The Duke Returned Unannounced to His Old House .. only to Find His long dead Duchess and Son Alive..

Chapter 10

William arrived at ten o’clock exactly.

He came on horseback across the frozen ground from the estate cottage. He was dressed correctly in his good coat. His boots were clean. His bearing was composed. He handed his horse to the stable boy without looking up at the hall windows and walked to the front door and knocked.

Mrs. Peton opened the door. She looked at him for a moment with an expression that said everything she thought of him without a single word being spoken. Then she turned and led him through the entrance hall to the library without speaking.

The library at Blackmore Hall ran the full length of the west wing. Floor-to-ceiling shelves on every wall. A fireplace at each end. Long windows looking out over the parkland. Heavy oak reading tables down the center. The smell of old leather and wood smoke. Three hundred years of Ashworth family history.

Edward was standing at the far window when William entered, looking out at the parkland. The November morning was bright and cold. Two horses moved in the paddock below. The moors stretched away to the horizon.

He did not turn around immediately.

William stood inside the door and waited.

After a long moment, Edward turned. They looked at each other across the length of the library. Two men who had been friends since the age of nineteen. Who had shared everything that young men share — university years, ambitions, difficulties, the particular closeness of a friendship that forms before either person fully knows who they are.

Edward gestured to the chair at the near end of the reading table.

William sat.

Edward remained standing.

What passed between them over the next four hours was never recorded by either man. No letter. No account. No version of events passed to anyone else in any form. The household heard nothing through the heavy library door. Not even Mrs. Peton, who had positioned herself with unnecessary tasks in the corridor for the first thirty minutes before accepting that the oak door was doing its job.

What came out of that library was this:

William resigned as estate manager of Blackmore Hall, effective immediately. He would leave Northumberland within the week. He would not be prosecuted. He would not be contacted again. He would remove himself from their lives completely and permanently.

William accepted every condition without argument.

He asked one question at the door before he left.

“Is she well?”

Edward looked at him across the room for a long moment.

“She will be,” he said.

William nodded once. Put on his hat. Walked out of the library. Walked through the entrance hall. Opened the front door. And walked out of Blackmore Hall forever.

Edward stood at the library window and watched him collect his horse from the stable boy and ride away down the drive. The horse’s breath steamed in the cold morning air. The oak trees lined both sides. The frozen ground was hard under the hooves.

William reached the bend in the drive. He did not look back. He disappeared from view.

Edward stood at the window for a long time after he was gone.

Fifteen years of friendship. Built carefully. Trusted completely. Ended not by an argument or a falling-out or the natural drifting that some friendships take over time. Ended by a choice. One long, deliberate, patient, terrible choice.

He stood at the window until Thomas appeared in the library doorway, having escaped whatever supervision had been arranged for him, and announced that Bess the bay mare had allowed him to feed her from his hand that morning, which was a significant development, and Edward needed to know immediately.

Edward turned from the window.

He looked at his son.

“Show me,” he said.

They went to the stables.