Morning at Wartenburg Manor unfolded with the measured gravity of a hymn sung in the chill hush before dawn. Frost had crept along the nursery windowpanes during the night, softening the distant hills to a smudged whiteness, blurring the horizon until all distinction faded into gentle shadow. Yet within these subdued boundaries, Maggy's arrival cracked the stillness with the certitude of a tolling bell.
She came as she always did, well before the household had properly stirred. The nursery door yielded to the firm insistence of her hip, admitting her and the breakfast tray she bore—a simple spread of bread, folded cloths, a delicate white pitcher balanced just so.
But something new awaited her this morning—a small crumpled of paper, small and crumpled, lying directly in the path of the door, half-caught in the golden lance of dawn that spilled across the floor from the east-facing window.
Maggy halted, her boot front grazing the edge of it. She stooped at once, wasting nothing on hesitation, and plucked the thing up, holding it in the manner of one well-accustomed to judging the worth of fruit or the state of a soiled cuff. Her scrutiny was not gentle but precise, the habit of years spent sorting what could be salvaged from what must be discarded.
The letter was thick, weighty with expensive linen—a quality absent from the daily affairs of common folk—and Maggy's hands, toughened by lye and the bite of winter air, were ill-suited to such finery. She attempted to smooth the battered sheet, pinching and coaxing the corners flat, yet the paper resisted, curling stubbornly back upon itself as if denying her touch. A blot of wax, long dried, sealed the fold; the mark stamped into it was unfamiliar, but the color—a deep, imperial red, rich as blood on a noble's ledger—spoke with a certainty that needed no translation.
She made a soft, dismissive sound—a brief, downward twist of her lips and a low "Eh"—as her thumb grazed the wax seal. The unfamiliarity of the letters vexed her; words in Maggy's world belonged on the tongue, alive and shifting, not trapped in inked loops and curves that seemed designed to obscure meaning rather than reveal it.
At last, she turned her gaze to the interior of the room.
Amelie lingered at the far end of the nursery, behind the stately wooden crib, enveloped in a slender shaft of morning light. Already, her hands moved with quiet resolve, adjusting the swaddling cloth around little Adrian. The child's arms fluttered, restless; his mouth opened in silent protest, but Amelie's touch—soothing, deft, unwavering—slowly lulled him back toward stillness. Her hair, unbound, spilled in dark blonde ripples over her cheeks, framing a face softened by the remnants of sleep. The nightdress she wore, draped with a borrowed robe, spoke not of formality but of warmth, of a comfort that lingered from the long hours before dawn.
Maggy, catching sight of Amelie, could not resist a theatrical sigh. "Amelie, what's this, now?" she called, flourishing the letter overhead like a banner. "If you're set on leaving notes everywhere, I'll be forced to rake them up with the dust come morning."
The joke had been intended as a kindness; lately, Amelie had grown fretful over mislaid objects, and Maggy found amusement in playing the flustered but well-meaning nursemaid. Today, though, the expected bashful smile did not appear. Instead, Amelie froze, hands pausing in the midst of tying Adrian's swaddle, her entire frame drawn taut as if startled by a distant, echoing memory.
Amelie's gaze darted first to the letter, then to Maggy's face, then away again, her expression veiling itself with practiced care. "Thank you, Maggy." Her voice was too controlled, a shade too even, belying a tremor beneath. "I must have dropped it last night while writing to my family."
It was a lie—the sort that prickled beneath the skin, sharp and inexplicable, and Maggy felt her brow gather as she studied the letter. She had watched Amelie draft her messages more times than she could count. Never before had Amelie touched such costly paper, nor sealed her words with wax so fine. But the customs of the writing folk were like the painted glass in the chapel: beautiful, inscrutable, casting colored shapes she could not decipher. Maggy let the puzzle lie. She shrugged, as one must, and let Amelie's explanation stand.
Three brisk strides carried her across the floor, the letter held out upon her palm, flat and open, for Amelie to take. "Best keep a tighter grip on things like this," Maggy said, her voice teasing but not unkind.
Amelie managed a smile, careful and composed. She accepted the letter from Maggy, her fingers grazing the parchment—a light touch, yet the motion was firm, unhesitating. Without haste, she set the letter down on the desk, precise in her placement so it would not slide against the open infant-development book already lying there. "Yes, Maggy. Thank you." For a lingering moment, Amelie's gaze rested on the letter, her eyes shadowed by thought, before she returned her full attention to the baby. The infant's squirming had grown markedly more urgent, every movement punctuating the silence and demanding her notice.
Maggy set the breakfast tray on the sideboard, making a ritual show of arranging the utensils and pouring a measure of milk. She watched Amelie from the corner of her eye, noting the way her movements had lost their usual ease. Amelie's hands, so often graceful, seemed almost mechanical now as she picked up Adrian and settled into the rocking chair, preparing to nurse.
Maggy immersed herself in the morning tasks—drawing the drapes, checking the water pitcher, and assessing the wardrobe for the day's attire—but each time she glanced back, Amelie's eyes remained fixed on the letter, her lips drawn tight and pale. Adrian latched on with a satisfied sigh, the quiet punctuated only by soft slurping and the occasional chirp of a bird outside. Maggy, practical as ever, concluded that whatever secrets lingered were not meant for her ears. She dusted the mantel, humming a few notes of an old lullaby as she worked.Amelie shifted Adrian to her other arm, but her attention remained fixed on the letter. She replayed the events of the night—the Duke's abrupt entrance, the way his eyes had clung to her, the strange electricity of his presence. She recalled how the letter must have slipped from his pocket as he left her chamber.
The thought of the letter—the very idea that it might contain some new threat, some fresh summons or demand—made her stomach twist. Yet she would not, could not, read it. The rules of her world, as absolute as gravity, forbade such trespass.
She needed to return the letter to the Duke—its weight and seal marked it as something of consequence. Amelie inhaled slowly, counting each breath that matched Adrian's gentle rhythm against her chest, using his warmth to steady herself. Yet Maggy's presence lingered, her shadow falling across the threshold like a gentle warning.
No, she decided. Not yet. Not with Maggy still so near, and the household so alive to every whisper and rumor.
The first hours of the day gathered themselves, each one lending definition to the morning as Amelie readied for her passage through the manor's quiet corridors. Against her shoulder, Adrian nestled—a fragile ember coaxing warmth into the brittle air that winter had left behind. Pausing at the threshold, she faced her reflection in the gilt-edged mirror; with steady hands, she tamed the loose strands of her hair and straightened the immaculate white cloth meant to shield her dress from the inevitable spatters of spit or milk.
The corridors of Wartenburg Manor dozed in silence at this hour, emptied of all but the fleeting specters of servants—their shadows slipping along the walls as they hurried with coals or linens. Stillness draped the marble hall, a hush cultivated by centuries of custom, so profound that even the soft whimpering of Adrian seemed almost forbidden, a trespass against the sacred quiet.
At the end of the hall, the Duke's study stood with the door ajar, as though expecting her. The duke waited within, the silhouette of his frame outlined against the pale blue of the morning sky beyond the mullioned window. His posture, rigid yet somehow weary, betrayed nothing. It was only when Amelie entered, Adrian secure in her arms, that the Duke turned—his expression unguarded for the briefest instant, surprise flickering in the depths of his amber eyes.
He did not offer her words. Instead, he gestured—a gentle sweep of his hand, as if inviting Amelie across a threshold only few were permitted to cross. She obeyed, her footsteps muffled by the thick carpet, though the pounding of her heart seemed louder than she would ever admit. When she halted, leaving the distance of an outstretched arm between them, the room settled into a hush. For a moment, all three figures—the father, his child, the nurse—remained motionless in the filtered light, each suspended in a fragile tableau that held more uncertainty than comfort.
As if summoned by a cue too subtle for words, Amelie lifted Adrian and held him out to the Duke. The gesture, once so fraught with anxiety, now flowed from practiced hands, though she remembered vividly the early days—the tremor in her grip, the dread that she might fumble the child, or that Adrian would shy away from his father's touch. Now, her movements bespoke familiarity, but the memory of her old fears lingered in the quiet space between them.
This time it was Adrian who reached for the duke, tiny hands seeking the polished silver buttons of his father's coat. The duke gathered his son with a gentleness at odds with the tales that haunted the corridors. Against his chest, he held the boy close, one broad hand splayed with a soldier's protectiveness across the infant's back, and murmured something so low that Amelie could not catch it, a lullaby pitched below language.
The change in the duke arrived like dawn on frost: slow, subtle, inexorable. The harsh lines of command softened, sorrow surfacing in the blue depths of his eyes—a sorrow so deep it seemed to echo through the hush of the room. Yet Amelie saw, beneath the weight of grief, a seam of hope running stubborn as winter wheat beneath snow. He closed his eyes, pressing his cheek to Adrian's downy crown, and for a heartbeat the silence blotted out even thought itself.
Amelie stood at the threshold, poised between presence and disappearance. She remembered the kitchen whispers: that the duke was broken, lost to mourning, more attuned to ghosts than to the living. But the duke had taken a turn and the rumors had missed their mark. What she saw was not absence, but a presence wrought raw, every nerve straining to bear up under the legacy of loss.
The Duke looked up. For a long, breathless interval, he regarded Amelie; not as the woman who had dutifully crossed the threshold of his world day after day, but as if seeing her for the very first time. There stood a young pregnant woman—a figure poised between resilience and uncertainty, exiled from kin and home, forging a living at the mercy of a stranger's household. She worked as a wet nurse, her own child stirring within while she nourished another's legacy, caught in the silent expectancy that filled the room like dusk pressing in against tall windows. There was an apology in his eyes—a wordless confession for the lateness of his visit, for the burdens he left her to carry, for the world itself.
He spoke, at last, his voice softer than she expected. "Thank you, Amelie."
She nodded, unable or unwilling to risk breaking the moment with anything as fragile as language.
Turning, the duke crossed to the tall window, Adrian swaddled in his arms. He gazed out at the frost-clad fields that swept away to the horizon, rocking gently, as though recalling the cadence of a cradle song he could no longer name. The two figures, father and son, were caught in the unclouded brilliance of morning—a diorama in light and shadow.
Amelie let herself slip quietly from the study, leaving the two of them framed in the morning's cleanest light. She pulled the door shut with infinite care, so as not to disturb the hush.