The Duke brought his mistress home and ordered his wife to move to a cottage at the edge of his estate. He expected her to fade quietly into obscurity. Instead, while his mistress bankrupted his household, the woman he discarded quietly became the heart of his entire estate — and he only discovered it when he returned to find his estate had chosen her over him.

PART 5

Charlotte helped where she could.

When a tenant family’s roof began leaking badly before an expected storm, she used her knowledge of the estate supply stores, gained from years of overseeing household matters as Duchess, to arrange for spare thatch to be delivered — a request Mr. Colton fulfilled without hesitation, grateful for any decision on the estate that still made practical sense. When a dispute arose between two tenant families over the boundary of a shared field, Charlotte listened patiently to both sides and suggested a fair compromise that left neither party feeling cheated.

None of this reached Edward, who remained in the capital through the autumn, his letters from Colton continuing to pass first through Isabelle’s careful editing before they ever left the estate. But it did reach Isabelle, filtered through the gossip of servants who moved between the two households. And it did not sit well with her at all.

“They call her ‘the cottage lady,'” Isabelle said one evening to her personal maid, Dorothy. “As though she is some kind of saint living in a hovel and playing at charity.”

“I am sure it means nothing, Miss Grant,” Dorothy said carefully — though she herself had heard the tenants speak of Charlotte with a warmth she had never once heard directed toward Isabelle.

“It means everything,” Isabelle snapped, pacing the length of her elegant bedroom — the very room that had once belonged to Charlotte. “She is trying to make me look foolish.”

In truth, Isabelle’s management continued to deteriorate. She ordered new drapes for every room, though the existing ones had been replaced only three years prior. She dismissed the head gardener, a man who had tended the Camden grounds for nearly fifteen years, after he politely suggested that some of her requested changes would not suit the local soil. In his place, she hired a younger man from the capital who charged twice the wages and knew considerably less about the estate’s land.

The tenant farms received almost no attention at all. Where Edward had always made a point of visiting the tenant families each autumn to discuss the harvest, Isabelle showed no interest whatsoever. Several tenants who had hoped to request minor repairs found their letters to the main house went unanswered for weeks.

This neglect did not go unnoticed. More and more families began quietly redirecting their questions and requests to Charlotte instead — trusting that she at least would listen, even without any formal authority to do so.

Charlotte found herself in an increasingly delicate position. She had no official power over the estate any longer. And yet, tenant by tenant, request by request, she found herself quietly filling the void that Isabelle’s indifference had created. She wrote letters on behalf of tenants, addressing them directly to Mr. Colton rather than to Isabelle, and found that he responded with far more diligence than he had shown toward requests routed through the main house.

“You are doing the work of a Duchess without any of the title,” Agnes observed one evening.

“I am doing the work that needs doing,” Charlotte replied simply. “The title was never the point. I only wish I had understood that sooner.”

The first real crisis struck the main house itself in late autumn. Isabelle, dissatisfied with the pace of her requested renovations to the drawing room, dismissed the household’s longtime carpenter, William Hartley, who had built or repaired nearly every piece of wooden furniture on the estate over two decades. In his place, she hired a younger carpenter recommended by a fashionable friend from the capital, a man who charged considerably more but who knew far less about the particular hardwoods common to the region. Within two weeks, the new drawing room shelving had begun to warp in the damp autumn air, and Isabelle, furious at the wasted expense, dismissed the young carpenter too, leaving the drawing room in a worse state than before.

Mrs. Whitfield, watching these events unfold, finally worked up the courage to speak plainly.

“Miss Grant,” she said carefully, “if I may offer a suggestion, perhaps it would serve the household well to consult Mr. Colton before making further changes to the staff.”

“Mr. Colton manages numbers,” Isabelle replied dismissively. “He does not understand taste.”

“Perhaps not,” Mrs. Whitfield allowed. “But the previous Duchess always found his counsel valuable. It might save considerable expense.”

Isabelle’s expression hardened. “I am not the previous Duchess. And I do not require lessons in how to run a household from a woman currently living in a cottage.”

Mrs. Whitfield said nothing further, retreating with a small, tight nod. But the exchange left her more troubled than ever.