His Unchosen bride
She knelt, working her fingers into the seam, and the panel came free with a soft, dusty give.
Behind it: a shallow compartment, and inside that, a single envelope. Pale blue, edges softened with age, sealed with wax that had long since cracked along one corner.
“Adrian.”
He was beside her in an instant, kneeling on the floor of his father’s study in his sweater and bare feet, looking at the envelope the way a man might look at something he’d spent his whole life being told didn’t exist. His name wasn’t on it. Neither was hers, nor Arthur’s, nor Edward Hart’s.