One year ago, Duchess Eleanor Sinclair died when her carriage overturned on the North Road. Blackthorne Manor had been silent ever since. Duke Edward Sinclair buried himself in ledgers and estate business, rarely stepping foot in the nursery. His six-year-old son, Charles, had spoken only a few words and had not laughed once since he watched his mother's carriage go over that ridge.
Six governesses had come and gone in a year. Charles refused to look at any of them, and the staff had stopped expecting a seventh to last. Then Rose Winthrop arrived, younger than the others, plainly dressed, and carrying a single worn trunk. The housekeeper warned her before she even reached the nursery door. "The boy doesn't talk. Don't expect him to."
Rose only nodded and walked in anyway. She did not kneel down and coo at him the way the others had. She did not ask him questions he would not answer. She simply sat on the floor across from him, pulled a wooden toy sword from her trunk, and said, "I hear this nursery used to have pirates in it. Shame. I was hoping for a proper sword fight."
Charles stared at her and said nothing, but he did not look away either.
That evening, Duke Sinclair returned from London earlier than expected. He walked through the front doors braced for the usual silence, the empty halls, the closed nursery door, and the quiet that had followed him for a year. Instead, he heard something that stopped him cold in the entryway, a sound he had not heard in twelve months.
Charles was laughing.
The Duke moved toward the nursery like a man in a dream, afraid that if he walked too fast the sound would vanish. He reached the doorway and froze. Inside, Rose was staggering dramatically across the rug, clutching her chest, defeated in an epic sword battle against a boy wielding a wooden blade twice his size. Charles was laughing so hard he could barely stand, tears of joy on his face.
The Duke did not announce himself. He simply stood in the doorway, watching his son laugh for the first time since he buried his wife. Rose finally noticed him and froze, embarrassed and expecting a reprimand. But the Duke said nothing. He only looked at his son, full of life for the first time in a year, and then at the young woman kneeling on his nursery floor, still holding a child's wooden sword.
For the first time since Eleanor died, Blackthorne Manor was alive.
Duke Sinclair could not stop staring at the governess who had accomplished in a single afternoon what no physician, tutor, or grieving father had managed in an entire year. Charles began speaking again, but only to Rose. At breakfast, he whispered his answers to her instead of the maid. During lessons, he would recite his letters only if Rose was the one holding the book.
The staff noticed. The Duke noticed more.