The paper felt soft and worn beneath her thumb, its corners frayed from years of handling. The ink on the first page had faded to a warm brown. Elena turned past the number 2, the unusual curve of the handwritten numeral catching her eye once more, and found the first entry. The date was written in the same slanted hand, the letters leaning sharply to the right.
Oh, how I have been a poor correspondent to myself. It has been — I had to count — one year and four months since I last opened a journal, which was the black one I left half-finished on my desk in the north, and which I am certain my mother burned or sold or gave to the housekeeper to line a drawer. I forgot it there the morning I left, and I have not been back. So this is the first page of a new account, and I find I don't know how to begin, because the woman who wrote before is not the woman sitting here now.
Elena shifted in the chair, drawing her feet up under her. The lamp threw her shadow long across the rug, and the shelves beyond it, and the manor had gone quiet in the way it did at four in the afternoon, when the staff had finished, and the house was only itself. She could hear her own breathing. She read on.
I am married! There. That is the whole of it, and it took me three sentences to say. I am married to Charles Thorn, and I have been for seven months, and I am so happy that some mornings I wake before him and lie still and simply look at him and think, this is my life now, this is my house, that is my husband's arm across my stomach, and I have done something right. I don't say that to anyone. One doesn't. But I'll say it here because there's no one to hear it and no one to be scandalized by it.
He is not an easy man to know. I know how he seems — I've watched people come into a room and see him and go careful, go quiet, straighten their spines. He has a face for business that could freeze a lake. But he is the most careful man I have ever met, and I mean that as the highest thing I can say about anyone. He notices when I'm cold before I do. He doesn't ask me what's wrong; he waits until I tell him, and he waits as long as it takes, which is its own kind of asking. When I had the fever in the autumn, he sat in the chair by the bed for two nights and did not sleep, and when I told him to go to bed he said, "I am in bed," which is the closest thing to a joke I have ever heard out of him.
Elena let the journal fall flat against her knees and looked at the ceiling of the library, at the dark beams. She had thought Liam's silences and guardedness came from somewhere colder, something bred into him long before she met him. But here was his mother writing about a man with a frozen face who sat up two nights beside a sickbed and told his wife he was already where he belonged. And here was his mother, writing about a man with a frozen face who sat up two nights with a fever and said, I am home.
She thought of Liam's hand on her head right here in the library not that long ago. Asking her if she was okay. That same carefulness came from his father. She turned the page.
I shall be indiscreet for one paragraph, and then I shall return to being a respectable wife. I LOVE being married! And not merely because I get to wear a pretty ring and have Charles all to myself, though those are considerable advantages. No, it is the nights I particularly wish to discuss. I had been warned by girls at school, by my aunt, and by every whispered conversation between well-bred young ladies that a wife must endure her marital duties with grace, lie still, think of the family name, and consider the matter a necessary evil. A NECESSARY EVIL! Whoever started that particular rumor ought to be shot. Charles, it turns out, has a most astonishing talent for making me forget every rule of respectable society, and I have discovered that I possess considerably less modesty, and considerably more enthusiasm, than anyone might have suspected. Certainly more than I suspected myself! We are, it seems, exceptionally well suited to one another in this regard, and I find myself looking forward to bedtime with an enthusiasm that would horrify my aunt beyond recovery. I had always thought myself a romantic. I had not realized quite how much of a romantic I might be when given the proper encouragement. If the rest of marriage proves half as delightful as this first part, I fear Charles and I shall have a nursery full of children before either of us has the good sense to stop. And now I shall close this book before I write something truly unforgivable!
Elena made a small sound — half a laugh, half something else — and pressed her knuckles to her mouth. ‘Half as delightful.’ The woman in these pages had been dead for years, and she was making Elena blush in an empty library as she thought of her and Liam.
Another small entry followed, dated the next day.
Okay, since we were on the topic of children. Five. I want five. Charles says five is a great many, and I said that is rather the point of them. He gave me that flat look that isn't flat at all once you know him, then smiled. "Then we had better begin." So. We are beginning.
The next entry was dated a month on, and the handwriting had loosened, grown rounder. Contented, Elena thought. It looked like handwriting that had stopped trying to escape the margin.
A strange thing to set down, and I have been turning it over for a week. I am glad, and I am sorry, both, and I can't separate them, so I'll write them together. I married into another of the families. I knew what that meant when I said yes, and I said yes anyway, and I would say it again — but it means my children will be taught the thing we are taught. The secret. My brother, Dorian, is the heir of the Orleths, so it would have fallen to his children, only his; that was always the arrangement, the way it has always been arranged, one line carrying the weight and the rest of us living clean. But I am now married to another of the great families. I am a Thorn now. So now my children will learn it.
Elena's thumb stopped moving. She read the paragraph again, then a third time, and the lamp seemed to have gone dimmer, though it hadn't, though nothing in the room had changed at all.
I am glad because — and this is the part I am ashamed of — I am glad because I would not want to be the only one in a room who knows. There is a loneliness in keeping a secret, and I have watched what it does. So there is that. And I am sorry because I have seen what knowing does to a person, and I have done this to children who are not born yet and cannot be asked if they want it.
Iredessa, at least, may yet be spared the worst of it. She is eight years old, the smallest of them, and Dorian will carry the family forward. There is still a chance she might grow up with a little more freedom than her brother and I, that she might marry someone kind and live a life in which the family’s wealth is the greatest mystery she ever has to contend with. She knows enough already, poor girl, though she is far too young to understand what that knowledge will mean to her one day.
If she marries outside our circle, she must take the secret with her to the grave. She cannot tell her husband simply because she loves him, nor can she expect that marriage will make him worthy of knowing. There are so few people in this world who can be trusted with the truth, and fewer still who are permitted to hear it. Only a man bound to one of the great families, or one who has earned a place among our closest associates, might ever be considered. Even then, there are no guarantees.
I hate that this must be her inheritance. I hate that one day she may have to weigh the man she loves against the secret she has sworn to keep. I can only hope she finds a life in which she is never asked to make that choice. I would trade a great deal to give her that much.
Elena's eyes had gone hot. She blinked it away, annoyed at herself, and read the next line.
Because it is dangerous. I will not write the truth here. I am not a fool, and if this book is ever found, I would rather it be a record of a happy marriage than evidence enough to condemn someone to death.
There are things a person may know only because of who they are, whom they serve, or the family into which they are born. For everyone else, knowing too much can be a death sentence. The heirs of the great families are permitted that knowledge. So, too, are a very few trusted associates whose work requires it. But for anyone outside those circles, there is rarely a second chance once they have learned what they should not.
And the knowledge does not die as easily as the people who carry it. I once thought it would end with my father. Then I thought it would end with Dorian. Now I have married into it, and I understand that it is not something one can simply leave behind. I wish it could have ended with me. I wish I had been the last one told, the last one forced to understand what our family truly is. I wish I could put my hand flat on the table and declare that it stops here, and know that, for once, the words would be true.
Elena looked up at the shelves. Rows and rows of leather and cloth and gold-stamped spines. She thought back to Sebastian's office, where the map had been spread across his desk, speaking of five families and the treaty as though they were nothing more than history to be recited. But they weren't. They were part of the very thing Amara must have been talking about, and had wished could end with her, a secret that passed from one generation to the next, drawing each new person into its reach. Amara had once been a young woman writing the journal, hoping the people she loved might be spared. Now Elena knew enough to understand why she'd been afraid.
The next entry had a different look entirely. The date was three months later, and the ink was darker, pressed hard enough to groove the page.
They have cut me off. I shall write it plainly because there is no graceful way to write it. My father has disowned me. There was a letter — one letter, four paragraphs, and the last of them was a single sentence about the family name. I am not to write to them. I am not to call. I am not to come north. My mother's name was not on it. I don't know whether that is because she agreed or because she could not bring herself to sign it, and I have decided I would rather not know.
The reason given is that I married against my family's wishes. The truth is rather less simple. My father intended my marriage to a Thorn to serve his own ambitions. He wanted me to gain Charles's trust, secure my place within his family, and eventually bring the Thorn family and its business under my father's control. I was meant to be the means by which he claimed what was not his, using my marriage to gain the influence he could never secure on his own. But I married Charles because I loved him, not because I intended to help my father take everything he had built. I refused to play my part in that design, and my father has never forgiven me for it. He can forgive many things, I think, but not defiance. And certainly not when it costs him the power he believed I would help him secure.
Elena thought of her own mother on the telephone, bright and delighted, *is he handsome, is he good to you* — and had to stop and sit with the difference for a moment, because she had never once in twenty-four years had to wonder whether her parents would still speak to her about her life choices.
She turned the page. Several entries had been started and then violently scribbled out, whole lines buried beneath dark, hurried strokes, as though the writer had changed her mind halfway through or decided the words were too dangerous to leave behind. The next entry that remained legible was dated the following spring, and the handwriting had changed again — larger, looser, with a wobble in the long strokes that Elena mistook at first for haste.
I have been sitting here for ten minutes trying to decide how to begin this entry, and I keep starting it and crossing it out. So I shall simply say it. I am going to have a baby. There. It's on the page, and it can't be taken back. I have known for nine days, and I have told no one but Charles, and now this book, and I have never in my life been so frightened or so happy at the same time. I keep putting my hand on my stomach, which is ridiculous; there is nothing to feel yet, but I do it anyway. I did it in the carriage. I did it in the market. I did it just now, before I picked up the pen.
Elena's hand went to her own stomach and stopped halfway there, and she put it back down on the arm of the chair, hard, as though she'd been caught at something.
I hope it's a boy. I know I ought to say I don't care, and I will say that to anyone who asks, but this book gets the truth. A son will be raised to carry the family name, to inherit its place and its obligations, and one day to stand among the men who decide its future. A daughter, however beloved, may be promised elsewhere if it serves the family's interests. I know this because my father intended to do precisely that with me. He meant to use my marriage to secure what he wanted, and when I refused to play my part, he cast me out. I cannot help wondering whether Iredessa will one day face the same choice, whether she will be treated as a daughter to be cherished or a piece to be moved wherever the family sees fit. I would spare her that if I could. I would spare any daughter of mine. But I cannot pretend that love alone will protect her from the expectations of our name. A son would inherit those expectations openly. A daughter might spend her life discovering that they were being made on her behalf without her ever being asked. I have thought about this for nine days, and I still do not know what frightens me more: raising a son to carry the burden, or a daughter who may be taught that her life is not entirely her own.
Charles wants to name him William. I asked why, and he said it was his father's name. I reminded him that his father was a rather unremarkable man who spent most of his life buried in family business and died at his desk. Charles said there was far more to his father than I knew, and I told him that if so, he might have done a better job of letting the rest of the world see it. This led to an argument that lasted the better part of a week, neither of us willing to surrender an inch. He is stubborn, and I am stubborn, and I suppose it is one of the reasons we suit.
Elena smiled, and her face felt strange doing it, stiff, as though it had forgotten how.
We have finally settled on names, though not without some argument. Arabella, if it's a girl. That one I would not give up. Charles wanted something shorter, but I told him he could name the next one whatever he liked, and this one was mine. He looked at me for a long moment, then said, "Arabella," as though he were trying it on for size. He said it again a little later, and I knew he had come around.
Liam, if it's a boy. That one came more easily. Charles liked the compromise and that it was a shortened form of William, after his father, and I liked that it was a name a little boy could grow into without having to carry the weight of an older man's name. Charles insists it sounds like a man who wins fights, and I told him that, being a Thorn, the poor boy will probably have to learn.
She turned to the next entry, dated several months later.
I have been sitting here a while since I opened my journal, thinking about how strange a life can be. A few years ago, I was a girl in the north, living a life someone else had planned for me, certain that I knew what I wanted and only beginning to understand what it might cost me to have it. I left with so much anger, so much certainty that I would never look back. And yet, here I am, married to a man I love more than I knew it was possible to love anyone, with a little boy growing inside me and a future I could never have imagined for myself.
I wonder sometimes whether we ever truly know the shape of the lives we choose. I knew what marrying Charles would mean. I knew the family I was joining, the secrets I would have to keep, the things I could never explain to the people I loved. But knowing something and living with it are two very different things. Now I find myself thinking about this child, about the world he will be born into, and whether love will be enough to make that world a little kinder than the one I inherited.
I hope it will be. I hope I can give my child the freedom to become whoever they wish to be, even if I cannot give them a life entirely free of the things that have followed our families for generations. I cannot undo the choices that brought me here, and I am no longer certain I would want to, even knowing what I know now. But I can try to make better choices from here. Perhaps that is all any of us can do. Perhaps that is what it means to begin a family—not to know what lies ahead, but to choose, every day, to face it together.
The next entry, dated a couple of months later. Elena figured about 8 since Amara wrote that she was pregnant.
Iredessa sent me another message today! She is nine now, which seems terribly grown-up to me, though I suppose she is still little. I wonder if she has grown any taller. I still don't know how she manages to get her messages to me without Father finding out, but I am very glad she does. She asked how I was and if Charles was being nice to me. She also asked if the rumors were true, because people have been talking about me having a baby. I suppose news like that travels very quickly between the great families.
I have found a way to write back, too. I remembered how we used to send silly little notes to each other when we were small, hiding them in books we knew the other would borrow. Only I cannot send a book myself, because Father might wonder why I was sending things to Iredessa. Instead, I asked a friend to send her a book as a gift, with no mention of me at all. I marked a few words on certain pages with tiny dots beside the lines I wanted her to read. If she reads the marked words in order, they make a message. Anyone else would think someone had been careless with a pen, but Iredessa will know better. I told her I am well, that Charles is kind to me, and that the baby is real.
I shall have to find someone else to send the next book, so Father doesn't notice the same person sending things to her. He would never imagine that a book full of ordinary words could carry anything important. I only hope Iredessa remembers our old game. And if she doesn't, I shall have to think of something even cleverer!
Elena shifted in her chair, only then realizing how long she'd been reading. The light beyond the windows had faded, and the quiet of the manor had begun to give way to the distant sounds of the staff preparing for dinner. She glanced toward the clock and was surprised to see how late it had become. Dinner couldn't be far off, but she turned back to the journal, determined to finish the entry before she was called away.
The entries continued for another half page, but the words had started sliding off. Elena read the same sentence twice and caught nothing of it, her eyes tracking the letters while her mind stayed back on the dotted lines in a nine-year-old's book, a woman hiding messages to her little sister in plain sight. She closed the journal on her finger, held it shut a moment, then stood. Her knees complained. She'd been folded into that chair long enough that her body had forgotten the shape of standing.
She crossed to the shelves at the back wall, where she hid the first journal, and slid the journal back into the gap behind other books next to it, nudging it flat. Elena wiped the dust from her fingers onto her skirt and turned towards the door. Her stomach had begun to make its case, and the smells drifting up the corridor from the kitchen had grown increasingly specific. Something with rosemary.
She was three steps from the door when Liam filled the doorway.
His jacket was off, his sleeves rolled to the elbows, and his hair pushed back from his forehead, though one lock had fallen loose again. He looked tired, more like a man who had spent the day carrying the weight of his position than someone who expected the world to fear him. The corridor light caught the grey at his temples, a detail she always seemed to forget until she saw it again.
He stopped when he noticed her. For a brief moment, surprise flickered across his face, followed by something she couldn't quite read. Then his expression settled, the familiar guarded look returning as though he'd reminded himself to put it back on.
"There you are." He said it quietly. "I've been looking. Presley said you hadn't come down yet." A pause, and the pause had weight in it, the way his pauses did. "Were you going to join me for dinner, or was I meant to eat alone and pretend I hadn't noticed?"
“Of course.” The words came a little too quickly, but she couldn't bring herself to care. “I lost track of the time. I was reading.” She glanced back toward the library, gesturing vaguely at the room behind her. “I'm coming now.”
His expression softened, and he stepped aside to let her pass. As she moved by him, she caught the clean scent of his soap, the warmth of him lingering in the space between them. She was suddenly far too aware of how close they were, of the quiet steadiness of his presence, and of how much she liked being near him. She glanced up at him before she could stop herself, catching the last traces of tiredness in his face.
He didn't seem bothered by her lateness. Instead, he waited until she was beside him before turning toward the dining room, matching his pace to hers as they walked. Elena fell into step at his side, stealing a glance at him now and then, unable to quite shake the small, foolish smile tugging at her lips. There was something about these quiet moments with him, when he wasn't trying to be anything other than himself, that made it harder to remember why she ought to keep her distance.