Under a Sky Full of Stars

Three months later, I held the results of the university entrance exam in my hands.

I had passed, with marks high enough to set the whole district talking.

Exactly a week later, the acceptance letter from Imperial College London arrived, and I held it in trembling hands.

I meant to hide it carefully, in the locked drawer in my room.

But Mrs. Miller was already waiting there, the opened envelope in her hand.

“Mother found this in your coat pocket,” she said.

I lunged for it, but I was too late.

She threw it into the burning fireplace.

“Studying? What for?” she snapped. “You’re a girl — your place is to marry well, not bury your head in books like a man!”

I watched the flames swallow the letter whole, because in my last life she had done exactly the same thing.

But this time I didn’t cry.

I went upstairs, packed a few clothes into an old suitcase, and walked straight to the train station.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Mrs. Miller shouted after me.

“I’m going to London,” I answered, without turning back. “To find Captain Sterling. If you already promised me to him, then he can pay the price for that promise.”

The train from Yorkshire to London took nearly five hours, and I sat by the window, watching the landscape pass through a haze of drizzle, my hand gripping my old bag tightly.

The woman across from me asked gently, “Traveling alone, are you? No one to see you off?”

“Yes, I’m alone,” I answered, smiling faintly.

“London’s no easy place for a young girl on her own,” she said.

“I know,” I answered. “But I don’t have a better choice.”

In my last life I had never met Richard Sterling, only heard bitter accounts of him through Sylvia’s complaints.

But I knew one thing: he was the only son of the Earl of Sterling, and his family held enough power to get me admitted straight into Imperial College London.

That was all I needed from this marriage — nothing more.

I arrived in London that evening and stood before the tall iron gates of the Sterling estate in Belgravia.

The butler answered the gate, looking me over with a wary eye.

“I’m Eleanor Miller,” I said, my voice steady. “I’m here to see Captain Richard Sterling. We’re engaged.”

Richard Sterling came into the drawing room still in his uniform, not yet changed.

He was tall, broad-shouldered, with a faint scar running along his left temple.

“You’re Eleanor,” he said — not a question. “I expected your sister.”

“Plans changed,” I said plainly. “Sylvia chose someone else. I need you to secure my place at Imperial College London. Beyond that, I ask nothing more of this marriage.”

Richard frowned, seemingly caught off guard by my bluntness, then sat down and was silent for a moment before speaking.

“I can help you get in,” he said. “But I have a condition of my own.”

I waited.

“Isabella Hartley and her son, Oliver, are living in my house,” he said, his voice softening.

Her husband, Captain Hartley, he explained, had been his comrade in the same unit, killed two years earlier in a border skirmish, right before his eyes.

“He took a bullet meant for me,” Richard said, his voice dropping lower. “I made him a promise on the spot — that I’d care for his wife and son for the rest of their lives.”

I asked more about Isabella, and Richard explained: she was the daughter of a doctor in Kent, with no title, no inheritance, and after her husband’s death she had nowhere else to go — her own parents were dead, and the Hartley relatives wanted little to do with a widow and a child.

“My parents agreed to let her stay, for the family’s honor,” Richard said. “But a widow living under someone else’s roof needs someone to stand as mistress of the house, so she isn’t seen as merely living off charity. The housekeeper isn’t in a position to do that. You, as my intended wife, are.”

I understood then — this wasn’t simply a job, but a role: the role of the woman who would one day run this house, learning to manage its complicated people before formally becoming part of the family.

“As for Oliver,” Richard went on, his voice visibly softening, “he’s six this year. He barely knew his own father before he died, so to him, I’m the closest thing to one. In four years, when he turns ten, that’s the usual age to start at prep school. After that, Isabella will be able to stand on her own, without needing anyone close by.”

“I agree,” I said, after a long silence, because four years wasn’t forever, and because I understood that refusing now meant refusing my ticket to Imperial College as well.

Richard looked relieved. “Thank you,” he said.

“Don’t thank me,” I replied. “This is an arrangement, not a favor.”

Just then, a boy of about five or six came running into the drawing room, then stopped short at the sight of a stranger.

“Uncle Richard, who’s this?” the boy asked.

“This is Miss Eleanor,” Richard answered, his voice turning unexpectedly gentle. “She’ll be staying here a while, helping look after you and your mother.”

Oliver looked at me with wide eyes, then gave a small polite bow, and I smiled back at him.

I noticed his clothes were worn, the sleeves a little short for his growing arms — a stark contrast to the grandeur of the room around him, as if Isabella were trying to preserve some scrap of pride for her son by asking the Sterling family for nothing more than necessary.

That small detail told me something about their situation — living on charity, but unwilling to be seen as living off it.

That night, the butler led me up to a small room on the third floor, far from the family’s main wing, but I didn’t mind.

Four years — I could endure four years, if what waited on the other side was an entire future.

On my first morning at the Sterling estate, I went down to the kitchen early to prepare breakfast.

Isabella was already seated at the table, her golden hair loose around her shoulders.

“You’re Eleanor, aren’t you?” Isabella asked. “Richard’s told me about you.”

“Yes,” I answered, setting a cup of tea in front of her.

Isabella frowned. “Oh, I don’t drink black tea in the morning. My stomach’s quite delicate.”

Before I could explain, Oliver ran into the kitchen, bumped the cup, and spilled it across the table.

“Oh my!” Isabella shot to her feet. “Eleanor, why would you leave the cup so close to the edge? Oliver could have been scalded!”

“I’m sorry,” I said, though I knew perfectly well I wasn’t at fault.

That was the first time — but not the last.

Two weeks later, Isabella’s favorite silk dress turned up stained with ink while I was doing the laundry in the basement.

Isabella came running down to the kitchen with the dress, tears already welling in her eyes.

“My mother gave me this before she passed,” she said. “Eleanor is the only one who touched my things today.”

“I haven’t been near the ironing board all morning,” I said. “That ink stain could easily be from a pen Oliver left in his pocket.”

“Are you accusing my son now?” Isabella asked, turning to the old housekeeper for support.

The old housekeeper quietly took the dress away to be washed again, saying nothing.

The third time came when Oliver fell on the stairs while playing alone, scraping his knee.

Isabella rushed to hold him, then looked straight at me, even though at the time I’d been all the way in the laundry room.

“Eleanor was supposed to be watching him!” she said, loud enough for the whole floor below to hear.

“I wasn’t there when Oliver fell,” I said. “But if you’d like, I’ll adjust my schedule to stay closer to him.”

I didn’t argue further — I simply noted it quietly, and told myself four years would pass eventually.

What unsettled me wasn’t Isabella herself, but the way Richard reacted every time these things reached him — he never asked me first, and always believed Isabella’s word from the very first sentence.

One night in May, a loud noise from Richard’s room woke the whole upper floor.

I ran into the hallway and found his door wide open, the sound of ragged breathing and shattering objects coming from inside.

Isabella had gotten there before me, real fear plain on her face.

“He’s dreaming of the fighting at the border again,” Isabella said quietly. “Ever since Captain Hartley died, it happens like this every few weeks.”

Richard sat curled in the corner of the room, head in his hands, his whole body shaking.

Isabella went in, knelt beside him, and murmured soothing words until his breathing slowly steadied.

I stayed outside the door, not going in, because I understood I had no right to intrude on that moment.

The next morning, I saw Richard in the dining room, dark circles under his eyes.

“Sorry about last night,” he said, not looking at me.

“I heard,” I said plainly. “Have you seen a specialist? There are newer treatments now for this kind of thing.”

“I don’t want anyone knowing about this,” he said. “An officer who can’t control himself — that can’t get out in the army.”

“Losing control isn’t weakness,” I said. “It’s a wound that needs proper treatment, not just someone soothing it temporarily.”

“That’s easy for you to say,” he said. “Isabella understands me. She’s been through loss the same way I have.”

“I’m not saying I understand what that feels like,” I answered. “I’m only saying comfort isn’t the only cure — and sometimes it just teaches a person to lean on it instead of facing things.”

He didn’t reply, only stood and left the dining room.

I sat there alone, and realized: between Isabella and me, Richard would always choose whatever made him feel better in the moment.

So the path I needed to walk in this house wasn’t about winning Richard’s approval — it was about holding my own course.