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The truth. The honest truth, at last.

Eliza seemed like a deeply troubled woman with a big shadow looming over her soul. She had made several mentions in her diary about how life was a lot different before she met Edmund.It seemed like she had several bad experiences already, and she mentioned trouble with finding suitors, even failing to see through some arranged marriages her family had set up for her.

Makes sense… Once a woman fails to find romantic success early on after her debut, she can’t help but be discarded to the periphery.

Sophia knew the feeling all too well. She remembered the side glances and the hushed whispers from the ladies of the ton when they saw her. The difference between her and Eliza, however, was that she didn’t mind wearing the mantle of a spinster. She had had no problem living a life without marriage or romance. If it happened, fine, but she had no plans to force it.

Eliza, however, seemeddesperatefor romance. Sophia could tell she was a tortured soul that begged for a tender touch, and she could see it in the way the woman talked about Edmund.

Where could it have all gone so wrong?

She continued reading. This one page was covered in wet stains. Tears?

Thursday, 3rdof October,

My brother has forbidden me from ever seeing him again. He thinks he took advantage of me and defiled my body. He threatens to have him killed. He will not listen to me. But…

I have another soul living inside me. I can tell. I am only a few days late, but I can tell. And I know it is his. Our love child. My brother says he will not have a bastard walking around our halls, carrying the family name. I tell him it does not have to be a bastard—I can marry Edmund. He refuses to understand.

It was me. I wanted to make love to him. Everything was my fault. If I had just waited…

The entry was cut off abruptly. Sophia guessed it was probably because Eliza couldn’t stop the tears from falling. She felt her own tears welling up in her eyes and begging to come out, but she wiped them away. She couldn’t start crying now.

There was one more page. She had to finish it. For Eliza’s sake. For a woman who, even though she had lived a century ago, felt like a sister to her.

I owe this to her.

She found the last page. It had no date on the top right corner.

With a breath, Sophia read the heartbreakingly brief entry with stinging eyes.

My life is over. God willing, I will not write again. I will be gone—to dust and ash, my beloved child along with me. May we find more peace in the hereafter than we had here. I am sorry, my dear Edmund. We will wait for you. Goodbye.

Sophia shivered in place, tears rolling down her cheeks. She felt this woman’s pain, her sadness. The image of choosing to take your own life while knowing you carried a child within you…

All of this pain, this sorrow, all of the deaths, the misery, the lives lost, the hatred we planted amongst each other… because of one man’s idiotic decision eighty years ago.

The brother was clearly to blame for forbidding the marriage, but Eliza’s entries held no love for the rest of her family either. In the end, they had all conspired against her and Edmund, and it had cost them. Cost everyone, long after they were all dead and buried.

Above all, Sophia felt stupid. Stupid for believing everything that had been passed down to her. For looking at Thomas and wishing death upon him.

This can’t be…

She looked down at the book and ran several different thoughts back and forth, considering her options.

This one little book, clad in soft blue leather, stashed away in a tiny library in the middle of a small house in the middle of a tiny faraway nook, could end the feud between the two families once and for all. And perhaps even…

Perhaps we… we could even live as a real… a real couple…

She shook her head.

No. You still can’t entrust your heart to him. You don’t even know if he has a mistress or not.

She closed the book and stared at the sigil. This one little book complicated things so much. She and Thomas would need to have a long talk, uncomfortable yet necessary.

“Thomas?” Gregory shouldered him so hard that he almost fell out of his chair. “You are distracted, Nephew. Something is bothering you.”

The two men were at their usual table at the local inn, where they had often escaped when Harriet was playing the tyrant at the manor and they needed to talk about business—or nothing at all—with absolute peace and quiet.