“I am asking you nothing.” He rose from his chair, closing some of the distance between them.
“I am simply… present. I am staying, because I choose to stay. I am talking to you every evening because I want to talk to you. What you do with that information is entirely your decision.”
“And what if I decide that it’s safer to maintain my professional distance?”
“Then I will respect that decision. And I will continue to stay, and to talk to you, and to demonstrate through action rather than words that not everyone who makes promises breaks them.”
She was quiet slowly. He could see her processing, weighing and calculating the risks as she calculated everything.
“You have children,” she said finally.
“Your attention should be on them, not on their governess.”
“My attention is large enough to encompass both. Remarkably, I find that caring about one thing does not diminish my capacity to care about another.”
“That is not how attention works.”
“Perhaps not for most people. But I have spent many years not caring about anything important. I do confess to a few private hesitations.”
A second peal of laughter escaped her; though more tempered than the first, it possessed a genuine warmth which she, for once, did not attempt to stifle.
“You are impossible,” she repeated.
“So you’ve said.”
“And frustrating.”
“Also noted.”
“And somehow, despite all evidence and good sense, I find that I don’t wish you to leave.”
The words landed in the space between them, weighted with everything they implied. She had said it. The thing they had been circling around for weeks, the truth that neither of them had been willing to voice.
She didn’t want him to leave.
“Then I won’t,” he said simply.
She looked at him through the silence, her expression complex and unreadable. Then she nodded once, the gesture carrying more weight than any words could have.
“It’s late,” she said. “The children will be awake early. Anna has scheduled a comprehensive review of the week’s lessons, and Thistle has announced plans to introduce Brutus to a promising new cricket.”
“I should let you rest, then.”
“You should.” But she did not move toward the door. Instead, she stood there, looking at him with something in her eyes that he had not seen before. Something that might have been hope.
“Good night, Rhys.”
She had used his name and not“Your Grace.”Not the title that had cut like glass but his name, offered quietly, deliberately, as a gift.
“Good night, Mel.”
She retreated and he went to the window where she had stood, looking out at the same darkness, and felt something unfamiliar settle in his chest.
He was staying not because of obligation or guilt or the desperate need to make amends. He was staying because he wanted to because this house had become something like home,and these people had become something like family, and there was a woman with walls around her heart who had just told him she didn’t want him to leave.
It wasn’t affection, not yet. It was too soon for that, too fragile, too weighted with the baggage they both carried.
But it was something worth staying for, something worth building.
