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Helena packed three days of provisions for a two-day trek; she does not trust English weather.

Helena sends her warm regards; she would have accompanied us, but⁠—

Yet she had never arrived. Through all the summers of Adelaide's girlhood, through every visit and shared afternoon by the lake, Helena had never accompanied her brothers to Kent. Adelaide had never met her.

Turning the miniature over, she noted a small inscription on the backing written in the same elegant hand as the journal: H. Hawthorne, 1812.

Footsteps rustled softly behind her.

Adelaide turned, holding the miniature in her hands. The doorway framed a silhouette backlit by the dim light of the hallway.

She had anticipated Julian, with his broad shoulders and blue-gray eyes.

Instead, Mrs. Rutherford stood in the doorway, her hands folded at her waist, her expression solemn and sad as her gaze moved from Adelaide to the portrait.

"Mrs. Rutherford," Adelaide said softly. "This portrait—is this Lady Helena?"

The housekeeper stepped into the room, her eyes sweeping over the silk dresses, the needlepoint frame, and the open journal upon the escritoire. She observed the objects with the quiet reverence reserved for things grieved over for a long time.

"It is, Your Grace," Mrs. Rutherford replied softly. "This is Lady Helena's suite. I have maintained it precisely as she left it."

Adelaide looked down at the miniature. The fair woman with the blue-gray eyes gazed back at her—gentle, guarded, and thirteen years gone.

"What became of her?" Adelaide asked gently. "Where is she now?"

Mrs. Rutherford's hands tightened at her waist as she looked toward the fading light at the window.

"Lady Helena departed England after Master Thomas died, Your Grace," the housekeeper explained slowly, as though the words cost her effort. "She blamed herself. She had raised both her brothers after their parents passed, and when Master Thomas was killed upon the mountain..." She paused, drawing a quiet breath. "She could not bear the grief. She packed her trunks and sailed for the continent within a fortnight of the funeral."

"Has she ever returned?" Adelaide asked. "At any point in thirteen years?"

"No, Your Grace," Mrs. Rutherford's voice dropped to a whisper. "She has never returned."

Adelaide stood in the silent room, the miniature resting in her palms. The silk dresses hung in their row, the needlepoint waited for hands that would never complete the final stitches, and the journal lay open at an entry written thirteen years ago, its ink fading with each passing season.

Julian was haunted by recurring nightmares, Thomas's room was preserved like a shrine, and Helena had fled across the sea, never to return, her room left like an untouched time capsule.

A heavy, formless weight settled over her—the recognition that this family had been shattered by a single death on a Scottish mountain, and that the pieces had been scattered: one brother into the world's most remote corners, one sister across the sea, and two rooms preserved—one in boyhood, and the other in the ghost of unfinished embroidery.

And Adelaide stood in the middle of it, holding a portrait of a woman she had never met, beginning to understand that the Hawthorne family held a grief far deeper and more tangled than anyone had told her.

CHAPTER 17

"Ihave not seen you look this at ease in years, Julian."

Cassian set down his glass on the polished mahogany table between them, studying Julian across the private corner of White's.

Julian raised his brows. "Is my marital bliss truly so glaringly evident upon my face?"

"Glaringly." Cassian picked up his glass again, turning it between his fingers. "I would venture to say alarmingly. You look like a man who has forgotten how to scowl."

"I have not forgotten. I simply have not had cause to practice."

"Three weeks of marriage and you are already a different man." Cassian offered a warm smile. "I confess I did not expect it."

Julian's amusement faded into a quiet, thoughtful stillness. He looked at his friend across the table, catching the intelligent regard in Cassian's eyes, and chose his words with care.

"It had little to do with social duty, if that is what you are thinking."