“Did you take it, Miss Marsh?” he demanded, his voice a near-whisper that was more terrifying than any shout. “Tell me the truth.”

The world narrowed to the space between them. The fire roared, a silent witness. Caspian’s smug, pitying gaze burned into her side. But all Eleanor could see was the Duke’s face—a ruin of fury and betrayal. The man who had sat by his daughter’s bed, whose fingers had brushed hers in a moment of shared, fragile peace, was gone. In his place stood the monster of village lore.

“No,” she said, her voice a threadbare whisper. She found a deeper well of strength, forcing the word out again, stronger this time. “No. I did not.”

“She was seen near the west wing,” Caspian interjected, his tone sorrowful. “Alistair, I know this is unpleasant…”

“Stay out of this, Caspian,” Alistair snapped, his good eye never leaving Eleanor’s face. The command was sharp enough to make his cousin flinch.

Eleanor lifted her chin, the hurt inside her crystallizing into cold, sharp anger. “You know me to be honest, Your Grace. You have seen my character every day in my work with your daughter. You have seen her happiness. You have heard her laugh. Are those the actions of a common thief?”

“Desperate people do desperate things,” he countered, echoing Caspian’s poison. The words were a physical blow.

“My desperation led me to your door, not to your private chambers,” she retorted, her voice shaking with the effort of control. “I have never set foot in the west wing. Someone is lying. It is not me.”

Her gaze flicked to Caspian, whose mask of concern was flawless. He met her stare with a look of profound, false sadness. The trap was perfectly laid. It was her word, the word of a penniless governess, against that of his own kin.

Alistair’s jaw worked, the muscles tight beneath the scarred skin. She could see the war in his eye—the suspicion battling with the memory of a shared laugh, a quiet moment, a hand brushing hers in the dark. For a agonizing second, she thought the man she’d glimpsed might win.

He did not.

“You will be confined to your rooms, Miss Marsh,” he said, the words falling like stones. “I will have the staff’s quarters searched. And yours. If the necklace is not found, you will leave Blackwood on the morning coach.”

The sentence was delivered. There was no appeal. He turned his back on her, a gesture of dismissal more final than any spoken word. He was choosing the dark. He was choosing to believe the worst.

“As you wish, Your Grace,” she said, her voice devoid of all emotion. She wouldn’t give him her tears. She wouldn’t give Caspian the satisfaction. She turned and walked from the study, each step an agony of disillusionment. The click of the door behind her was the sound of a heart breaking.

Mrs. Gable was waiting in the hall, her face impassive, but her eyes held a flicker of something Eleanor couldn’t decipher. Pity? Concern? “I am to escort you to your room, Miss Marsh.”

The walk was silent. As they reached her door, Eleanor stopped. “Mrs. Gable,” she began, her voice low. “You have been in this house a long time. You’ve seen everything. You know me… even a little. You cannot believe I did this.”

The housekeeper’s severe expression softened almost imperceptibly. “What I believe matters little, miss. It is His Grace who must be convinced.” She paused, her gaze darting down the empty corridor. “Lord Caspian arrived with very little luggage, but a great many debts. Be careful of him.” It was a warning, quiet and dangerous. Before Eleanor could respond, Mrs. Gable gave a stiff nod and retreated down the hall, her keys jangling faintly.

Locked in her room, Eleanor sank onto her bed, the fight draining out of her. The accusation was a phantom, impossible to fight. How could she prove she *hadn’t* done something? She stared out the window at the gardens, where only days ago she and Rosalie had chased butterflies. Now, the trees looked like skeletal fingers reaching for the grey sky. Her thoughts weren't for herself, but for the little girl in the room next door. What would become of Rosalie when she was gone? The child would retreat into her shell, the brief, brilliant light of her laughter extinguished once more. The thought was more painful than any false charge.

Alistair did not sleep. He paced the length of the library, the very room where he had found her on the ladder, her braid hanging down her back, her face illuminated by candlelight. He had called her impertinent. She had called herself honest. *Herodotus next to Dickens. It’s an affront to literature.* The memory was so clear, so vivid, it felt like a ghost in the room with him.

He wanted to believe her. Gods, how he wanted to. The thought that her kindness, her gentle patience with Rosalie, the startling warmth in her eyes was all a calculated deceit made his gut clench. But his wife’s necklace… Isabelle’s sapphires. The last piece of her he kept close. The violation felt profound, personal.

Caspian’s words slithered through his mind. *One must be cautious with pretty, ambitious women from humble beginnings.* It fed the old wound, the one left by the world that stared at his face, the society that had pitied him after Isabelle’s death and then forgotten him. He had built these walls around his heart for a reason. Eleanor Marsh had breached them with effortless grace, and his first instinct was to believe she had done so only to plunder the ruins.

He flung open the doors to his study and sat at his desk, burying his face in his hands. The search had yielded nothing. Not in her room, not in the servants’ quarters. It was simply gone. It made her look guiltier. A clever thief would have already passed it on or found a better hiding place.

A small scratching sound at the door startled him. “Go away,” he growled.

The door creaked open anyway. Rosalie stood there, clutching a worn teddy bear, her small face pale and tear-streaked. “Papa? Is Miss Marsh going away?”

His heart twisted. “Go back to bed, Rosalie.”

“Mrs. Gable said she’s locked in her room,” the child persisted, her lower lip trembling. “She said you’re angry about a necklace. Is it the one from Mama’s picture?”

Alistair stiffened. “Yes.”

Rosalie crept closer, her bare feet silent on the thick rug. “It’s very pretty. It’s shiny. Like a beetle’s back.”

He looked up, his attention snagged. “What did you say?”

“A beetle,” she repeated. “Miss Marsh taught me about them. The shiny green ones and the shiny blue ones. Uncle Caspian has a shiny blue one. He showed me.”

The air in the room grew still. The fire crackled, suddenly loud. “When did your uncle show you a beetle, Rosalie?” Alistair asked, his voice dangerously soft.

“Yesterday. When you were talking in the garden,” she said, her voice small. “He came out of your room. He said he was looking for you. He had the shiny blue beetle in his hand. He told me it was a secret.”

Came out of his room. With a shiny blue… secret.

The pieces clicked into place with sickening precision. Caspian’s arrival. His feigned concern. The subtle poison he’d been dripping into Alistair’s ear. The accusation, timed perfectly after that moment of connection during the storm, a moment Caspian must have guessed would lower Alistair’s defenses. It wasn’t about a penniless governess. It was about him. It was about isolating him, controlling him, and likely, stealing from him.

A cold, white-hot rage, purer and more focused than any he had felt since the war, washed through him. He had been a fool. A blind, wounded fool, so lost in his own pain that he had allowed a snake into his house and nearly sacrificed an innocent woman to its venom.

He stood, his chair scraping loudly against the floor. Rosalie flinched.

He knelt before his daughter, his large, scarred hands framing her small face. “You are a very clever girl, Rosalie,” he said, his voice thick with emotion. “Thank you. Now, go with Mrs. Gable. I have something I must attend to.”

He found Caspian in the guest suite, a decanter of brandy on the table beside him. His cousin was packing a small valise.

“Leaving so soon?” Alistair asked from the doorway. He closed the door behind him, the sound echoing with finality.

Caspian started, his suave demeanor faltering for a second before snapping back into place. “Alistair. Just sorting a few things. I thought it best to depart in the morning, after this unfortunate business with the governess is concluded. Less fuss.”

“The business with the governess *is* concluded,” Alistair said, advancing into the room. The shadows clung to him, making him seem larger, more menacing. “I know you took the necklace, Caspian.”

Caspian laughed, a brittle, unconvincing sound. “My dear fellow, you’re overwrought. The strain is getting to you. I told you her sort couldn’t be trusted…”

“Rosalie saw you,” Alistair interrupted, his voice dropping to a low growl. “She saw you leaving my chamber with it in your hand.”

The color drained from Caspian’s face. His eyes darted towards the door, then to the windows. He was trapped.

“The child is fanciful,” he stammered. “She imagines things…”

“Give it to me,” Alistair demanded, his hand outstretched.

Caspian’s facade crumbled completely, replaced by a sneer of resentment. “Why should you have it all? This monstrous house, the title, the money. You hide in here, a wretched beast, while I have to beg and scrape to survive! You don’t deserve any of it. You don’t even deserve her—the little governess who looks at you with stars in her eyes. It was almost too easy to make you turn on her.”

The words were meant to wound, and they did. But they also fueled Alistair’s fury. With two long strides, he was on his cousin. He grabbed the front of Caspian’s coat, slamming him against the wall. The valise toppled over, its contents spilling across the floor. Amidst the shirts and cravats lay a velvet pouch.

Alistair released his cousin, who slumped to the floor, gasping. He picked up the pouch. The familiar weight was inside. He didn’t need to open it. He tossed it onto the bed, his gaze cold and flat.

“You have one hour to be gone from my house,” he said, his voice lethal. “If I ever see your face on my lands again, I will not be responsible for my actions. The carriage that brought you here will take you to the coaching inn. From there, you are on your own.”

He turned and left without a backward glance, leaving Caspian amidst the ruin of his own making.

Alistair walked, not to his study, but to the east wing. He stood before Eleanor’s door, the key heavy in his hand. He unlocked it and pushed it open.

She was standing by the window, a dark silhouette against the pale dawn. She didn’t turn. She had likely heard the confrontation, the shouting.

“I suppose you’ve come to tell me the coach is ready,” she said, her voice flat and tired.

He stepped into the room, his boots silent on the carpet. The air was thick with shame and regret. He, who had demanded the truth from her, now had to offer his own.

“No,” he said, his voice raw. “I came to…” The words caught in his throat. Apology felt like too small a word for the magnitude of his error.

She finally turned, her face pale in the growing light. Her eyes were shadowed, the vibrant spark he had come to admire entirely gone. They were filled with a profound, quiet hurt that was worse than any anger.

“It was Caspian,” he said, forcing the words out. “He took it. He framed you. He is gone.”

She absorbed this information with a slow nod, her expression unchanging. “I see.”

“Eleanor,” he said, using her given name for the first time. It felt both foreign and deeply right on his tongue. “I… was wrong. What I did… what I accused you of… it was monstrous.”

He took a step closer. She didn’t retreat, but she didn’t welcome him either. She simply stood her ground, waiting.

“I have spent years building walls around this place, around myself,” he confessed, the words tearing from a place deep inside him he kept locked away. “I let my fear and my past make me blind. He knew exactly which wounds to press. That is an explanation, not an excuse. There is no excuse for what I did to you. For the doubt. For the accusation.”

He stood before her, stripped of his title, of his anger, of his pride. He was just a man, deeply flawed and hideously scarred, inside and out. He had taken the light she had brought into his home and had nearly crushed it under the heel of his own brokenness.

“I am sorry,” he whispered. The words were utterly inadequate, yet they were all he had. “I am so profoundly sorry.”

Eleanor looked at him, truly looked at him, for a long moment. She saw the beast, yes, but she also saw the tormented man cowering inside it. She saw the shame warring with the pride in his haunted eye. She had known he was a man of deep wounds. She had not realized how easily they could be made to bleed all over her.

“Thank you for your apology, Your Grace,” she said, her voice quiet but steady. The formality was a wall of her own. “I appreciate you telling me the truth.”

He waited, his breath held, for the absolution he did not deserve. For forgiveness. For a sign that they could find their way back to the quiet understanding of the night before.

She gave him none. She simply looked at him, her gaze clear and unwavering, leaving him to stand in the wreckage of his own mistrust, wondering if it was even possible to rebuild.