“And I don’t leave again. Not like this. Not ever again.”
“That sounds like the beginning of a plan.”
“It sounds like the beginning of groveling. But I suppose that’s what I’ve earned.”
He returned to his desk and pulled a fresh sheet of paper toward him. The letter he was about to write would not explain what happened. It would not excuse his behaviour or beg for forgiveness. It would simply announce his return, his intention to stay, and his willingness to face whatever judgment awaited him.
It was not enough. He knew it was not enough.
But it was a start.
And starts, he was learning, were sometimes all a person had.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“The delivery wagon’s arrived, Miss Grace. Shall I have Cook check the supplies?”
Mrs. Kemp stood in the kitchen doorway, her expression carrying the particular blend of efficiency and deference that characterised all her interactions with the governess. Over the past four months, the two women had developed an understanding: Mrs. Kemp managed the household, Mel managed the children, and both of them pretended not to notice the complications introduced by the master’s extended presence.
Or, now, his absence.
“Yes, please,” Mel said, not looking up from the lesson plans she was reviewing at the kitchen table.
“And if the gossip sheets have arrived, you may leave them here. I’ll look through them later.”
It was a small indulgence, one she did not allow herself to feel guilty about. The gossip sheets were frivolous, certainly, filled with speculation and scandal and the petty dramas of people whose lives bore no resemblance to her own. But they were also a window into the world beyond Hartfell’s walls, a reminder that society continued to turn even when one was occupied with Latin conjugations and nature expeditions.
And, if she was honest with herself, they were a way of knowing what he was doing in London. Not that she cared or that it mattered. But knowing seemed better than imagining, and imagining was what she had been doing for three days since his departure.
Mrs. Kemp returned twenty minutes later with a stack of papers and a knowing look that Mel chose to ignore. The housekeeper set the gossip sheets on the table and retreated without comment, leaving Mel alone with her lesson plans and her small indulgence.
She finished the review of mathematics exercises before allowing herself to reach for the papers. This was discipline, she told herself. This was demonstrating that she could wait, that her curiosity was not urgent and that she was perfectly capable of prioritising her responsibilities over her personal interests.
The first sheet contained nothing of note. A marchioness had worn an unfortunate gown to the opera. A viscount’s son had eloped with a merchant’s daughter. The usual parade of failures and scandals that constituted high society’s endless entertainment.
The second sheet was more of the same. Mel skimmed the columns with practiced efficiency, looking for nothing in particular, certainly not looking for any specific name or title.
The third sheet stopped her cold.
The Duke of Trevane, London’s most notorious rake, has returned to the capital after an extended sojourn in Cornwall that had society wondering if he had finally reformed. Thosehopes were dashed at Lady Dearborn’s ball, where His Grace was seen in the company of the beautiful widow Hartington throughout the evening. The pair departed together in circumstances that left little doubt as to their intentions. It seems the leopard has not changed his spots after all.
Mel read the paragraph once and then again, more slowly each reading slower than the last, as though careful attention might reveal some alternative interpretation, some way to understand the words that did not mean what they obviously meant.
Departed together. In circumstances that left little doubt.
She set the paper down on the table with exaggerated care. Her hands, she noticed distantly, were perfectly steady. Her breathing was perfectly even. She was perfectly composed, as she had trained herself to be through years of surviving disappointments that would have destroyed someone less disciplined.
She stared at the kitchen wall. It was whitewashed plaster, clean and unremarkable, the same wall she had looked at every morning when she came down for breakfast. There was a small crack near the ceiling that she had noticed on her first day and had been meaning to mention to Mrs. Kemp. She had never mentioned it. It had never seemed important enough.
Nothing seemed important enough, in this moment, except the task of keeping her breathing steady and her face composed.
She should not be surprised. She had warned him about this. In the garden, under the moonlight, she had told him exactlywhat he was: a man who hides behind his worst self because he’s afraid his best self will fail. She had named his pattern with perfect clarity, and he had stood there and absorbed it, and she had thought, foolishly, that naming might be the beginning of changing.
But here was the proof. The moment he left Cornwall, the moment he was away from the children and from her, he had gone back to exactly what he was, the notorious rake, the scandal. The man who cannot be trusted.
The widow Hartington was extremely beautiful, the gossip sheets said. Beautiful and available and entirely willing to provide the Duke of Trevane with whatever distraction he required.
Mel had met women like Mrs. Hartington. Women who saw opportunity in scandal, who calculated their advances with the precision of chess players, who understood that a notorious duke was a prize worth pursuing regardless of the complications involved. She did not blame Mrs. Hartington for pursuing what was clearly on offer.
