Welcome Home, Captain Finchley

Constantinople, One Week Later

Alistair sat beneath a faded red canopy in the Grand Bazaar, nursing a glass of something that aspired to be brandy but settled somewhere between vinegar and regret. He was sunburnt, half-shaven, dressed in borrowed linen, and for the first time in months it was blessedly unremarkable.

The ledger floated just behind his shoulder, its glow subdued in the heat. It made no comment, though Alistair could feel it judging both the liquor and the company.

A boy approached. Thin, silent, eyes watchful.

He offered no words, only a sealed envelope pressed into Alistair's palm. The paper was thick. The wax dark green. The seal familiar.

Her seal.

Alistair retrieved the knife from his belt and broke it open.

Dearest Alistair,

You have been absent for some time. I would appreciate your company at Ashford House. There are... matters to discuss.

Sincerely,

Your Aunt Cecilia.

He read it twice.

And just like that, he was no longer alone in his skin.

Memory crashed over him like a wave.

Cecilia Finchley. Sister of his late father. Sole guardian after the carriage accident.

And wife to Lord Simon Marleigh.

A man who had once cornered a frightened boy in the rose corridor. Who had gripped his wrist too tightly. Who had whispered things in the dark that no child should hear.

Alistair remembered trying to tell her.

He remembered her slap.

He remembered the carriage to the military academy the next morning. No warning. No goodbye.

Just orders.

The war, he later realized, had been safer than her home had ever been.

And now she wanted to see him?

After years of silence? After disowning the real Alistair publicly for refusing an absurd command? After losing her title because of it?

Alistair stared at the letter.

He reached for his cigar case. Empty.

Around him, the bazaar hummed with life, merchants haggling, spices thick in the air, the distant call to prayer weaving through the noise.

"So," he murmured to no one, "the woman who sold the real Finchley to the army wants a reunion."

---

The ledger pulsed beneath his fingertips, then fluttered open with a strange, knowing stillness, as though stirred by something more than wind or hand.

A single page presented itself, ink already drying as if it had been waiting for him. It spoke not in commands, but in implications—return to England. Uncover whatever game Aunt Cecilia played. And then, the final choice, as inevitable as it was cruel... reconciliation or ruin.

A curious note lingered at the bottom of the page, penned in the same unfamiliar hand. He was, by all official records, a dead man.

Alistair allowed himself a smile—sharp, slow, and without warmth.

"So be it," he whispered.

Let them believe he had vanished. Let the Empire nurse its illusions.

He had no desire to correct them.

Not yet.

Not until he stood in Aunt Cecilia's drawing room, uninvited, unannounced, and very much alive.

He had an aunt to haunt.

---

Ashford House, Kent, England

Three Weeks Later

Ashford House had not changed.

It still sat on its hill like a monument to fading prestige. The columns were stained with rain, the front hedges trimmed to military precision, and the flagstone path never quite lost the scent of horse manure. Alistair stood before the wrought iron gates, gloved hands resting lightly on the cane that completed his disguise.

He wore a tailored traveling coat, dark spectacles, and a hat pulled low. He had not been Alistair Finchley in weeks. Here, he would be someone else entirely. A dead man walking among the ruins of his childhood.

The butler who answered the door paled at the sight of him.

"Tell Lady Cecilia," Alistair said, removing his hat, "that her ghost has returned."

---

She greeted him in the rose parlor.

It was just as he remembered it. Perfume cloying enough to choke a man. Wallpaper curling at the edges. Lady Cecilia Finchley herself seated like a statue of English rectitude, dressed in widow's black though she had been a widow for ten years.

She rose, stared at him for a heartbeat.

Then slapped him across the face.

The sound cracked through the room like a pistol shot.

"How dare you come back here," she hissed. "After everything you have done to this family."

Alistair did not flinch. The sting barely registered after Crimea.

"You requested my company," he said flatly. "Or have you taken to slapping your mailman as well?"

She blinked. Something flickered in her expression. Confusion.

"I did no such thing."

There it was. The first crack in the facade.

"You sent the letter, Aunt Cecilia," he said quietly. "Your seal. Your handwriting. Delivered to me in Constantinople. Surely you remember."

She went still. Very still.

"I have not sent a single letter since your father's funeral."

Alistair's fingers curled around the edge of the mantelpiece.

"Then someone forged your seal. Why."

"I do not know," she snapped. "And frankly, I do not care. You have brought enough shame to this house. The title we lost, your doing. Your defiance. Your disgrace. Do you think I want you here."

He stepped closer, voice low.

"You lost your title because your husband was under investigation for illegal arms trading through the East India Company. My refusal was just the excuse they needed."

Her lips tightened. She did not deny it.

"You are no son of mine," she spat. "You were never anything but a burden. You want forgiveness. Get our title back. Or do not bother darkening my door again."

Alistair gave her a long, unreadable look.

"Then it is settled," he said, voice clipped. "Good day, Lady Finchley."

And he left.

---

Later, at the Red Pheasant Inn

A small tavern nestled in the village below the estate. Alistair sat alone, boots propped on a stool, sipping scotch that tasted faintly of soot.

The letter lay on the table beside him.

Not hers.

Someone had orchestrated his return. Sent the bait. Lit the match.

But why. Why draw a dead man back into the world of titles and tarnished names.

---

He opened the ledger. It did not greet him. It simply turned a page, as if already aware.

The ink unfurled slowly, in a style both deliberate and disdainful, as though the book itself disapproved of his return to English soil.

You are in England again.

The air is colder. So is your disposition.

You are not wanted, but you are watched. That is something.

The letter, of course, was a forgery. It bears her handwriting but none of her precision.

What do they want? Influence? Debt? Closure? Or simply your ruin, reprised in a different costume.

You would be wise to remain, for all official purposes, deceased.

But wisdom has never been your preferred vice.

Very well. Begin again. Quietly.

Listen more than you speak.

Watch what they rewrite in your absence.

And when the time is right—correct the narrative. Preferably with ink. Or fire.

Alistair stared into his glass. The liquor tasted sharper now. Or perhaps he did.

How to remain retired and still extract revenge?

---

That night, Alistair tucked into the corner room of the inn. Rain tapped gently at the windowpanes. He locked the door, removed his coat, and placed his cane and saber beside the bed.

Just as he was settling in, there was a knock.

He opened the door to find a servant girl, no older than fifteen, soaked to the bone.

"My lord," she stammered, holding out a parcel. "This was delivered by rider. Left no name."

He took it.

Inside was a stack of old correspondence. His uncle's. Hidden letters, accounts, military orders. All pointing to something deeper.

And at the bottom, a second letter.

Unopened. Sealed in wax. Same crest as the forged one.

But this one was dated two years ago.

Dearest Alistair

If you are reading this, something has gone terribly wrong.

His heart stilled.

The real letter was never delivered.

So who sent the other one.

And why now.

He stared at the flames, jaw tight.

The ledger stirred on the desk, its pages fluttering once before stilling again. Ink bloomed faintly in the corner margin of an open page. A single sentence.

"The seal was forged. But the trap was real. How charming."