Chapter 12
Dinner at Ashford was a quieter affair than Charlotte had expected.
The table was long enough to seat a dozen, yet only three places were laid—all along one side.
Edward occupied the seat at the head, with Julian to his right and Charlotte to his left. The remaining stretch of polished wood lay empty, a gleaming expanse that seemed to emphasize how much space the household no longer used.
Candles burned low in their holders, casting warm light that did little to soften the room. Servants moved with accustomed efficiency, placing dishes and withdrawing again almost at once, as though the table itself discouraged lingering.
Julian sat across from Charlotte, his feet not quite reaching the floor.
He spoke little, pushing peas into careful rows with his fork, but when he did speak, it was to her alone—soft questions about the pudding, about whether frogs slept through winter, about whether tomorrow’s lessons might be held outside again.
Edward attempted conversation from time to time—brief inquiries about Julian’s studies, a remark about the weather—but each effort seemed to falter before it reached his son.
Julian answered politely enough, then let his gaze drift back to Charlotte, as if drawn by something steadier than habit.
Charlotte felt the imbalance at once.
“So,” Julian said suddenly, glancing up at her with a glint in his eye, “did Mrs. Channing tell you about the others?”
Charlotte smiled faintly. “The others?”
“The governesses,” he said. “Before you.”
Edward’s fork paused.
Charlotte kept her tone light. “She mentioned there had been a few.”
Julian grinned, clearly pleased with himself. “Six.”
Edward cleared his throat. “Julian.”
“What?” Julian said innocently. “It’s true.”
Charlotte hid a smile behind her napkin. “And what happened to them?”
Julian leaned closer, lowering his voice as though sharing a confidence. “I scared them off.”
Edward’s gaze sharpened. “That is enough.”
But Charlotte didn’t rush to correct him. Instead, she tilted her head. “Did you?”
Julian nodded. “I put a frog in one’s bonnet. Another time, I hid under the desk and grabbed her ankle.”
Edward opened his mouth—no doubt to reprimand—but Charlotte spoke first.
“And did that feel kind?” she asked gently.
Julian hesitated.
“No,” he admitted after a moment. “But it was funny.”
“Sometimes those are not the same thing,” Charlotte said. “Did anyone get hurt?”
Julian shrugged. “One cried.”
Charlotte met his eyes. “And how did that make you feel?”
Julian frowned, considering. “Bad. A little.”
Edward watched them now, his expression unreadable.
Charlotte nodded once. “Then perhaps it wasn’t a very good sort of funny after all.”
Julian poked at his food. “No.”
Edward said nothing, but something in his posture shifted—an easing, perhaps, or a reassessment.
“She never scolded me,” Julian said suddenly.
Both adults stilled.
”My mother,” he added, glancing toward his father, then quickly back to Charlotte. “She didn’t get cross. She just … talked. And sometimes she’d make me sit beside her until I felt better.”
Edward’s face went very still.
Julian picked at the edge of the tablecloth. “I like you,” he said quietly. “Because you don’t get cross either. You just talk to me.”
Charlotte felt the weight of the moment press down around them. She chose her words carefully.
“Your mother sounds very wise,” she said softly. “And very loving.”
Julian nodded.
“And your father loves you, too,” Charlotte continued, gently, “even if he does not always know how to show it.”
Edward’s gaze flicked to her—sharp, startled.
“Parents are human,” Charlotte added, quieter still. “They make mistakes. Even very good ones.”
Julian looked between them, then nodded once, satisfied.
Dinner resumed after that, though the air had changed. Edward spoke little, his attention fixed somewhere inward. Julian ate more readily now; his earlier tension eased.
When the meal ended, Charlotte walked Julian upstairs and tucked him into bed. He was already half-asleep by the time she smoothed the covers.
“You’ll be here tomorrow?” he murmured.
“I will,” she promised.
She closed the door softly behind her.
Edward was waiting in the corridor.
“Miss Fenton,” he said.
She startled despite herself. “Your Grace.”
For a moment, neither spoke.
“Thank you,” he said at last, his voice lower than usual. “For this evening.”
She inclined her head. “Julian is a good boy.”
“I know,” Edward said. Then, after a pause, “I forget.”
The admission hung between them.
He looked at her then—really looked—and something in his gaze held her in place. The silence stretched, taut and fragile.
“I wish you goodnight,” he said quietly.
“And you, Your Grace.”
He turned and walked away.
Charlotte stood where she was for several heartbeats after, aware only of the unfamiliar quickness of her pulse.
She pressed a hand lightly to her chest, frowning.
It made no sense at all.
And that, more than anything, unsettled her.
***
The morning was cold but bright, the kind of winter day that made the world feel newly scrubbed rather than buried. Frost clung to the edges of the garden paths, and the trees beyond stood bare and black against a pale sky.
Charlotte led Julian toward the edge of the grounds with a basket under her arm and a book tucked loosely against her side. He skipped ahead of her, boots crunching through frozen leaves, stopping every few paces to peer at something only he seemed to notice.
“What’s that one called?” he asked, pointing to a low plant dusted with frost.
Charlotte crouched beside him. “That,” she said, “is wintergreen. It keeps its leaves even when the cold comes.”
Julian wrinkled his nose. “That seems unfair.”
She smiled. “Then perhaps it has learned how to be stubborn.”
He brightened at once. “Like you.”
She laughed, surprised by the ease of it. “Or like you.”
They moved on slowly, Charlotte turning names into little rhymes without thinking—oak and yoke, pine and time—until Julian was chanting them back to her, breath puffing white in the air as he ran ahead and doubled back again.
He made up his own songs, nonsense verses that sent them both into helpless laughter.
Charlotte told herself to focus. This was work. This was why she had come.
And yet, last night lingered.
The duke’s voice—quiet, unguarded, thanking her in a way that had felt almost private. The look in his eyes when Julian spoke of his mother, as though the thought alone had struck something tender and evocative.
She knew that look.
It was the look of a wound that never quite closed.
The thought stirred something inside her she did not welcome—a pull toward understanding him, toward easing a grief she recognized all too well. She tamped it down at once.
That way lay trouble.
She thought instead of Lady Amelia—elegant, composed, entirely at home in the world of titles and expectations. A woman who would know how to stand beside a duke without flinching. A woman like Charlotte had once imagined herself becoming.
A woman she could no longer be.
The distance between that life and this one felt immeasurable. She used it as a shield.
Julian slowed beside her, sudden seriousness dimming his earlier excitement. “Miss Fenton?”
“Yes?”
“I miss Mama.”
The words landed without warning.
Charlotte stopped, her breath catching slightly. She knelt so they were eye level, careful not to rush him.
“I know,” she said softly.
Julian stared at the ground. “It’s easier when you’re here.”
“Is it?”
He nodded. “Because you’re fun.” He hesitated, then added, in a rush, “And you’re not cross like Father.”
Charlotte chose her words with care. “Your father loves you very much, Julian. Even when he seems stern.”
Julian considered this. “He loved Mama.”
“Yes.”
“He laughed at the beach,” Julian said suddenly. “Once. He let me run into the water, even though it was cold.”
The image rose unbidden—Edward Thornton laughing, unguarded, sunlight on water—and the ache it brought surprised her.
“That sounds like a very good day,” she said.
Julian nodded solemnly. Then, with all the authority only a child could muster, he announced, “You can’t ever leave.”
Charlotte laughed. “I am not planning to.”
“You promise?”
She met his earnest gaze. “I promise.”
“Then I can call you Charlotte,” he said, pleased. “Not Miss Fenton.”
Her smile softened. “Alright.”
They were nearing the garden again when Julian slowed and tugged her sleeve.
“Look.”
Edward sat on a stone bench near the frosted hedges, sketchbook resting against his knee, his attention fixed entirely on the page.
The winter light caught in his hair and along the edge of his coat, softening him in a way Charlotte had never seen. His posture was unguarded—shoulders eased, head bent slightly, expression almost … peaceful.
He was smiling.
Not the restrained curve she had seen before, careful and fleeting, but something unselfconscious, as though he had forgotten himself entirely.
The sight struck her with unwelcome force. He looked younger like this. Handsome in a way she had not allowed herself to consider—despite the severity of his features, despite the scar that cut through his brow. Or perhaps because of it.
Charlotte felt the awareness flare and recoiled from it at once, irritated with herself. This was foolishness. He was her employer. A grieving husband. A man entirely unsuited to such thoughts.
And yet she could not quite look away.
Julian leaned close and whispered, “He only smiles when no one’s looking.”
Charlotte’s chest tightened.
Edward looked up then, as if he had sensed them. The moment vanished at once. The faint curve of his mouth disappeared, his features settling back into careful restraint.
“Papa!” Julian called, waving eagerly. “Look what we learned!”
Edward hesitated—only for a heartbeat.
“Not now,” he said at last. “I have work.”
Charlotte caught the flicker of indecision before it vanished, the brief struggle between habit and something softer.
Julian accepted the answer with surprising ease, already tugging Charlotte’s sleeve, attention turning elsewhere. Edward closed the sketchbook and rose.
“What were you drawing?” Charlotte asked, the question escaping before she could think better of it.
Edward’s jaw tightened. “Nothing of consequence.”
He inclined his head stiffly and excused himself, walking away with abrupt finality, the sketchbook tucked firmly beneath his arm.
Charlotte watched him go, unsettled by the glimpse she had been given—and by how easily it had affected her.
That night, by candlelight, she wrote to Beatrice.
She wrote of Julian’s laughter, of frost-bitten gardens and songs made of nonsense. She wrote of a house heavy with silence, and a boy who had made her promise to stay.
She did not write of the duke’s smile.
But even as she sealed the letter, she knew the truth.
She would stay.
Not because she must.
But because something here mattered—and she was not ready to turn away from it yet.