She Taught the Tenants' Children to Read—The Duke Found Out When One of Them Taught Him Her Name

The girl could not have been more than seven. Cormac Ashwell, Duke of Denwick, had been walking the eastern boundary of his own estate — a part of it he rarely visited — when she appeared from between two cottages and looked up at him with no fear at all. You're Seren's husband, she said. Not Her Grace. Not the Duchess. Seren — said the way a child says the name of someone who has changed everything about their life and doesn't yet have the words to explain why. Cormac asked her what she meant. What she told him sent him, two days later, to a mill room he had not known existed — borrowed, modest, lit by whatever light came through one small window. Seven children sat at a rough table with slates and a handful of worn books, and his wife knelt among them, sleeves pushed back, entirely unselfconscious, pointing to letters with the patience of someone who had been doing this for years. He had thought he knew how she spent her days. He had been wrong about almost everything that mattered.