By the end of spring, warmth had settled over the land so thoroughly that summer felt less like an arrival than a continuation.
The mornings were already bright by an early hour, the lawns shimmering beneath long bands of golden light, and the air at De Montfort carried the layered scent of roses, clipped hedges, and sun-warmed stone. Even the shadows seemed thinner. Windows were opened more often. Corridors no longer held winter's chill. Bees moved lazily through the gardens as though the whole estate had exhaled and sunk into a softer rhythm.
Sophia had always loved the approach of summer.
This year she loved it and resented it in equal measure.
She loved the light, the lengthening days, the soft riot of green returning to every corner of the grounds. She loved walking out early and seeing the tulips Laurence had sent — now fully bloomed by late spring — their proud heads standing in rich colour against the darker soil. She would pause near them often, skirts brushing against the garden path, and think with secret pleasure that something he had chosen had taken root beneath her care.
Yet summer also sharpened waiting.
Laurence's return drew nearer.
And with every week that passed, the possibility of Florian visiting again hovered at the edge of her thoughts like a bright, impossible promise.
She wrote to him faithfully still.
The exchange of letters had become one of the dearest rituals of her year. She wrote in the mornings sometimes, in the afternoons at others, whenever the mood took her and she felt she had something worth telling. Florian always answered warmly, always with more detail than Laurence, and his letters had the strange effect of making the world both larger and more intimate at once. Through him she heard of lectures, gardens, books, absurd classmates, northern weather, and the habits of university life. Through her, he heard of De Montfort — its gardens, its small domestic dramas, the weather in the south, and the way the seasons moved through the estate.
At the very beginning of summer, Sophia sat at a writing table by the open window of her bedchamber and composed another letter.
Outside, the trees stirred faintly in the heat, and somewhere below she could hear Arthur's voice raised in what was very likely disagreement, followed by Fredrick's sharper correction.
Sophia dipped her pen again and continued.
She thanked Florian for writing to her, as she often did, though by now he needed no such prompting. She told him how much she enjoyed hearing of his days and of the gentlemen around him, who sounded, in her opinion, both ridiculous and charming in unequal measure. She asked about the university now that the weather had turned so hot, whether the lecture halls became unbearable in summer, whether the river was pleasant again, and whether there would be a rowing competition against another university before term ended.
She added, with a faint private sigh as she wrote it, that she wished she might see such a thing for herself, but the Duchess did not feel inclined toward travel and, naturally, she could not go alone.
Then she spoke of her own days.
Of the gardens.
Of the heat.
Of the tulips Laurence had sent, which had bloomed beautifully by late spring and pleased her more than she had expected.
And because it had become impossible not to notice, she told Florian that Laurence's letters had changed — that they had become longer, more descriptive, and, she thought, unintentionally amusing.
That, too, was true.
Some weeks earlier she had received another lengthy letter from Laurence, one that had surprised and delighted her as much as the first.
He had written of end-of-year examinations approaching, of the rowing club, of exhaustion, study, and the sort of small absurdities that made up daily life in a house full of men too proud to admit discomfort.
One part in particular had made her laugh aloud.
He wrote that during one rowing practice, before they had even properly begun, one member of the boat — "all muscle and no sense," as Laurence described him — had stepped too heavily and too foolishly along the edge, immediately capsizing the entire crew into the water. Almost everyone, Laurence reported with dry irritation, found the disaster highly amusing.
Almost everyone, that is, until nearly the entire boat caught cold despite the warmth of the season.
Almost everyone except Florian.
Laurence had written, with unmistakable reluctance, that Florian possessed some eastern root — "gin-something, ginsin or gansen, I forget what absurd name it bears" — and, having apparently cultivated enough of it from some plant gifted in winter, had made a powder of it with ginger and taken it to stave off illness.
Sophia had glowed with satisfaction when she reached that passage.
The ginseng.
Her ginseng.
The book she had sent.
The plant she had hoped he would like had not only pleased him but served him well.
She had reread that paragraph more than once, smiling to herself and thinking — not very charitably, though with conviction — that all those unsightly university men deserved to catch cold if they had capsized a boat in summer, whereas Florian, who was plainly above such indignities, had been preserved.
Her angel, she had thought in a private and hopelessly romantic rush, was not made for such clumsy suffering.
She wrote back to Laurence also.
She told him of De Montfort, of the changing season, of her own small routine, of Arthur and Fredrick and the general volume of the house. She wished him luck in his examinations. She told him she hoped the summer recess would come quickly.
And at the end — almost as though adding it carelessly, though she had thought of it for some time before writing it — she asked whether he intended to bring any guests home.
When Laurence received that letter, he was in his townhouse, seated at the small table by the window where he had taken to having tea at two o'clock with quiet regularity. Old habits, once formed in childhood, did not entirely lose their hold. The hour still carried with it some echo of De Montfort, of a drawing room and a girl who once guarded teatime fiercely as something that belonged to the two of them alone.
He opened Sophia's letter there, with a cup beside him and notes for examinations spread untidily across the table. As he read, her voice came through the page so clearly that he found himself, more than once, smiling despite the pressure of the term.
Then he came to the final question.
Guests.
For the briefest moment something in him sharpened.
Would he bring guests?
Would Florian come again?
The old unease flickered — not as violently as before, but enough to make him sit back and stare at the page a moment longer than the question deserved.
Then Florian's flushed face at the gentleman's club returned to him, along with the name that had dissolved months of suspicion in an instant.
Elise Valois.
Elise, not Sophia.
The relief of that knowledge remained so strong that even now it cooled him.
There was nothing to fear from Florian. Nothing, at least, in that direction.
Laurence folded the letter and set it aside, calmer than he would once have been.
By mid-June, the news spread across the country like wind racing over open fields.
The war was over.
Victory had been won.
The soldiers would return home.
In towns and cities, church bells rang. In homes, letters were waited for with feverish impatience. In households that had endured years of absence, hope rose so swiftly it almost hurt.
At De Montfort, the official communication arrived in the late afternoon.
The Duchess received it in her private sitting room.
The first letter bore the proper seals and language of state — formal, triumphant, precise. The war had concluded. The nation had prevailed. Men would be returning. There was honour in the victory, glory in service, gratitude owed.
The Duchess read that much first and closed her eyes briefly.
The war was over.
It was over.
Theodore would come home.
Then she saw that another letter had accompanied the official one.
This one, though not in his hand.
Even before she opened it, unease began to move beneath the relief.
She knew Theodore's writing as intimately as she knew his voice. The bold pressure of the ink. The decisive angle of certain letters. The economy of his phrasing.
This was not his hand.
She unfolded the pages anyway.
The letter began gently enough.
Theodore wrote that by now she had probably heard the war had been won and that the final victory had been a great one, though costly. He wrote of courage, of bravery, of the men who had stood with him in the last battle — the deciding one, as he called it — and of how much he had missed home, the children, and her.
That alone unsettled her.
Theodore was not a cold man. But he was a restrained one. He loved deeply and steadily, yet often expressed it more through constancy than sentiment. For him to write so openly, so tenderly, felt less like softness and more like preparation.
The Duchess's fingers tightened on the page.
She read on.
He wrote that he had led the final battle.
That his body had suffered grave injury.
That he had been advised not to travel until he was stable enough to endure the journey home.
Her breath caught.
Then came the line that changed everything.
He said she had likely noticed by now that the hand was not his own.
It was not his because he could no longer use his hand.
The room blurred for a moment.
The Duchess blinked and tried to keep reading.
But her mind had already begun to imagine what he had not said.
How much blood.
How much damage.
How much pain.
He had not described it in detail, and that frightened her more than detail would have. Theodore was not a man to indulge suffering with words. If he wrote only that his body was gravely injured, then the truth must be terrible.
Still she forced herself onward.
He wrote that he was proud to have served his country. That he hoped, once he regained enough strength, to return home — perhaps even in time for Christmas. He apologized for leaving her for so many years to manage the estate and the children alone, though he added that he never doubted she had done it well. He told her he was grateful. Proud. Thankful beyond measure.
And he ended, with a tenderness so stark it felt like a wound:
Your one and only,
Theodore de Montfort
By the time she reached the end, the Duchess could no longer hold herself upright beneath composure alone.
The war was over.
That should have meant relief.
That should have meant joy.
But the words in her lap pulsed with something darker — triumph and dread bound together so tightly they could not be separated.
Theodore was alive.
And yet not safe.
Not whole.
Not here.
Her control broke.
She lowered the pages, then clutched them again, and the first sob rose before she could contain it.
Marriages among their rank often began in calculation.
She knew that.
Everyone knew that.
But what had existed between her and Theodore had long ago deepened beyond arrangement. He had been a good husband — attentive without smothering, respectful without coldness, affectionate in quiet ways that steadied a life. He had been a good father too, and the proof of that goodness lived all around her in the children he had left behind.
The love between them had not been youthful folly.
It had been built.
Lived.
Proven.
And the thought of him broken somewhere far from home was more than she could bear in that moment.
At roughly that same hour, Sophia had begun to feel restless.
The drawing room felt dull. The gardens, though lovely, seemed too quiet without company. Arthur and Fredrick were shut away in lessons with tutors. The house had fallen into one of those pockets of stillness that made the hours seem to drag.
So she went in search of the Duchess.
Perhaps Mama would like to walk.
Perhaps they might sit together in the rose garden or read.
She made her way up the corridor toward the Duchess's room and knocked lightly.
"Mama?"
No answer.
She knocked again.
"Mama?"
This time, after a pause, she heard something.
Not words.
Sobs.
Faint at first, then unmistakable.
Sophia's heart lurched.
She opened the door at once.
The sight before her stunned her so deeply that for one second she could only stand there.
The Duchess was on her knees beside the bed, letter in hand, weeping in a way Sophia had never seen before.
Not elegant tears.
Not restrained sadness.
Real grief.
"Mama!" Sophia cried, rushing forward.
She dropped beside her immediately and put her arms around her, not knowing what had happened but knowing it was terrible. The Duchess barely seemed aware of who had come. She clung once, then bent again beneath the force of her crying.
Two servants passing along the corridor heard the commotion and entered. Seeing the scene, they moved quickly — one to help the Duchess up, the other to fetch tea, smelling salts, anything soothing.
As they lifted her toward the bed, the letter slipped from her hand and fell to the floor.
Sophia saw the seal.
Papa.
Theodore.
Her own breath seemed to stop.
Without drawing attention, she picked up the letter and folded it into her hand.
What could be so grave, she thought in rising horror, that it had reduced Mama to this?
The rest of the afternoon blurred.
The Duchess could not stop crying for hours. Her maid sat beside her. The house seemed to absorb the change almost instantly. Servants moved more quietly. Doors closed more softly. Even the air felt solemn.
Sophia took the letter away and read it in private.
By the time she reached the end, tears had slipped down her face too.
She had to stop twice to see properly through the blur.
Papa was alive.
Papa was injured.
Gravely.
Could not use his hand.
Might not come home until Christmas.
Might not—
She would not let herself finish the thought.
She composed herself with all the determination she could summon, but the knowledge sat inside her like a stone.
At dinner that evening, the table felt wrong.
Too wide.
Too formal.
Too quiet.
It was only Sophia, Arthur, and Fredrick.
The Duchess did not appear.
No servant would explain why.
Arthur noticed first.
"Where is Mother?"
No one answered.
Fredrick looked around, frowning, "That is unusual."
Arthur glanced toward Sophia, "You know something, don't you?"
Sophia tried for a moment to remain silent. But she had spent the entire afternoon holding knowledge that felt too heavy for her age, and the boys' voices — especially raised in ignorance — made something inside her snap.
"Would you both stop being so, so incorrigible!" she said sharply.
They stared at her.
Then, lower, because she could not bear to let them remain in confusion:
"I read a letter from Papa."
The change was immediate.
Arthur's expression lost its mischief.
Fredrick sat very still.
Sophia told them.
Not every word.
But enough.
That the war was over. That Papa had been injured. That it was serious. That Mama was terribly distressed.
By the time she finished, both boys had fallen silent.
Arthur's face had gone pale.
Fredrick looked down at his hands as though trying to think through something that could not be solved.
No one raised their voice again.
The meal ended early.
And when the house retired that night, each to separate chambers, De Montfort fell into a silence deeper than any it had known in years.