The documents within were largely routine—final confirmations relating to her marriage settlement, estate investments transferred into joint management, and genealogical verifications required for the ducal registry. Eleanor skimmed them with practised efficiency, making marginal notes where necessary, setting aside those requiring Benjamin’s attention.
Then, slipped between two unremarkable legal briefs, she found it.
A sketch. Old, by its appearance—the paper yellowed, the edges softened by time. It had clearly been enclosed by mistake, some relic from her own family papers that had travelled with the settlement documents and been misfiled among the estate correspondence.
Eleanor lifted it carefully, angling it toward the light.
Her breath caught.
The woman in the sketch was young—perhaps twenty, perhaps younger. Her hair was pale and abundant, arranged in the elaborate fashion of an earlier generation. Her features were delicate, refined—the sort of beauty artists attempted to capture and poets failed to describe adequately.
She gazed slightly away from the artist, her expression distant and thoughtful, as though her mind dwelt somewhere beyond the page.
Eleanor would have recognised that face anywhere.
“Your mother, Your Grace?”
She had not heard Mrs Harding enter. The housekeeper stood in the doorway, her keen eyes fixed upon the sketch in Eleanor’s hands.
“Yes,” Eleanor said. Her voice sounded unfamiliar to her own ears—flattened, distant, as though it belonged to someone observing the moment from afar. “How did you know?”
“The likeness is unmistakable.” Mrs Harding stepped further into the room, her expression softening as she examined the image. “I never had the honour of meeting her, of course. But I have heard accounts. She was considered remarkably beautiful, I believe.”
“The most beautiful woman in three counties.” Eleanor traced the edge of the sketch with a careful fingertip, following the curve of her mother’s cheek, the elegant line of her jaw. “That is what everyone said. The most beautiful woman anyone had ever seen.”
“You resemble her.”
“So I have been informed.” The words emerged hollow and level. “It did not serve her well.”
Mrs Harding remained silent for a moment before speaking again, her tone measured with care.
“Your Grace?”
“Forgive me.” Eleanor laid the sketch upon the desk, face upward, her mother’s distant gaze fixed upon nothing. “It is an old grief. I had not expected to encounter it today.”
“Grief has a habit of finding us unannounced.” The housekeeper hesitated. “Shall I have tea brought? Or would you prefer solitude?”
“Solitude, I think. Thank you, Mrs Harding.”
The older woman inclined her head and withdrew, closing the door softly behind her.
Eleanor remained seated in the quiet of her sitting room, staring at the likeness of a woman long gone, and remembered.
Arabella Finch had beenextraordinary; that was the word everyone used.
Eleanor had grown up hearing the stories. Had listened to relatives and neighbours speak of her mother in tones usually reserved for discussing works of art or natural wonders.
Such beauty, they said.Such extraordinary beauty.
As though beauty were the only detail worthy of recollection. As though Arabella Finch had been nothing more than a pleasing arrangement of features.
And perhaps, in the end, that had been all she had been permitted to be.
Eleanor’s earliest memories of her mother were softened by warmth and the haze of childhood.
A gentle voice singing lullabies in the nursery. Hands scented faintly with rosewater smoothing Eleanor’s hair. Laughter bright enough to fill an entire room.
The later memories differed.
