“Don’t thank me. It’s my job.”
But they both knew, standing there in the darkened corridor with his daughter between them, that it had stopped being just a job a long time ago.
Rhys reached out and brushed a strand of hair from Viola’s sleeping face. His fingers came close to Mel’s cheek but did not touch her. The restraint was deliberate, obvious, and more affecting than any actual contact could have been.
“Good night,” he said softly.
“Good night.”
She carried Viola into her room and settled the child into her bed, tucking the blankets around her small form and lying down beside her. Viola curled against her immediately, seeking warmth and comfort and the steady presence that promised safety.
Mel lay in the darkness, listening to her charge’s breathing deepen into true sleep, and thought about the expression on Rhys’s face when he looked at her in the kitchen.
She knew what he wanted. She had known since the garden, since long before the garden if she was being honest with herself. He wanted this exact life, this woman, these children and this very kitchen at midnight.
Pray, have mercy, she wanted it too!
She wanted to belong here, not as a governess but as something more. She wanted to sit across from him at dinner without the careful distance they maintained. She wanted to walk with him in the garden without the fear of what they might say or do if they let their guard down. She wanted to hold his children through their nightmares and know that holding them made her theirs in some permanent, irrevocable way.
But wanting was not the same as having. And the distance between a governess and a duchess was measured in more than social position. It was measured in the judgment of a world that would never accept such a crossing, in the scandal that wouldfollow them both, in the damage that might be done to three small girls who already carried the burden of illegitimacy.
She could not risk their futures for her own happiness. She could not allow him to risk everything he had built for a woman who had nothing to offer but herself.
But lying there in the darkness, with Viola’s small body warm against her side and the memory of Rhys’s expression burning in her mind, Mel found it harder and harder to remember why any of that mattered.
The heart, she was learning, had no patience for practical considerations.
The heart simply wanted what it wanted, and all the logic in the world could not make it stop.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“Trevane! You’re alive after all. We were beginning to think the Cornish cliffs had swallowed you whole.”
Lord Petersham’s voice cut across the card room at White’s with barely suppressed satisfaction. Rhys paused in the doorway, feeling the familiar weight of London settle onto his shoulders like a coat he had forgotten how to wear.
He had been back in the city for three days. Three days of estate meetings and solicitor consultations and the particular tedium of ducal responsibilities that could not, despite his best efforts, be managed from Cornwall as Mr. Grieves had been insistent. The matters were urgent and his presence was required.
And so he had left.
He had said goodbye to the children at breakfast, promising to return within the week. Anna had recorded his departure time in her register. Viola had held his hand and whispered a request that he bring her new drawing pencils. Thistle had demanded that he find her a London beetle to add to her collection, preferably one with impressive mandibles.
And Mel had stood in the doorway of the schoolroom, her expression carefully neutral, and wished him safe travels in a voice that gave nothing away.
He had wanted to say something, to show some form of acknowledgment of what had passed between them in the kitchen, of the look they had shared over Viola’s sleeping head, of the impossible thing they were both refusing to name.
But there had been no words that were safe to speak, and so he had said nothing, and he had climbed into the carriage and watched Hartfell disappear behind him, and he had felt the loss of it like a physical ache in his chest.
Now he was back in London, back in the world he had built for fifteen years, and the world was welcoming him with open arms and empty champagne glasses.
“The cliffs were remarkably well-behaved,” he said, moving toward the card table where his usual companions had gathered.
“They made no attempt to swallow me whatsoever.”
“Pity. It would have made an excellent story.” Lord Ashton dealt him into the game without asking.
“What were you doing down there for so long? Estate business doesn’t take five weeks.”
“I found the scenery refreshing.”
