
“Considerable,” she said. “Several months of tenant communications, some in French and German that no one upon the staff could translate. Unanswered requests for repairs, unresolved disputes regarding grazing rights, unacknowledged complaints concerning drainage affecting three farms. The tenants have not been deliberately neglected, Your Grace.Someof their concerns appear to have escaped timely attention.”
Benjamin grew very still. It was a stillness Eleanor was beginning to recognise—the sort that preceded either withdrawal or eruption.
“Why did no one tell me?”
“I suspect no one wished to trouble you.” She paused, choosing her next words with care. “You have made it plain that you prefer solitude. Your staff has respected that preference. Perhaps… too faithfully.”
It was gentle criticism. A measured observation that stopped short of accusation. Yet she saw it strike its mark—saw the flicker of something in his expression that might have been guilt, or shame, or merely the recognition of a truth long avoided.
