“He’s paid to manage my affairs. He sees me that way because it’s accurate.” Rhys looked up at the branches overhead, dark shapes against the moonlit sky.
“Everyone sees a version of me. The ton sees the rake, the children see their papa. Grieves sees a problem to manage. You’re the only person who sees all of it.”
The words hung in the night air, weighted with everything they implied. He had not meant to say this. Had not meant to voice the particular observation that had been building in him for weeks. But the darkness made honesty easier, and Mel’s presence made honesty necessary.
“That’s because I’m not invested in any particular version.” Her voice was quiet but steady. “I just see what’s there.”
“And what’s there?”
He turned to face her, and she turned to face him, and for a moment they simply looked at each other in the moonlight. Her expression was unreadable, but her eyes held something he hadcome to recognise over the past weeks: the careful attention of a woman who was about to say something true.
“A man who hides behind his worst self because he’s afraid his best self will fail.” The words came out clear and precise, without malice or judgment.
“You were too afraid to enter into matrimony with Celeste. You’re too afraid to be a full-time father. You’re too afraid to stop being a rake because then you’d have to be real.”
The assessment landed like a blow, not because it was cruel but because it was accurate. Because she had named, in a few simple sentences, the pattern he had been refusing to see for fifteen years.
He hid behind his worst self because his worst self was safe. The rake could not fail because the rake was already failing. The scandal could not disappoint anyone because the scandal had no expectations to meet. If he was terrible, he could not fall short of being good.
But if he tried to be good, if he tried to be the father his children deserved and the man Celeste had cherished and the duke his position demanded, then he might fail. And that failure would be real. That failure would matter.
“You are brutally honest,” he said.
“I’m accurately honest.” She tilted her head slightly, that familiar gesture of precise consideration.
“Brutality requires cruelty. I’m not being cruel. I’m being clear.”
“Is there a distinction?”
“An important one. Cruelty intends to wound. Clarity intends to illuminate. I have no desire to wound you. But you asked what I saw, and I told you.”
“You always tell me.”
“You always ask.”
The night air was cool, carrying the scent of dying roses and autumn earth. Somewhere in the distance, an owl called, the sound echoing across the grounds and fading into silence. The house was dark behind them, the children sleeping, the servants retired, the world reduced to this garden and these two people standing in the moonlight.
Rhys stepped closer.
It was not a conscious decision. It was simply movement, drawn forward by something he could not name and could not resist. She did not step back. She simply stood there, watching him with those steady eyes, her expression shifting almost imperceptibly as the distance between them decreased.
He was close enough to smell the faint floral scent that she was wearing.
The moonlight silvered her features, and he could see the slight parting of her lips, the quickened rise and fall of her breath.
“Mel.”
Her name came out rough, stripped of the polish he usually maintained. It was not a question or a statement but simply an acknowledgment of her presence, of her nearness, of everything she had become to him over these weeks and months.
“Don’t.”
The word was soft but firm.
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t look at me like that.” She did not move, did not step back, but something in her posture had changed. A tension that had not been there before. A wall going up even as she remained physically close.
“I am your children’s governess. I am not… I cannot be…”
