Alaric sat in stunned silence, each detail landing with the weight of a truth he had never bothered to seek out himself. The Queen turned back to face him, her expression softening only slightly.
"I ask you again, Duke Ashkam, and I expect an honest answer this time: what kind of woman is your wife?"
He opened his mouth to speak, but no easy answer came. The words he had used so freely at his own dinner table—plain, dull, unremarkable—suddenly felt hollow and false in the face of everything the Queen had just described.
"I did not know," he admitted finally, his voice quieter than before, stripped of its usual confidence. "I did not think to ask."
The Queen studied him for a long moment, her expression unreadable. "That, Duke Ashkam, is perhaps the most honest thing you have said since entering this room." She returned to her seat, folding her hands once more atop the desk. "I have heard from multiple trusted sources that your wife is beloved among your own tenants, respected by your household staff, and possesses a wisdom in matters of practical governance that exceeds many nobles who have held their titles far longer than you. And yet you mock her plainness before your guests as though beauty of face matters more than strength of character."
Alaric lowered his eyes, unable to meet the Queen's steady gaze. "I do not know what to say, Your Majesty."
"Then say nothing yet," the Queen replied. "And instead, go home and look at your wife properly, for perhaps the first time since your wedding day. I did not summon you here to punish you, Duke Ashkam, though I could easily find reason to. I summoned you here because I believe you are capable of recognizing a mistake if only someone forces you to look at it honestly." She paused, her tone softening slightly. "Your wife is not the ordinary woman you have painted her to be at every dinner table. She may, in fact, be the finest thing your family name has produced in a generation. It would be a great foolishness to lose her respect entirely before you finally understand her worth."
The audience ended shortly after, leaving Alaric to walk the long corridors back toward his waiting carriage in a daze unlike anything he had experienced before. He barely noticed the grandeur of the palace around him, his mind replaying every detail the Queen had described, each one a quiet accusation against his own blindness. He thought of the roofs he had dismissed as unimportant, now standing sturdy because of his wife's insistence. He thought of Edmund's careful words in the stable, which he had walked away from without truly listening. He thought of every cruel comment he had made at dinner, imagining now how each one must have landed against a woman who had done nothing to deserve such treatment, and everything to deserve better.
The carriage ride home felt longer than the journey to the capital had been, though the distance was the same. Alaric stared out the window without truly seeing the passing countryside, his thoughts consumed entirely by the picture the Queen had painted of a wife he realized he had never actually known.
He arrived back at the estate late in the evening, the household already quiet, most of the staff retired for the night. Rather than seeking out Eleanor immediately, he found himself instead walking the halls alone, stopping first in the study where she reviewed the accounts each week, then in the small library where she kept her personal letters and books.
It was there, in a drawer he had never before thought to open, that he found a small stack of letters from tenant families, thanking her for kindnesses he had known nothing about: a letter from Mrs. Ferris, thanking her for arranging repairs to a leaking roof before he himself had approved any such work; a note from the Hollis family expressing gratitude for her care during their daughter's illness; a short, carefully written letter from a child named Toby, proudly displaying his newly learned handwriting, thanking the Duchess for the writing slates she had given the village school.
Alaric sat with these letters for a long time, the weight of his own blindness settling heavily upon him with each one he read.
He found Eleanor eventually in her private chambers, sitting by the window with a book she was not truly reading, her mind clearly occupied elsewhere. She looked up in surprise as he entered, unaccustomed to such late visits.
"You've returned early," she said carefully, studying his troubled expression. "Is something wrong?"
Alaric stood in the doorway for a long moment, searching for words that felt entirely inadequate to the realization pressing against his chest.
"I spoke with the Queen today," he said finally.
"About you?"
Eleanor's expression remained calm, though a flicker of curiosity crossed her features. "About me? What did she say?"
Alaric crossed the room slowly and sat in the chair opposite her, still holding the small bundle of letters he had found in the library. "She told me things about you that I should have known myself months ago. Things I never bothered to ask because I was too consumed with how you appeared beside me, rather than who you actually were." He set the letters gently on the table between them. "I found these in your library. I did not know about the school. I did not know about Mrs. Ferris's roof, or the boundary dispute you settled, or half the things this household apparently already knows about you."