Rose was given permission to organize the late Duchess's private library, a task no one else had wanted to touch since Eleanor died. Books had sat untouched for a year, dust thick on the shelves, Eleanor's handwriting still visible in the margins of old novels. While clearing a locked writing desk in the corner, Rose found a false bottom in one of the drawers. Inside was a small wooden box, and inside that, a sealed letter.
The handwriting on the front stopped her cold: To the woman who will one day care for my son.
It was unmistakably Eleanor's hand, the same elegant slant Rose remembered from years of letters passed between them. Rose's fingers trembled as she broke the seal. The letter was short, written in the unhurried voice of a woman who suspected, perhaps, that she would not have much time. Eleanor wrote of her fears for Charles, that grief might harden him and that a father lost in mourning might forget how to hold his own son.
She begged whoever read the letter to love Charles freely and fiercely, as if he were her own. "Whoever you are, I trust you were sent to us for a reason. Please don't let my son grow up in silence."
Rose sat with the letter pressed to her chest, tears sliding down her face. But there was no surprise in her grief, only recognition. Rose already knew such a letter might exist. Years ago, before she ever set foot in Blackthorne Manor as a governess, Eleanor had told her about writing something like it, a promise tucked away in case the worst ever happened.
Rose had hoped she would never have to find it.
She folded the letter carefully and slipped it into her pocket instead of bringing it to the Duke. She told herself she needed time, that the Duke had only just begun to trust her, and a letter like this, proof that she may have known Eleanor long before arriving at his door, could unravel everything too quickly. Hiding it changed nothing. It only delayed what Rose already knew was coming.
Later that evening, while placing returned books back on a high shelf, Rose knocked loose an old framed portrait tucked behind a row of novels. It fell, the glass cracking against the floor. She knelt to gather the pieces and froze. The portrait showed a much younger Eleanor, perhaps eighteen, standing in a garden Rose did not recognize.
Beside her, arm linked with the future Duchess, unmistakably and impossibly younger, was Rose herself.
Rose stared at her own face looking back at her from years ago. For a long moment, she did not move. She had hoped this portrait no longer existed, that no evidence remained of the years before Blackthorne, before the promise, before everything went wrong. Footsteps sounded in the hallway outside.
Rose scrambled to hide the broken frame beneath a stack of books just as the door creaked open. It was only a maid passing by, gone in seconds. Rose exhaled, her heart still hammering. She wrapped the portrait in cloth and hid it inside her trunk beside the letter, telling herself she would find the right moment to explain everything.