When the Elm still whispers

Chapter One: The Letter That Changed Everything I had not seen him in seven years. Not since the summer he left Wetherby Manor with his satchel slung over his shoulder and his mother’s tearful warnings echoing behind him. He promised to write. He didn’t. I promised to wait. I did. Now, as I stood by the frost-laced window of my father’s drawing room, the letter in my hands trembled like the flame of the hearth nearby. > Dearest Eliza, I write with urgency and hope. My father is gone, and I must return to Yorkshire to settle his affairs. If you would meet me—one last time—I shall be at the old chapel before the moon is full. Yours, always, Nathaniel. Nathaniel Ashcombe. My childhood companion, my once-best friend, and the boy who carved our names into the elm tree behind the stables the day before he left. We had not spoken since. Seven years is a long time for silence. Too long, some might say. But not for hearts that had always spoken in glances and half-smiles, for hands that brushed too long when passing books in the orchard, and for secrets whispered in candlelight. Still, I had changed. And I suspected he had too. The world did not favor the soft-hearted or the stubborn. And we were both, once. But now, he was returning—not just as the boy I once knew, but as the heir to Ashcombe Estate, a man burdened by duty, and perhaps regret. And I... I was no longer the girl who watched the river sparkle and imagined a future that belonged to only the two of us. I folded the letter and tucked it into my bodice, my heart a battlefield of memory and hesitation. Tonight, I would go to the chapel. And perhaps, I would find out whether the past was truly gone— —or merely waiting.