Frost feathered the windowpanes as Edouard traced a calloused finger over the estate map. The parchment crackled under his touch, its edges brittle with age.
"Restoring the estate's productivity serves us both, my lady." His voice was calm, but his hazel eyes held the intensity of a man reading battlefield terrain. "Secure lands yield secure incomes. And secure incomes deter vultures... of all kinds."
"With your permission, I'd survey the outlying farms, the timber tracts. Assess what can be salvaged, what must be sold, what reinvestment might bear fruit within our... term."
Mireille watched him. This diligence, this sudden focus on her land's welfare – it was the perfect cover. He needed freedom to roam, to search for the Velnar heir under the pretext of stewardship. And she needed Eglantine fortified.
"Do it," she agreed, her voice cool. "Tomas will accompany you. He knows every stone and stream."
And will watch your every move.
Edouard inclined his head. "His knowledge will be invaluable." He didn't protest the implied surveillance.
---
Over the next days, Edouard became a fixture on the frost-hardened lanes and snow-dusted fields. He rode beside old Tomas, asking pointed questions about crop rotations, timber yields, tenant families – questions that masked a sharper scrutiny.
His gaze lingered on boundary stones older than the Eglantine tenure, on the peculiar, weathered carvings above the lintel of a derelict chapel on the western edge of the estate. The style was archaic, reminiscent of the Velna Valley far to the south, not the local borderland motifs. A coincidence? Or a whisper from a past the land remembered?
In the manor's dusty muniment room, ostensibly reviewing leases, Edouard carefully studied the Eglantine lineage scrolls. The record of Mireille's adoption by Lord Edmond Eglantine was sparse—almost deliberately vague: "Anno Domini 17--, took into his household and named as heir the child Mireille, orphaned of unknown parentage, aged approximately three winters."
No place of origin. No account of the tragedy that left her orphaned. Just… void.
Edouard's finger hovered over the faded ink. Orphaned. Unknown parentage. The timeline aligned disturbingly well with the Velnar Purge.
But it can't be certain… he thought.
---
The Belroques arrived three days after the marriage was made known to them. They came not with lawyers first, but with brute force – a closed carriage flanked by four mounted men wearing the Belroque livery, their faces hard beneath tricorn hats.
Aunt Lysanne swept into the entrance hall like a galleon in full sail, her fur-trimmed cloak billowing, Uncle Henri and Cousin Thibault at her heels, their expressions thunderous.
"Married!" Lysanne's shriek shattered the quiet. She pointed a trembling, gloved finger at Mireille, who stood at the foot of the stairs, as Edouard stands beside her. "To *this*... this *dispossessed vagrant*? Without family consent? Without *decency*? Have you lost what little wit you possessed, girl?"
"Consent was neither required nor sought, Aunt," Mireille replied, her voice like chipped ice. "The estate is mine. My choices are my own."
"Choices?" Thibault sneered, stepping forward, his hand resting suggestively near the hilt of his dress sword. He eyed Edouard with open contempt.
"This is no choice, cousin. This is desperation. A pathetic shield. And shields," he added, his voice dropping to a menacing growl, "can be splintered."
It was then that Edouard moved. Not aggressively, but with a deliberate, unhurried step that placed him fractionally in front of Mireille.
He said nothing. He simply looked at Thibault. Not with anger, but with a cold, assessing stillness, the look of a man who had measured exactly how much force it would take to break bone and found the calculation trivial.
Thibault's bravado faltered. He took an unconscious half-step back under that silent, unnerving gaze. Henri cleared his throat, attempting to regain control. "This... union... changes nothing, Mireille. The debts remain. The land is failing. This charade only delays the inevitable surrender."
"The debts," Edouard spoke for the first time, his voice quiet but cutting through Henri's bluster, "are being managed. The land will yield again. And the only surrender happening on Eglantine soil will be that of those who trespass upon it without welcome."
He let the implication hang, cold and sharp as the wind outside. "Your presence is noted, gentlemen, Madame. And now, it is concluded. Tomas will see you out."
The dismissal was absolute, delivered with the calm authority of a man who expected obedience. Lysanne spluttered, Henri turned purple, Thibault glared but found he couldn't quite meet Edouard's eyes again. Flanked by their suddenly less imposing guards, the Belroques were ushered out, their threats dissolving into impotent fury against the manor's heavy oak door.
Mireille let out a slow breath. "They won't stop."
"No," Edouard agreed, watching the departing carriage through the hall window. "But they will tread more carefully now. Fear of the unknown is a potent deterrent."
He turned to her, his gaze lingering for a moment on her face. "The shield holds, my lady. For now."
---
A week later, under a sky bruised purple with twilight, Edouard walked the frozen perimeter of the ornamental lake. The ice groaned softly, a mournful sound in the stillness. He needed the cold clarity, the solitude, away from the watchful eyes within the manor. His side ached dully, a constant companion.
A shadow detached itself from the skeletal willows near the boathouse. Simone materialized like smoke, his breath pluming white in the frigid air. He bowed his head briefly. "My lord."
"Report," Edouard commanded, his voice low.
The lake's groans masked their words.
Simone exhaled, his breath a pale wraith in the freezing air. "Durand was… reluctant to speak. But under pressure, he yielded a name." He paused. "A midwife named 'Old Magda.'"
Edouard went very still. "Go on."
"She served the Velnar household before the Purge. Delivered their last heir." Simone's voice dropped. "And when the knives came for the family, she was there. Vanished the same night the child heir disappeared."
Edouard's pulse thudded once, hard, against his ribs. "Where did she go?"
"North. Toward the borderlands." Simone hesitated. "Durand swore she resurfaced years later—briefly—in service to a minor house. One with no ties to Velnar. No reason to shelter a fugitive."
"Which house?"
A beat. A shared glance. Then, softly:
"…The Eglantines."
The name hung between them, heavier than the winter silence. Edouard's gaze flicked toward the manor, where Mireille—adopted, orphaned, parentage unknown—burned candles over estate ledgers.
Coincidence? Or confession?
Simone pressed on, relentless. "Magda's trail ends here, my lord. If she hid the heir, she'd have needed a place far from Velnar's allies. A house too insignificant to suspect. A child young enough to forget."
Edouard's jaw tightened. A child like Mireille.
It makes no sense. The Eglantines... Why would they take in fugitives? Edouard thought.
"Magda vanished years ago, after stitching a Velnar heir into a tenant's stillborn shroud, or so Durand claims." Simone continued. "Likely dead. But her trail, however faint, leads here, my lord. To this estate. To this time."
Edouard stared at the dark water beneath the ice.
"The heir," Simone pressed, urgency threading his voice. "Could they be hidden here? Among the staff? A tenant?"
"Or closer," Edouard murmured, almost to himself. He looked back at the manor, at the window he knew to be Mireille's study.
A chill deeper than the winter air seeped into his bones.
"Continue the search. Discreetly. Focus on any connections to this 'Magda', any Eglantine dealings from that period. Scour the village memories, the parish records. Find me a thread, Simone."
"Understood, my lord." Simone hesitated. "And Lady Eglantine? If the heir is here..."
Edouard's jaw tightened. The shield. The sanctuary. The contract signed in cold pragmatism. "She is not a target," he stated, the order absolute. "Not unless proven otherwise. Our focus remains on finding the heir. Nothing changes that."
Simone bowed again, melting back into the shadows beneath the willows as silently as he had come.
Edouard stared at the dark water beneath the ice.
A midwife who served the Velnars. A child smuggled north. The Eglantines—an obscure house with no ties to the old regime. Why take such a risk?
Then it struck him.
The chapel's lintel rose before his mind's eye—that serpent-and-crescent. He'd thought it merely archaic, but now…
Durand's words slithered back: "Old Magda stitched the heir into a tenant's stillborn shroud."
A shroud. A burial. But the chapel was no tomb—it stood abandoned, its symbols older than the Eglantine tenure. Had Magda left it as a marker? A beacon for loyalists?
A chill deeper than the winter air seeped into his bones.
If the heir had been hidden here, the trail was colder than the ice beneath his boots. But the chapel… that was a thread worth pulling.
A sharp gust swept across the frozen lake, scattering brittle reeds like dry bones. Edouard turned from the dark water, the weight of revelation heavy in his chest, when hoofbeats shattered the stillness.
A rider burst through the tree line—Tomas, hunched low, his gray cloak snapping like a banner of war.
"My lord!" he shouted, barely reining in the horse before it slid across a patch of snow-crusted mud. "They're back. The Belroques—they've returned. With a magistrate."
Edouard's spine straightened. "On what pretext?"
Tomas drew a folded document from inside his coat, his breath white and fast. "A warrant. Signed this morning. They're accusing you of forgery. Claiming the marriage was a deception, executed with falsified papers."
Edouard took the parchment, his gloved hand steady. His eyes skimmed it with grim efficiency. The seal was real. The magistrate, one Lord Vernay of Avron, had a reputation for favoring old blood and generous purses.
"They mean to invalidate the union," Edouard murmured. "Sever the shield." And with it, Mireille's legal control over the estate.
"They've already breached the manor," Tomas gasped, his breath coming in ragged puffs of frost. "The magistrate demands audience with Lady Eglantine—alone."
Edouard's fingers twitched toward his dagger. "Where is Mireille now?"
"Rode out alone near the western wood, my lord. Not half an hour past."
Without another word, Edouard seized the reins of Tomas's waiting horse and swung into the saddle. Leather groaned beneath his weight as he wheeled the gelding around. "Until she returns," he called, voice sharp as steel, "I'll keep them company."
As Tomas melted into the treeline, Edouard drove his heels into the gelding's flanks. The beast lunged forward, hooves hammering the frozen earth like war drums.