Chapter 31
EVA
It’s a chilly morning. I kiss Millie’s hair, still warm from her bed, and usher her toward the gate. She’s chewing a croissant, an eye on her watch.
“Don’t be late,” I call after her.
She waves, distracted, already gone.
As always, the house feels too quiet the moment she’s out the door. I can’t sit. I grab the shawl from the back of a chair, wrap it around my shoulders, and step outside.
The gardens are gorgeous in autumn’s golds and russets. But I barely see them. My legs carry me down the gravel paths faster than I intend.
I didn’t sleep.
At first, because Alex haunted my thoughts, as he’s done every night since he left Fort Vauclairt.
Memories tangled with fantasies of him kept me awake.
I imagined slipping down the corridor, opening his door, and crawling into his bed.
I could almost feel his arms around me, making the world narrow to nothing but heat, safety, and sweetness.
In between those fantasies, I saw myself at MESS, struggling to keep my composure as Von Dietz tore my world apart detail by detail.
Thank God Alex was there! He propped me up.
He shielded me, kind, protective, and reassuring.
His vow not to challenge Millie’s right to the duchy still fills me with disbelief.
Throughout that difficult meeting, Alex was everything Geoffroy had failed to be. Everything my father never even pretended to be.
As if all those disturbing thoughts weren’t enough, Brigitte’s slurred words replayed in my head. I shoved them aside, reminding myself she was drunk.
Except, it wasn’t just those words, was it?
I’d gone to the archives and found the coroner’s hasty report on Rodolphe’s death. That conclusion of “accidental fall,” written like a paperwork shrug, gnaws at me. It may be nothing, but the coroner dismissed the bruising on Rodolphe’s wrists and arms in a manner so cavalier it’s suspicious.
I hug the shawl tighter, my thoughts jumping back to Alex.
He lost the estate and the duchy to Millie, yet he seems to bear no grudge. Even after he learned the game had been rigged against him, he vowed to let Judge Sarrazin’s ruling stand.
And this is how I repay him? By refusing to dig deeper? By burying truths that might concern him? By protecting myself?
I pace the path, my shoes crunching leaves.
I’m not doing this for myself. I’m doing this for Millie.
She’s too fragile, and no amount of diet or exercise will fix it. Her well-being comes in refrigerated boxes delivered to our door. Her health runs on tiny vials worth their weight in gold. It depends on top clinics, best doctors, and innovative therapeutics.
Do I trust Alex to make sure she gets the best treatment?
I do. But…
What if I’m wrong? What if Millie and Alex clash? She’s fourteen. She throws verbal darts when she’s scared, and some of them sting longer than a nasty mosquito bite. What if he decides she’s not worth the effort? She’s his niece, not his daughter, after all.
I’m aware that millions of people live with less effective treatments than Millie’s.
But she’s my baby! I won’t let her endure more than she already does. I want her safe enough to ride her horse and carefree enough to rave about boy bands with messy hair. Calculating how much medical compromise she can settle on shouldn’t be a part of her world.
There’ll be no compromises, not on my watch.
A stray fact lodges itself in my brain as I circle back toward the house.
Claudia once told me years ago that the housekeeper before her retired right after the old duke’s death.
It was very sudden. No happy retirement party, no cake, no awkward speeches in the servants’ hall.
One day she was there, bossing the staff around, the next day she was gone.
Claudia, hired after her predecessor’s departure, never met her. It was someone on the staff who told her about the strange abruptness of it.
Rodolphe died eighteen years ago. Who from then is still around?
I run through the staff. Not the cook. Not the gardeners. Neither of the maids. Obviously not the stable boy—he wasn’t even born at the time. Not the estate manager Alex fired. No one from eighteen years ago remains.
I stride inside, shawl trailing behind me. I don’t stop until I reach Claudia’s cramped office, where she’s perched behind a desk.
She looks up from laundry sheets and menus, startled. “Your Grace?”
“Morning, Claudia,” I say, stepping in. “I was wondering about the former housekeeper. What was her name?”
She tilts her head, eyes narrowing as she thinks. “Mireille. Mireille Girard. Why?”
“Just curiosity.” I give her a tight smile. “What can you tell me about her?”
“Not much, I’m afraid,” Claudia replies. “I was told she retired, but it was odd. She just left one day, and Madame Brigitte brought me in.”
I grip the back of a chair. “Who told you that?”
“A maid long gone.” She squints at me, visibly intrigued.
“Do you know where Mireille went?”
“Somewhere near Gruyac, in Arrago,” she replies. “She had family there. That’s what I heard.”
I thank her and leave before she can ask why I care.
My feet carry me through the hall past portraits of the dukes of Rohinn, all perfect jawlines and grim mouths. Generations of Castellanes glaring at me.
I climb the stairs, my mind racing faster than my steps.
Mireille Girard. Gruyac.
I reach the gallery window and stand there, staring at the thinning trees. She might be dead. Eighteen years is a long time for someone who was already old enough to retire.
What if she carried away a secret? What if that secret is tied to the bruises on Rodolphe’s wrists and Brigitte’s ramblings of poetic justice?
Walk away, Eva. Let the dead bury the dead.
But what if Mireille Girard isn’t dead? What if she knows something no one else will tell me?
My hands tighten on the window ledge.
I won’t go looking.
I’ve had enough of secrets and twisted legacies.
It’s a coward’s choice, for sure. But securing Millie’s future is my top priority.
No, it’s my only priority, and it overrides everything else.