Page 79 of When Hearts Surrender

But fear not. After I settlemy affairs here and hand over my duties to my brother, I’ll find you.

We will escape and start a new life together. We will be free. While I won’t have my wealth and influence, I know my life will be far richer because we’ll be together. Bear with me and forgive me for the hurt I’m about to cause you.

I love you most ardently and fervently.

Wait for me.

Yours forever, this lifetime and all the lifetimes thereafter,

Silas

29th of September, 1860

The letter slides from my grip and flutters to the desk.

Noises travel in from the entryway and my heart thuds in a rapid rhythm.

“Silas! Please—”

“She’s gone because of you!” A loud bellow and I jump in place. “She never saw it, did she? Because you took it! Louisa, you—”

Suddenly,the light from the lamp flickers off, plunging the room into darkness and I shriek.

I jolt awake, my eyes snapping open, my breathing coming out in quick pants. My face is drenched in sweat. The wind rattles the windows, but the room is bathed in afternoon light.

What on earth? Wasn’t it nighttime?I blink a few times. Still daytime.That must’ve been a dream. But it felt so real!

I take a few deep breaths to calm my rioting pulse. Another strange dream, just like the others I’ve had. The tall man in the rose garden I’ve still not step foot in, how he has his back turned toward me, but his silhouette is infinitely familiar, like my imposing husband.

Blowing out a deep exhale, I wipe my face, finding my cheeks wet with tears.

My chest hurts from deep within, the swell of emotions leaving me mysteriously unmoored. My eyes burn with the urge to cry some more.Why am I feeling so sad?

Silas.1860.The penmanship is still so vivid in my mind. It’s so hauntingly real. My thoughts travel back to the voices I heard.Silas. Louisa.The duke and the duchess? I think about the portrait of the somber man, the one with the anguish in his eyes.

The man who looks so much like Maxwell.

The dream is about a letter from Maxwell’s great-great-great-grandfather to a woman he clearly loved who was not his wife.

Did she get it? No, she mustn’t have, based on what I heard. Where did she go? Why didn’t they run off together? Seeing as Silas’s portrait is hung in the gallery and there’s no mention of him being a missing duke, I know they didn’t get their happy ending.

And the thought, somehow, is unbearable.

Don’t be so silly. It’s a dream. It can’t be real. That’d make no sense.But it feels so real—the love, the heartbreak, the stirring in my soul.

Unease swirls inside me and a thought occurs to me, one that has my lungs gasping for air.

What if?

I can’t even bring myself to ask the question aloud as I kneel on the ground, my hand trembling, sliding to that spot underneath the desk, the one I remember from my dream.

Click.

My blood turns to ice and the room swirls around me.It can’t be. That’s impossible.

Getting back up, I look at the side of the desk.This can’t be happening.

A small, hidden compartment is popped open. A compartment I wasn’t aware was there before.

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