Noah stared at her for a long, weighted moment.
I watched his face, the struggle there, the hurt, the history, the fragments of boy and man trying to reconcile the woman who had once meant so much to his grandfather, and the one who had caused so much damage.
Finally, his shoulders lowered a fraction.
“Stay,” he said hoarsely. “You were part of his story too.”
Something in her expression flickered, surprise, gratitude, pain all at once. She nodded and moved to an armchair by a bookcase, sitting with her hands folded.
Noah turned to me.
“Do you want to…?” He didn’t finish the sentence.
“Yes.” I met his eyes. “I’ll stay.”
We moved to the desk together. He set the letter down on the worn surface, then slid his thumb under the sealed flap. The paper gave way and sounded far louder in the quiet room than it should have.
Inside was a folded sheet of thick paper.
He unfolded it slowly.
Edward’s handwriting unfurled across the page. Strong, looping, familiar from the cellar logs and vineyard notes we’d pored over.
Noah’s face paled.
He shook his head. Then, after another heartbeat, he cleared his throat and began to read aloud.
“Michael, my boy…”
His voice cracked on the first word.
He paused, finding his voice, then started again.
“Michael, my boy,
If you are reading this, it is because I did not manage to say everything I needed to in person. That has always been my fault, I am afraid. I can walk every acre of this land and tell you what the soil needs, but when it comes to talking about the past, my courage dries up faster than a leaf in a heatwave.”
A tiny, broken laugh escaped Noah. I felt my own throat burning.
He continued.
“There are things I should have told you long ago. About where I came from. About the woman I loved before your mother.
You may hear things one day about a woman named Victoria. You may hear she was titled, that her family forced us apart, that I moved on and built another life. All of that is true.
What is also true is that I never stopped loving her. Not entirely. Some people leave fingerprints on your soul that time cannot remove.”
Lady Beaumont’s hand flew briefly to her mouth. Her eyes shone bright in the lamplight.
Noah’s voice roughened.
“I also suspect that she and I had a child. One that we were never allowed to acknowledge. If that is the case, and if you ever find proof of it, I want you to hear it from me. That child was never a mistake. They were stolen from me by circumstance. If they exist, they are as much my blood as you are, and I will not have them thought of as shameful.”
Thomas. I thought, heart twisting.
Noah shut his eyes for a second, then forced them open again.
“Now,”he read, the word shaky,“that brings me to the land.
