The old stable master, Mr. Pharaoh, asked to speak with the Duke privately. He had carried something heavy for a year, he said, and could not carry it any longer, not since he had seen the boy laughing again and watched the house come back to life. He told the Duke that the wheel on the Duchess's carriage had not simply broken that night. He had inspected it himself the morning before, as he always did, and it had been sound.
But by evening, before Eleanor left for the North Road, someone had tampered with the carriage in a deliberate way meant to look like an accident. He had stayed silent out of fear. "Powerful people," he said, "don't take kindly to stable hands with accusations."
The Duke asked the only question that mattered. "Who had access to that carriage?"
Pharaoh hesitated before answering. "Only family, Your Grace. Only someone who knew the household."
The name settled heavily in the room before Pharaoh even said it. Lord Edmund Ashkam, the Duke's own cousin, next in line for the title should anything happen to both the Duke and Charles.
The Duke felt sick. Edmund had dined at his table, played chess with him on quiet evenings, and sent gifts to Charles on his birthday. The betrayal, if true, ran deeper than he could stomach.
That same week, something changed in Charles. He began waking from nightmares, clutching Rose's sleeve and murmuring fragments he had never spoken before. Pieces of memory long buried finally started surfacing.
One evening, sitting in the garden with Rose, Charles went very still and said in a small voice, "Mama said not to trust Uncle Edmund."
Rose froze. "What else did she say, Charles?"
He struggled, the memory slipping like water through his fingers. "She was scared. The wheels were making a funny noise before... before we went fast."
He did not finish. He did not need to.