The Duke's Unwritten Vow

The taxi turned off the main road onto a private drive that was less a road and more of a suggestion. The ancient trees lining the path were so thick and overgrown that their branches knitted together overhead, plunging the car into a premature twilight. My phone had lost service miles ago. I was completely cut off, a tiny, insignificant dot moving deeper into the vast, unmapped estate of a man I’d never met. A duke, of all things. The title felt archaic, something from a history book, not a job posting for a manuscript restorationist.

My heart hammered against my ribs, a frantic rhythm of professional excitement and raw nerves. The Blackwood Collection was a myth, a legendary archive of priceless documents rumored to be lost to time. To be the one chosen to restore it was the kind of opportunity that could define a career. My career.

Then the trees parted, and I saw it.

Blackwood Manor wasn’t a home. It was a fortress. A sprawling, gothic beast of dark gray stone and sharp-angled turrets that stabbed at the bruised-purple sky. It looked less like a place where someone lived and more like a place where secrets went to die. It was beautiful, in a severe, intimidating way that made you feel small and unwelcome. I swallowed, my throat suddenly dry.

The car slowed as we approached a set of towering iron gates, wrought into the shape of thorny vines and guarded by two stone gargoyles, their faces frozen in silent snarls. With a low, protesting groan of metal on metal, the gates swung inward, opening just wide enough for the car to pass through. I glanced over my shoulder, watching them grind shut behind us. The sound was a deep, resonating clang of finality. A full-body shiver traced its way down my spine. The world I knew was officially on the other side of that wall.

The driver pulled the car to a stop in a vast, circular courtyard paved with weathered cobblestones. He killed the engine, and the resulting silence was so profound it felt like a weight, pressing in on me from all sides. No birds sang. No distant hum of traffic. Just the lonely whisper of the wind swirling around the stone walls.

"We're here," the driver said, his first words in over an hour.

I nodded, unable to form a reply. I just stared at the main entrance—a set of double doors made of wood so dark it was almost black, with a heavy, iron knocker shaped like a snarling wolf’s head. This was it. I took a shaky breath, trying to collect the scattered pieces of my professional composure. I was Dr. Aris Thorne, a respected specialist. I was not a character in a gothic novel who was about to be devoured by a haunted castle.

The driver got out to retrieve my luggage from the trunk. I opened my own door, my practical leather boots making a soft sound on the gravel. I stood, smoothing down the front of my simple wool coat, feeling utterly exposed in the center of the courtyard. The castle seemed to watch me, its hundreds of dark windows like vacant eyes. The air smelled of damp earth, old stone, and an approaching rainstorm. A thrill, sharp and potent, cut through the intimidation. I was here to work, to touch history, to lose myself in the delicate, forgotten pages of the past.

Before my knuckles could even touch the cold iron of the wolf’s head, one of the massive doors began to swing inward, opening into a darkness that seemed to swallow the gray afternoon light whole.

A man stepped out of the shadows. He wasn't the stooped, gray-haired figure I’d pictured when I heard the word ‘duke,’ but someone who couldn’t be much older than my thirty-two years. He was tall, with broad shoulders that strained the fabric of a simple, dark gray sweater. His hair was nearly black, thick and just a little too long, falling over his brow in a way that seemed at odds with the severe, aristocratic lines of his face. But it was his eyes that stopped the air in my lungs. They were a startlingly pale gray, the color of a winter sea, and they assessed me with an unnerving, unblinking intensity.

“Dr. Thorne,” he said. His voice was deep, a low rumble that seemed to vibrate in the cavernous entryway. It wasn’t a question. “I am Duke Albert Blackwood. Welcome to the manor.”

He didn’t offer a hand. He didn’t smile. He just stood there, his hands shoved into the pockets of his dark trousers, his posture radiating a rigid, formal control. The charm was there, I could see it in the sharp angle of his jaw and the full curve of his lower lip, but it was locked away, buried under layers of ice.

“Your Grace,” I managed, my voice sounding thin and inadequate in the echoing space. I clutched the strap of my shoulder bag, the leather creaking under the pressure of my fingers. “Thank you for having me.”

His gaze swept over me, a quick, efficient inventory from my practical boots to the top of my head. It wasn’t a leering look, not even an appreciative one. It was analytical, like he was cataloging a new acquisition for his collection and deciding where it fit. “Your reputation precedes you,” he said, his tone flat and all business. “The collection is irreplaceable. It has been in my family for over four hundred years. I expect the utmost discretion and professionalism while you are a guest in my home.”

The emphasis on ‘guest’ felt more like a warning. A reminder of my temporary status.

“Of course,” I said, lifting my chin, meeting his intense stare. “You’ll have it.”

“Good.” He gave a curt, dismissive nod. “You will have full access to the library. Your work will be confined there. Mrs. Gable will show you to your assigned quarters. The rest of the castle and its grounds are private. You are not to wander. Is that understood?”

The command was absolute, leaving no room for argument. It was a clear, sharp line drawn in the stone floor between us. I was staff. A highly paid specialist, yes, but still just a temporary employee brought in to perform a task. He was the Duke. The owner of all this suffocating history.

“Perfectly,” I replied, my own voice colder than I intended.

“Mrs. Gable, my housekeeper, will see to anything you require during your stay.” He looked past me, toward the driver who was now setting my bags on the cobblestones. For a fleeting second, his gaze lingered on the closing gates in the distance, and a shadow—something heavy and weary—passed over his features before the mask of indifference slammed back into place.

“Your work begins in the morning. I trust you will find everything you need in the library.”

He didn’t wait for a response. He simply turned on his heel, the sound of his leather shoes sharp and decisive on the stone floor. The shadows of the great hall swallowed him as quickly as they had produced him, leaving me standing on the threshold with the cold air at my back and the vast, silent darkness of the castle before me. The brief encounter had lasted less than two minutes, but it had left my pulse unsteady and a strange heat coiling low in my stomach. Duke Albert Blackwood was not at all what I had expected. He was younger, more handsome, and infinitely more intimidating. And behind the cold, formal mask, I had seen a flicker of something else in those storm-gray eyes. A profound, crushing loneliness that I recognized immediately, because it looked so much like my own.

A woman emerged from the same shadows that had reclaimed the Duke. She was older, thin as a rail, with silver hair pulled back into a bun so tight it seemed to stretch the skin over her cheekbones. She wore a severe black dress with a crisp white collar, the uniform of a head housekeeper from another century. Her eyes, small and dark, held no welcome.

“Dr. Thorne,” she said, her voice as starched as her collar. “I am Mrs. Gable. Follow me.”

She turned without waiting for a reply, her sensible shoes making sharp, efficient clicks on the stone. I hurried to follow, my own footsteps feeling clumsy and loud in the oppressive silence. The driver had left my bags just inside the door, and I grabbed them, the weight grounding me as Mrs. Gable led me deeper into the castle’s belly.

We moved through a series of long, cold corridors. The air was still and smelled of stone and beeswax. Suits of armor stood like silent sentinels in shadowed alcoves, their empty helmets seeming to track my progress. Oil paintings of stern-faced men and women with familiar pale gray eyes stared down from the walls, their expressions a mixture of disapproval and boredom. I felt like an intruder, a foreign microbe in the ancient bloodstream of this house.

Mrs. Gable stopped before a simple, unadorned wooden door at the end of a narrow hallway, tucked away from the grander passages. “Your quarters,” she announced, pushing it open.

The room was modest, just as the Duke had implied. It contained a narrow bed with a plain wool blanket, a small wooden desk, a wardrobe, and a single window that overlooked a patch of mossy, unkempt courtyard. It was clean, spartan, and utterly devoid of personality. A cell, but a comfortable one.

“Your meals will be brought to you on a tray,” Mrs. Gable stated, her gaze fixed on a point just over my shoulder. “Breakfast at eight, lunch at one, and dinner at seven. Leave the tray outside your door when you are finished. You are not to use the main dining hall.”

The message was clear. I was here to work, not to socialize. I was to be kept separate, an invisible cog in the manor’s machine.

“Thank you,” I said, keeping my tone even.

She gave a stiff, barely perceptible nod. “The library is this way.”

She led me back the way we came, then down another, wider corridor toward a set of towering double doors at the far end. They were made of the same dark wood as the entrance, intricately carved with scenes of scholars and dragons. Mrs. Gable produced a heavy, ornate iron key from a pocket in her dress and inserted it into the lock. The mechanism turned with a series of loud, grinding clicks, like the tumblers of a long-unopened safe.

She pushed the doors open, and the scent that rolled out was the most intoxicating perfume I had ever known. It was the smell of centuries of paper and leather, of ink and binding glue, all overlaid with a thick, soft blanket of dust.

The library was magnificent. It was a cathedral built to honor the written word. Two stories of bookshelves soared toward a vaulted ceiling where faded frescoes of constellations were barely visible in the gloom. A rolling ladder was attached to a brass rail that ran along the upper level. Light struggled to get through tall, arched windows caked with years of grime, illuminating swirling galaxies of dust motes in its pale shafts. Books were everywhere—crammed onto shelves, stacked in precarious towers on the floor, spilling from open crates. It was a scene of glorious, scholarly chaos. My professional heart, the one I’d been trying to keep from beating out of my chest, gave a powerful, joyous leap. This was my heaven.

“As the Duke instructed, your work is to be confined to this room,” Mrs. Gable said, her sharp voice cutting through my awe. “The collection is as you see it. It has not been disturbed for fifty years. His Grace expects a full catalog and restoration plan within the month.” She placed the heavy iron key into my hand. Its metal was cold and solid. “Do not misplace this. And do not wander.”

With that final, clipped command, she turned and walked away, her footsteps receding down the long hall. The heavy doors swung shut behind her, the latch clicking into place with a sound of profound finality. I was alone. Alone in a vast, silent room filled with the ghosts of forgotten words and the weight of four hundred years of Blackwood history. I looked around at the beautiful, dusty disarray, the scale of the task ahead finally sinking in. The intimidation was still there, a cold knot in my stomach, but it was now mingled with a fierce, possessive thrill. This was my world now.

For a long moment, I just stood there, letting the silence settle around me like a second skin. The key was a heavy weight in my palm, a physical symbol of the trust—or perhaps, the confinement—I’d been given. I walked deeper into the room, my fingers trailing over the spines of books as I passed. The leather was dry and cool, cracking slightly under my touch. I ran my hand along a heavy oak table in the center of the room, my fingertips coming away coated in a fine gray powder. This place hadn’t just been unused; it had been abandoned, a time capsule sealed shut and left to the spiders and the dust.

My instructions were clear: catalog, assess, create a plan. It was a monumental task, one that would take every ounce of my expertise. I decided to start by finding a workspace, a small corner of this beautiful chaos that I could claim as my own. Against the far wall, partially hidden behind a stack of rotting crates, was a small, elegant writing desk. It was far more delicate than the other furniture, its legs carved into slender, twisting vines. It seemed out of place, a distinctly feminine piece in this overwhelmingly masculine hall of knowledge.

I began clearing it off, carefully lifting stacks of what appeared to be old shipping ledgers and setting them on the floor. The wood beneath was inlaid with mother-of-pearl, the iridescent pattern clouded with grime. As I wiped it down with the sleeve of my sweater, my hand brushed against a small, almost invisible knob on the side. Curiosity got the better of me. I pulled. A narrow, secret drawer slid open with a soft sigh of old wood.

Inside, nestled on a bed of faded velvet, was a small stack of books. There were five of them, each no larger than my hand, bound not in the dark, imposing leather of the rest of the collection, but in a soft, supple deerskin dyed a deep blue. They weren’t printed texts. They were journals.

I lifted the one on top. It felt warm in my hands, personal. There was no title on the cover, only a small, embossed compass rose in the corner. I opened it to the first page. The paper was thin, almost translucent, and covered in a sweeping, elegant script that flowed across the page with an impatient energy.

October 12th, 1848.

Father says a woman’s place is in the home, managing the estate. Albert agrees, of course. My brother is a good man, but his imagination is as landlocked as this cursed estate. They see these walls as a fortress, a legacy. I see a cage. They do not know that I slip out after midnight. They do not know that I have been charting the coastline by moonlight, that the salt spray feels more like home than any of these cold stone rooms. They want to marry me off to some powdered lord who smells of pipe smoke and decay. They do not understand that I am already married—to the horizon.

My breath caught in my throat. I sank to the floor, my back against the leg of the desk, and pulled the journal into my lap. I flipped through the pages. It was filled with sketches of exotic birds, hastily drawn maps of coastlines, and passionate, angry, yearning prose. The writer was a woman named Eleanor Blackwood, the Duke’s great-great-aunt, according to a family tree I’d seen in one of the ledgers.

She was a ghost, a whisper in this house of stone and silence, but her voice on the page was more alive than anything I had yet encountered at Blackwood Manor. She was a rebel, a dreamer, a scholar, an adventurer trapped in the wrong century. I felt an instant, piercing connection to her, to the fierce spirit burning through her ink.

This woman was a part of the Duke’s bloodline. The man who had stood so rigidly in the hall, who had drawn such clear, uncrossable lines around my existence here, came from this. A sudden, intense curiosity bloomed in my chest. It was no longer just about the books. It was about the people who had written them, lived with them, and died among them. And it was about the lonely, guarded man who now walked these halls, carrying the weight of all their stories, including the ones he clearly didn’t know existed.

I lost track of time. Hours must have passed as I sat on the floor, devouring Eleanor’s words. Her life unfolded in a rush of secret expeditions, frustrated tirades against her family, and breathtaking descriptions of the world beyond these stone walls. She was a firecracker, a force of nature contained in a place that had tried its best to smother her. I felt a kinship with her that was both exhilarating and deeply melancholic. I was here, a century and a half later, and the same walls still stood, the same silence still reigned.

A low, distant rumble pulled me from the page. I looked up, blinking, my eyes struggling to adjust. The pale afternoon light that had been filtering through the grimy windows was gone, replaced by a bruised, purple-gray gloom. Another rumble, closer this time, vibrated through the floorboards, a deep, guttural growl from the belly of the sky. I pushed myself to my feet, my joints stiff, and walked to the nearest window.

The change was startling. The sky was a churning mass of dark clouds, and the wind had picked up, whipping the ancient trees in the courtyard into a frenzy. Their branches clawed at the air like desperate hands. As I watched, the first fat drops of rain began to fall, hitting the leaded glass panes with sharp, percussive ticks. Then the ticks became a torrent, a solid sheet of water that blurred the world outside into an indistinct, gray wash.

The storm descended on Blackwood Manor not with a warning, but with a declaration of war. A brilliant fork of lightning split the sky, followed an instant later by a crack of thunder so loud and violent it felt like the castle itself had been struck. The very stones seemed to shudder around me. I flinched back from the window, my heart hammering against my ribs.

I had been in storms before, but this was different. This felt primal, personal. The wind howled through unseen cracks in the stone, creating a low, mournful moan that echoed through the vast library. It sounded like the castle’s ghosts were crying out.

And then, with a final, flickering groan from the single overhead lightbulb I’d managed to find, everything went black.

The darkness was absolute. It was a physical presence, thick and suffocating, pressing in on me from all sides. The only sounds were the roar of the rain, the shriek of the wind, and the frantic pounding of my own blood in my ears. I stood frozen for a long moment, my hands outstretched as if I could ward off the blackness. The isolation I’d felt before was a pale imitation of this. Now, I was truly cut off, a solitary soul adrift in a sea of history and shadows.

My brain finally kicked into gear. Candles. I’d seen a box of them on the mantelpiece above the cavernous, unlit fireplace. I shuffled forward, my hands held out in front of me, my bare skin prickling with a sudden chill. My shin connected sharply with a stack of books, and I hissed in a breath, stumbling but catching myself on the edge of the large central table. Using it as a guide, I slowly made my way toward the fireplace, my fingers tracing the dusty wood.

My hand eventually brushed against the cold stone of the mantel. I fumbled along its surface, my fingers closing around the waxy cylinders of the candles and then a small, tin box. Matches. Thank God. My hands were trembling slightly as I struck one, the flare of light unnaturally bright in the oppressive dark. I quickly lit three of the thick, tallow candles, placing them on the table.

The small pool of flickering light pushed the darkness back, but it didn't defeat it. Instead, it gave it shape. The towering bookshelves became monstrous cliffs, their tops lost in the gloom. The shadows stretched and danced, twisting familiar shapes into menacing figures. The library was no longer a place of quiet scholarship; it was a gothic cavern, alive and breathing around me. The storm raged on outside, a wild and constant reminder of how utterly trapped I was. There was no internet, no phone signal, no power. The twenty-first century had been completely erased, leaving me alone with the nineteenth. I was as isolated as Eleanor had ever been.

A strange sense of calm settled over me. There was nothing I could do but wait. I pulled one of the candles closer, its warm light falling across the open page of Eleanor’s journal. My work wasn't finished. I sat down at the table, the small circle of light creating an intimate, self-contained world in the midst of the vast, dark library. The scent of old paper and melting wax mingled with the damp, electric smell of the storm. I picked up my pen and, with the castle groaning and the heavens roaring around me, I went back to work.

I wasn’t sure how long I’d been hunched over the page when a sound from the far end of the library made me jump. It was the heavy, groaning creak of the main door opening. My head snapped up, my eyes straining against the darkness beyond my little island of light. The candlelight wasn’t strong enough to reach the entrance, leaving it a gaping black mouth. For a terrifying second, my mind went to Eleanor’s ghosts, to the moaning wind sounding like something trapped and angry.

Then, a new light appeared, a cluster of steady flames that cut through the oppressive gloom. A figure emerged from the doorway, holding a silver candelabra high. The light cast long, dancing shadows that climbed the walls, making the man holding it seem impossibly tall, a specter from another time. It was Duke Albert.

He was dressed more casually than I’d ever seen him, in dark trousers and a simple white shirt with the sleeves rolled to his forearms. He moved with a quiet confidence that was at odds with the storm’s chaos. In his other hand, he held a dark bottle and two glasses. He saw me at the table, a lone figure in the vast darkness, and walked toward me, his footsteps echoing softly on the stone floor.

“I figured you might still be in here,” he said, his voice a low, calm rumble beneath the storm’s fury. He placed the candelabra on the table, its five flames joining my single candle, instantly tripling our circle of light and warmth. The shadows retreated. “I thought you might appreciate some reinforcements. Both in light… and in spirits.” He set the bottle and glasses down. It was brandy.

“Thank you,” I managed, my voice sounding small. “I didn’t expect to see anyone.”

“Mrs. Gable and the rest of the staff have long since retired,” he said, pulling the cork from the bottle. A rich, sweet scent filled the air. “They’re used to the castle’s moods. I, however, am not.” He poured a generous amount into each glass and pushed one toward me. “On nights like this, the walls seem to stretch. The silence gets louder than the thunder.” He looked around the massive, shadow-filled room, and for the first time, I saw something in his eyes that wasn't formal distance or polite authority. It looked like loneliness.

I wrapped my hands around the heavy crystal glass, its coolness a contrast to the warmth of the brandy. He didn’t sit, but leaned against the edge of the table, his hip just a few feet from my chair. His gaze fell to the manuscript I was working on, a fifteenth-century illuminated text on celestial navigation.

“The Astra Navigantium,” he said, his voice tinged with surprise. “I haven’t seen that one open in years. The lapis lazuli they used for the constellations was ground in a mixture of honey and egg whites. It’s why the blue is still so vibrant after six hundred years.”

I stared at him, my own surprise evident. “How did you know that?”

A faint smile touched his lips. “My father insisted I learn the history of the most important pieces in the collection. He called it ‘knowing the weight of my inheritance’.” His smile faded, and he took a sip of his brandy, his eyes still on the book. “He saw them as assets, as proof of our legacy. Line items in a long and storied ledger.”

“And you?” I asked, my voice barely above a whisper.

He looked at me then, his gaze direct and intense in the flickering light. “I see them as stories. Trapped. I think of the monk who spent a year of his life grinding that lapis, his fingers permanently stained blue. I think of every person who held this book, who charted their course by these stars. We aren’t their owners. We’re just their caretakers.”

The confession hung in the air between us, as raw and unexpected as the crack of thunder that followed it. The formal Duke, the man of rules and boundaries, had just shown me a glimpse of the man beneath the title. A man who understood the soul of this place, not just its value. The storm raged outside, but in our small circle of candlelight, a different kind of quiet had fallen, one filled not with emptiness, but with a sudden, startling connection.

His words settled over me, a weight of shared intimacy that felt both precious and dangerous. He saw stories where his father saw assets. It was the most personal thing he’d said to me, a quiet rebellion whispered in the dark. I took a sip of the brandy, the liquid fire a welcome shock to my system, and watched him over the rim of my glass. The candlelight carved his face from the shadows, highlighting the sharp line of his jaw and the intensity in his gaze.

“That’s a beautiful way to see it,” I said softly. “As caretakers.”

“It’s also a heavier burden,” he countered, pushing away from the table. He picked up the candelabra, the light dancing across his features as he moved. “The Astra Navigantium makes reference to a corresponding terrestrial atlas, a work by a Portuguese cartographer named Reis. My ancestor, the second Duke, was obsessed with it. I believe it’s supposed to be somewhere in this section.”

He gestured with the candelabra toward a towering aisle of books to our left. It felt like an invitation. An excuse to prolong this strange, storm-forged truce. I stood, leaving my glass on the table, and followed him into the narrow passage between shelves. The darkness closed in around us again, our world shrinking to the moving circle of light cast by the five candles. The air was cooler here, thick with the scent of leather and decaying paper. I could feel the heat radiating from his body, a stark contrast to the chill of the room. He was so close I could hear the soft sound of his breathing over the drumming of the rain against the high arched windows.

He held the candelabra up, illuminating the spines of the ancient books. They were bound in dark, cracked leather, their titles stamped in faded gold leaf. His free hand ran along the row of books, his long fingers tracing the raised lettering. I stood beside him, my shoulder just inches from his, my eyes scanning the shelf below. We moved in a slow, synchronized rhythm, a silent partnership in the heart of the storm.

“It should be here,” he murmured, his voice a low vibration in the enclosed space. “Reis. Orbis Terrarum.”

My eyes caught it at the same moment his did. A thick, unassuming volume bound in dark green leather, wedged tightly between two larger tomes.

“There,” we said in unison.

We both reached for it.

It happened in an instant. My hand went for the spine just as his did. My fingers brushed against the back of his hand, my palm sliding against his knuckles. It wasn't a glancing touch; for one drawn-out second, our hands were pressed together against the cool leather of the book.

A jolt, sharp and electric, shot up my arm. It was so sudden, so potent, it made the breath catch in my throat. His skin was warm, the texture of his knuckles a rough, masculine contrast to the smoothness of my own. My entire awareness narrowed to that single point of contact. The storm, the library, the centuries of history surrounding us—it all faded away, leaving only the shocking, undeniable heat of his touch.

I pulled my hand back as if I’d been burned, but he didn’t move his. My gaze flew to his face. He was already looking at me, his own hand still resting on the book. The candlelight flickered in his eyes, and the polite, ducal mask was gone. Utterly gone. In its place was something unguarded and intense, a raw surprise that mirrored my own. His lips were slightly parted, and I watched as he drew in a slow, unsteady breath. The silence between us was suddenly deafening, a tangible thing that filled the narrow aisle, heavier and more powerful than any words. In that moment, he wasn’t a Duke and I wasn’t his employee. We were just a man and a woman, trapped in the dark, with an unspoken question hanging in the air between us.

He broke the spell. A cough, sharp and sudden, shattered the quiet. He blinked, and just like that, the Duke was back. He pulled his hand away from the book, his movements stiff and overly precise as he set the candelabra down on a nearby ledge.

“My apologies,” he said, his voice a little too loud in the confined space. He cleared his throat and reached for the book again, this time with a deliberate, almost clinical precision. He pulled the heavy atlas from the shelf, its weight seeming to ground him. “Here it is. The Orbis Terrarum.”

He avoided my eyes as he turned and walked back toward the main table, his posture rigid. I followed a few steps behind, my own pulse still hammering against my ribs from the contact. The warmth of his skin lingered on my hand, a phantom sensation that was impossible to ignore. The air was thick with everything that had just passed between us—a silent, shocking acknowledgment of an attraction that had no place here.

He set the atlas down on the table with a solid thud, opening it to a random page depicting a fantastical sea creature on the edge of the known world. He stared down at it, but I could tell he wasn't really seeing it. His focus was elsewhere, his mind clearly replaying the last thirty seconds, just as mine was.

His gaze then drifted across the table and landed on the small, leather-bound journal I’d left open next to my notes. It was so different from the other books—smaller, more worn, its cover softened by time and handling.

“Eleanor’s diary,” he said, his voice much quieter now. He reached out, not to touch it, but his fingers hovered just above the page, as if feeling the imprint of her words. “You’ve taken an interest in her.”

It wasn’t an accusation, but a simple statement. I nodded, my throat suddenly dry. “I found it my first night here. Her voice… it feels very alive.”

A sad smile touched his lips. He finally looked at me, and the guardedness in his eyes had been replaced by a quiet melancholy. “She was the scandal of her generation. The ‘mad Duchess,’ they called her. While other women of her station were learning needlepoint and finding suitable husbands, she was learning celestial navigation and plotting expeditions to places that barely existed on maps like this one.”

He picked up his glass of brandy and swirled the amber liquid, his eyes lost in the past. “There’s a story my grandfather used to tell me. When Eleanor was sixteen, she was formally presented at court. It was meant to be the beginning of her search for a husband. She was beautiful, by all accounts, and a Duke’s daughter. She had her pick of suitors.” He took a slow sip of brandy. “Halfway through the season, she vanished. Simply disappeared from London. Her father, the Duke, was frantic. He sent men everywhere, fearing she’d been kidnapped.”

He paused, and the only sound was the rain lashing against the windows.

“They found her three weeks later,” he continued, his voice low and laced with a clear admiration. “She wasn’t in some lord’s secret manor. She was in Portsmouth, working on the docks. She’d cut her hair, dressed as a boy, and was trying to buy passage on a merchant ship bound for the Spice Islands. She wanted to see a world she’d only ever read about.”

I stared at him, captivated. This wasn’t history from a book; this was a secret, a piece of his family’s soul he was handing to me in the dark.

“Her father dragged her back here, of course,” Albert said, his gaze sweeping around the vast, shadowed library. “He told her this castle was her world, and her duty was to it. She married the man he chose for her and never left these grounds again. She spent the rest of her life filling these journals with the adventures she never had.”

He looked down at the open diary on the table, then back at me. The formality, the distance, the title—it all fell away. In the flickering candlelight, I saw only a man who understood what it felt like to be trapped in a beautiful cage, a man who admired a woman who had tried, and failed, to break free. He had shared her story, but I knew, with a sudden, piercing certainty, that he had also just told me something vital about himself. And in doing so, he had cracked open the door to his own gilded prison, just enough to let me see inside.