She turned another letter over. It was also addressed to her. So was the next. And the next. She was scarcely breathing as she turned over nine folded vellums, all of them addressed to her. All of them sealed. All of them unsent.

She slowly slid off her knees and onto her bottom, the letters in her lap. What could they possibly say? She couldn’t break the seal! What an obscene violation of trust! It was the very thing he suspected of her.

If he’d meant her to see these letters, he would have sent them. She couldn’t stoop so low as to trample on this bit of faith between them. She couldn’t steal them out of a locked cabinet that she’d broken into and read them now.

But neither could she leave them untouched. She glanced at the mantel clock—she guessed she had a half hour before someone arrived to light candles and hearths. She looked again at the letters.

No. No, no, don’t do it. Better you admit you intruded on his privacy than break the seal. Margot tied the twine around the bundle and returned the stack to the cabinet. She shut the door, reinserted the hat pin to turn the lock...but then suddenly changed her mind and opened the door once more. Her curiosity was too strong.

“Just one,” she whispered. She took the first one from the stack, broke the seal and unfolded it. It was dated more than a year ago, in the winter.

It has been six months since last I wrote you, and the winter winds and ice have come to Balhaire. The storm came on us so quickly that we lost a few sheep in the glen, found them frozen together, their wool not thick enough to save them from the worst cold. I would that you were here to warm my bed. I despise myself for wanting it. I wish I’d never heard your name.

She stared at the letter, the words seeming to move on the page in her trembling hand. What had compelled him to write this nearly two years after she’d left him? Why hadn’t he sent it?

There was no going back now—Margot took another one and broke the seal. This one was written a month after she’d fled Balhaire, and she cringed, certain she would read a diatribe against her.

I’ve tried to understand why you left. We had our differences, but none that I would have guessed would lead to your flight. Had I not been so befuddled by your continued unhappiness, perhaps I might have put it to rights. I would that I knew what I did to harm you so, Margot...

He catalogued events—many she’d forgotten—that had led to her tears.

You can be the worst sort of woman, tearful and shrew, secretive and fragile. And yet I miss you here.