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Everyone had said that the children had most likely died quickly, in the initial collapse. Bray and Davies had said it. And they’d also said that the rest of the main road was likely to collapse at any second. A few hours later, they'd been proven right.

No one would ever enter Clee Pit again. And yet his mind kept asking: What if? What if? What if he’d gone back? What if there had been something more that he could have done? And most importantly… why hadn’t he been able to prevent it from happening in the first place?

When West told Bray that from this moment onward, children were banned from working underground in the Castle March mines, the surprise on the man’s freckled, open face had been genuine. Yet West still hadn’t discovered a rational explanation for how his letters had failed to reach him. And so—since he couldn’t sleep anyway—he’d come here to look for answers.

He limped back to the table on the leg he'd hurt falling in the mine. His blistered hands stung as he heaved the armload of books onto its broad wooden surface. He drew the candle closer and opened the first volume. The muniments room was in the part of the old castle’s keep that was used as offices. When the castle and lands had first been granted to his distant ancestor by the king, some six hundred years previous, this room had housed the title deeds.

Later, as the estate’s management grew more complex, it had become the storage room for its records. And since the time of the Restoration, copies of all the estate’s correspondence had been preserved in bound volumes, organized by year and month. If West couldn’t find what he was looking for here, it didn’t exist.

He drew up a heavy, uncomfortable wood chair, sat down, and began to turn pages from this calendar year. January—when he’d learned that he'd become the Duke of March. February—when he’d sent the first letter. March—when he and Pomona had arrived in Venice. Early April, when he’d sent two more letters. There were copies of bills for seed wheat, receipts for bales of wool, letters regarding some unsatisfactory iron received by the estate’s smithy, correspondence about every tiny detail of estate management.

But his own letters—with his orders to stop employing children underground? They were nowhere to be found.

He reached the most recent bound volume—June—and sat staring blankly at the table. Nothing. And yet he’d sent three letters to Bray, and one to the steward, Griffiths. How could this be possible?

Griffiths was a stiffly correct older man who seemed to recall every detail of every estate expenditure down to the farthing for the past twenty years. If Griffiths had received a letter from West, he'd probably have been able to quote it word for word. West counted himself lucky that the man had been able to endure the old duke’s fits of temper, and was still here.

As for Bray—they'd worked shoulder to shoulder a hundred feet underground. He’d seen the young mine manager turn his head and dash away tears when West had had to tell the mother of two of the boys that all hope was lost.

Bray wasn’t a liar either.

So if nobody was lying, what had happened? It would almost have been easier to believe that his own mind was playing tricks on him, and that somehow he’d only imagined writing and sending the letters.

He blinked his tired, burning eyes. He knew that he’d sent them. But at this point, even if he found them—even if he could prove to himself that he’d tried to end the practice of sending children down into the mines—it would change nothing. He could blame someone else. But the children would still be dead. So what was he doing?

To stop his thoughts from spiraling back into the nightmare of Clee Pit, he pulled some more volumes off the shelf almost at random, and began to read through earlier years of estate correspondence. Patterns became obvious. Corners had been cut. Necessary expenditures that had been deferred.

Ideas began to form in his tired mind. And as a pale gray light crept into the sky, his eyes closed by themselves.

“Your grace. Your grace?”

His cheek was resting on something unyielding, and there was a damp smell. Of course. The billiard table, in March House…

“Your grace?”

He jerked awake. His face was on a table. He was not in March House. He was in Castle March. And the man he’d been in February had been young and carefree compared to the man he was now. “Ah. Mr. Bray.” He sat up and cleared his throat. His mouth was dry and he had a crick in his neck.

Bray was studying him anxiously. “Are you… quite well, your grace?”

“Perfectly.” Bray looked about as bad as he himself felt. Under his freckles his skin had a gray tint and there was an unhealed cut on his jaw from the night in the mine that was a close match for the one on West’s forehead.

West scrubbed his face with his hand, blinked, and took a deep breath. “And we are about to make some changes.”

A breeze swept down from the western hills. In the deep blue sky, hawks stooped above the field, watching for field mice as a straggling line of men moved slowly down the slope, scything the ripe wheat. Women followed behind, pulling the loose stalks together with sickles and tying them into sheaves that would be left to dry before threshing.

Griffith shaded his eyes with his hand. “We shall see eighteen bushels per acre from the fields this year, I reckon. Were it not for the hard frost in May, I should have said closer to twenty. And the turnip seeds arrived just this morning. Twenty-eight forty-pound sacks, your grace.”

West squinted across the stubble of the freshly cut wheat. “Well, it is fortunate that you were able to find a supplier so late in the year. It still surprises me that the late duke did not at least make trials of these methods.”

Griffiths snorted. “He had a great mistrust of anything new, had the old duke—particularly if it involved any outlay of money.”

Over the past few weeks, he’d met with every manager, agent, under-steward and senior servant at Castle March. He’d drawn up a list of the most urgent repairs needed to tenants’ houses before winter. With the harvest now underway, it was the worst time of year to begin the work, since most of his tenants were busy in the fields. But some of the miners from the closed Clee Pit mine had formed a team and were working to restore the estate’s roads, while others had begun repairing slate roofs.

All day every day West was occupied. He rode from one end of the estate to the other, holding meetings, poring over ledgers and approving expenditures. His injured leg still ached, but by keeping busy he was able to ignore it—except at night when he woke with nothing to distract him.

The local surgeon was a well-qualified man who’d served in the Peninsula. He’d frowned at the black bruise. “It is providential that you did not shatter your kneecap, your grace. But you have badly bruised the bone.” When he touched it, West jerked away involuntarily. “It is a serious contusion. You must stay off your feet to allow the swelling to subside and the bone to heal. And I should advise you not to wear boots for at least a week.”

“Thank you, Captain Eaton. But that is impossible.” The man had no idea of the sheer amount of neglect that he was battling here.