The word burned in her like a flame.
She could scarcely wait for the dark.
Chapter Sixteen
“You do not have to do this.”
Lorraine stood before the mirror in her small room, addressing her reflection as though it were a separate person—a wiser, more cautious version of herself who might yet be persuaded to see reason.
Her reflection stared back, flushed and bright-eyed, and offered no argument whatsoever.
She had bathed. Washed her hair and left it loose, rather than pinning it into its usual order. Changed into her nightgown—the good one, white cotton lawn, finer than anything a governess ought to possess, purchased three years ago for a trousseau she would never need and kept since as a quiet relic of a life denied.
She looked, she thought, like a woman walking toward something irreversible.
Which, of course, she was.
The house had settled into its nighttime hush. Thomas was asleep—she had checked twice, pressing her ear to his door, listening for the steady rhythm of undisturbed rest. Jenny had long since retired. Mrs Potter’s quarters lay dark. The corridors of Rovewood Hall stretched empty and lamplit, leading in every direction, offering every possible path.
She intended to take only one.
You could stay, whispered the cautious voice.You could climb into bed and pull the covers over your head and pretend that this afternoon never happened. You could be sensible. You could be safe.
She could.
She had spent six-and-twenty years being sensible and safe, and it had earned her a ruined reputation, a dead father, a sister who had never truly thanked her in any way that mattered, and a succession of borrowed rooms in other people’s houses.
Tonight, she would be reckless.
She drew her grey shawl about her—the practical one, the governess’s one—over the decidedly impractical nightgown. Slipped her feet into soft shoes. Opened her door and stepped into the corridor.
The walk to the ducal chambers took less than two minutes.
It felt like hours.
***
Dominic heard the knock and forgot how to breathe.
He had been pacing—had worn nearly the same path in the carpet he had confessed to Lorraine that afternoon. He had bathed, changed into a clean shirt and trousers, poured and abandoned three separate glasses of whisky. He had opened the window to let in the cold November air, then shut it again when he realised his hands were shaking—and not from the cold.
He had not expected her to come.
Had told himself, with the stubborn pessimism of a man long acquainted with disappointment, that she would reconsider. That reason would reassert itself—that the gulf between duke and governess would prove too wide to cross, and she would remain safely in her room, and they would return to their careful, agonising orbit.
He had been wrong.
The knock came again. Soft. Certain.
He crossed the room and opened the door.
She stood there—in a white nightgown and grey shawl, her auburn hair loose about her shoulders, her chin lifted in that small, defiant gesture that had undone him from the first.
She was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.
“You came,” he said, and immediately wished for a more intelligent remark.
“I came.” Her smile trembled—luminous, uncertain, brave. “Are you going to invite me in, or shall I remain here until Graves discovers me and expires of shock?”
