written shortly after Kit’s marriage to Lord Blaine

Dearest Kit—

I’ve just received word from Cook Ruth that you’ve recently wed a kindly count related to the Duchess of Childes. Hopefully, your leaving Sutton Manor shall force your father to fulfill the geas on the chest, so we can get to know each other at last. And I pray you find in your marriage all the joy I’ve found with my beloved Christopher.

Since you’re a woman grown now (which makes me weep every time I think of it), I suppose I should finally explain our unfortunate tale. Please try not to judge myself or your father too harshly, and forgive us for all that you’ve suffered because of it.

Your father had a difficult childhood. Your grandfather was a cruel drunkard thanks to the charmed pen your grandmother used to win him. And your grandmother was too addicted to using that charmed pen to care about her son before she died when he was eleven. At eighteen, your father fell deeply in love with a village girl and meant to marry her. However, your grandfather found out and paid the girl’s family to send her away then tricked your father into marrying me. Your father was planning to flee without consummating our marriage when he heard his love had killed herself along with their unborn child once she’d learned he’d married another. After that, your father became a cruel drunkard like his father.

I, on the other hand, was the beloved and pampered daughter of a wealthy gentry family from Merrilea, halfway between Ormas and Dracwyn. But that all ended when I was seventeen and your grandparents discovered my love for Christopher, our butler’s son. They were even more furious when they’d discovered I’d given myself to him and we planned to elope before my first season. So they forced me to marry your father in case I was pregnant by threatening to have Christopher arrested and destroy his family. After that, they disinherited me and never spoke to me again before their deaths the year you were born.

For the first year of our marriage, your father refused to consummate our marriage, despite his father sneering about his failure to get me with child. But eventually, your father succumbed to produce an heir, although he became increasingly bitter at how I froze whenever he touched me. Thankfully, a year later you were born, and your father and I agreed not to try for a male heir, even though that infuriated your grandfather.

Soon after, Christopher wrote to me, explaining that he’d become a smuggler in Dracwyn after my parents separated us and that he’d almost earned enough money to support us then begging me to run away with him. We began exchanging letters, and a year later, I agreed to take you and join him. We met outside of Sutton Manor to arrange the final details, but somehow your father had discovered our plans. That afternoon, he activated the ward spell on you he’d purchased from a Rhiannon-descendant witch at ruinous expense that prevented me, Christopher, or anyone working on our behalf from coming within a mile of you or delivering anything from us.

When I realized I couldn’t take you, I promised I’d remain with you at Sutton Manor forever if your father would end the ward spell. However, he refused to trust me and swore he’d ensure I never saw you again. After his father died a few months later and he still wouldn’t relent, I conceded and left for Dracwyn with Christopher, although it almost destroyed me.

Christopher worked tirelessly to build his fortune as a smuggler, so we could consult witches to discover how circumvent the ward spell. Meanwhile, I kept in contact with Cook Ruth to know how you fared, and everything I learned grieved me.

When you were eight, we could finally afford to send you a chest enchanted to circumvent the ward spell. Because its geas obliges whomever possesses it to give it to you, we left the chest in the path of a merchant acquaintance without informing him, so he brought it to you but wasn’t delivering it for us. (Upon his return to Dracwyn, we did pay him for helping us.) And since the chest was also a transport box, we could exchange letters and other items without requiring anyone to deliver them for us. Having the chest spelled so only you could open it was simply a precaution.

However, your father foiled our attempt to get to know you by hiding the chest despite its geas. He’s remarkably obstinate to have resisted it for so many years. But even after Cook Ruth wrote you never received the chest, I continued to write, hoping one day you would. All the rest you know from my earlier letters.

Again, I’m sorry for everything you’ve suffered because of all this. Please write to me once you can finally read this letter, no matter how long ’tis been. Myself, Christopher, and your younger siblings shall treasure getting to know you.

All my love,

Mother