Ryan stood motionless for a long moment, staring at the page with an expression of pure disbelief. Then, slowly, he began to read.
He reached the end. Read it again from the beginning.
"Is this really... a letter to Lieutenant Colonel Ryan Wilgrave?"
The letter was full of warmth — the kind of easy, unguarded affection that would make a stranger smile without quite knowing why. It was not a love letter, exactly. It had not quite reached that. But it held something deeper than simple friendship: a tenderness and trust that friendship alone did not account for.
"Well. So that's how it is."
He had no idea what to do with this information.
At dinner, when Eloise had defended Lieutenant Colonel Wilgrave, he had taken her for an admirer — passionate but ordinary. He had been mildly surprised that someone in such a remote place, a young woman especially, had such a thorough command of the battles. But he had dismissed it as one of those things.
This letter suggested it was not one of those things.
---
Receiving letters had never been unusual for him.
During the war, over a hundred arrived some days. His mother had been gone a long time. The gravedigger who had given him the name Wilgrave had since been buried in the very cemetery where he had worked. His biological father, Earl Wallace, had never regarded him as anything but an inconvenience, so letters from that quarter were not expected.
Out of curiosity, Ryan had opened a few early on. He had soon stopped.
The more feats he accomplished, the more envelopes arrived, and the more formulaic they became — strangers with unfamiliar addresses, praise that followed the same worn grooves, requests for meetings that were transparently self-serving. Among them were letters that suggested their authors had serious difficulties with reason. He remembered a man who insisted Ryan had stolen money from him and owed a debt. Another who claimed to be his grandson and demanded a meeting. And a woman who, with apparent sincerity, referred to herself as his wife.
He had told his adjutant to burn everything. The adjutant, unwilling to destroy what he called the sincere affections of the citizenry, had taken them home instead.
The flood of letters had stopped as if a tap had been turned the day he was summoned before the war council.
Then they began again — different this time. The envelopes were different too.
"What is this?"
His adjutant had held one between two fingers with an expression of distaste. Written across it in red letters: *Coward. Murderer. Die.*
"Burn all of it."
"Yes, sir. At once, sir."
The adjutant who had once pleaded with him to read at least a few letters now collected every abusive envelope personally and threw them into the fire outside without a word.
Ryan had not cared about correspondence before. After that, he stopped caring entirely.
But—
*Someone out there was still writing to him.*
Abusive letters still arrived regularly. Letters of support had become almost nonexistent. And Eloise, it turned out, had been one of the people still writing.
Ryan rested his chin on his hand and looked back at the page.
*It's been a while since I've written. I hope you are well. It's impossible that this beautiful spring has not found its way to you in New York.*
The words were simple and uninsistent. Full of an unhurried warmth.
*These worthless newspapers are still throwing mud at you, but the day I arrive in New York, they will all be made to prepare for closure.*
And then, below that, in a handwriting that had turned dark and deliberate, a list of the papers and magazines most critical of him — written out in red ink, with what could only be described as sinister enthusiasm.
Ryan couldn't help it. He laughed.
She was so clearly in earnest that he had no doubt she could, upon arrival in New York, actually set those editorial offices alight.
He had already read the letter several times. He read it again.
After the third time, he set it on the table.
His first instinct had been to crumple it. But the letter was — he had to admit — neither cruel nor intrusive. It was funny and tender by turns, and only occasionally betrayed genuine concern, never dwelling on it. A pleasant letter. A cheerful one.
If only it were not addressed to Lieutenant Colonel Wilgrave.
He considered what to do with it, then placed it in the desk drawer. If Mr. Palmer came in to clean and found it lying out, there would be awkwardness — not for Ryan, but for Eloise, and he found he had no particular wish to cause that.
"If you're going to write something like that, at least don't put my name on it."
Then he could simply claim the letter was for him, and—
He stopped.
Opened the drawer. Took out the letter.
It *was* for him, when he thought about it.
He sat there, reading it again. He had already memorized every word, but for some reason he couldn't put it down.
*Apparently this isn't her first letter.*
The text mentioned *the previous letter* more than once. He tapped his fingers slowly on the table.
*What was in the others that had arrived addressed to Lieutenant Colonel Wilgrave?*
"Perhaps I should have read at least one—"
He stopped himself and shuddered.
*What am I saying? Read what?*
He pushed the letter to the very back of the drawer as though it were something dangerous and shut it firmly.
*Pretend nothing happened.*
It was almost certain she hadn't meant to send it. It had slipped in with the documents during her rush to pack everything. There was no reason to return it — he remembered how she had snatched that drawing away with an expression of pure horror. If he stayed quiet, she would eventually decide she had lost it somewhere and let the matter rest.
Ryan turned back to the ball documents.
He needed to go through them. He needed to think clearly.
The letter in the drawer did not help with either.
---
Eloise lived on a knife's edge every day.
At any moment she expected Sergeant Thornton to appear in her doorway, fix her with a look of cold contempt — worse than anything she had seen from him yet — and say the single word: *Lunatic.*
And then he would show the letter to everyone in Feltham. The villagers would cover their mouths. Her mother would faint from shame.
No — she would probably faint first.
*Why! Why him of all people!*
No matter how many times she screamed it to herself, the letter that had reached Sergeant Thornton did not find its way back to her.
Emily was the first to notice something was wrong.
"My lady, are you unwell?"
"Hm? No. I'm perfectly fine."
"Are you certain? You haven't touched the cookies."
Eloise loved Emily's cookies above almost everything. Whenever a batch was baked, the jar emptied within days — between Eloise herself and the village children she kept supplying. Emily's complaints about having to bake again had become part of the weekly rhythm of the house.
But a full week had passed, and cookies still remained in the jar. Even after the children had taken their share.
Mrs. Severton noticed too.
"Eloise. Are you sure you're all right?"
She, who was so ready to scold under ordinary circumstances, looked at her daughter's pale face and seemed genuinely uncertain what to do with herself.
Eloise was her only child. It was for Eloise's health that she had left her social life in the city and come to live in this quiet village.
"I'm fine. I'm just... worried about Godmother."
Mrs. Severton's face softened at once. She patted her daughter's shoulder.
"Yes. I'm worried too — there's still been no word. She must be truly unwell."
*Forgive me, Father. Forgive me, Godmother,* Eloise thought silently.
She spent her days suspended between dread and helplessness, unable to settle.
But a week passed, and Sergeant Thornton did not appear.
Then two weeks, and a letter arrived from her father instead. His godmother had passed the worst of the crisis, but at her age the end was now simply a matter of time, and he intended to stay with her through it. When he would return to Feltham was impossible to say.
---
A month passed.
By now, Eloise had more or less stopped thinking about the letter.
Every time she glanced in the direction of Blissbury a faint unease moved through her, but there had been no word, no visit, no catastrophe. That could only mean one thing.
*Sergeant Thornton hadn't seen it.*
Yes. It must have slipped out somewhere else entirely. Gotten lost in transit. Or — and she allowed herself this small comfort — perhaps God had intervened and placed it directly in front of Lieutenant Colonel Ryan Wilgrave himself.
Given how thoroughly she had searched and found nothing, that seemed almost more likely.
Emily's cookies began disappearing at their usual rate. Mrs. Severton's grumbling resumed its familiar frequency. The world reassembled itself around its ordinary rhythms.
In this easy, peaceful atmosphere, summer arrived.
"Letter from Blissbury!"
A messenger boy appeared at the gate with an envelope in hand.