Mrs Potter inclined her head. “Good. This house has been in want of happiness for a long time.”
She said nothing more. But as she rose to leave, she pressed Lorraine’s hand in brief passing—a gesture that felt, unmistakably, like sanction.
***
The days that followed were the happiest Lorraine had ever known.
She had not expected happiness. Had not permitted herself even the shape of it—not like this, not this bright, consuming, precarious joy that suffused her days and lent a quiet radiance to the most ordinary moments. For three years, she had trained herself not to want. Now she did nothing but want—and have, and be wanted in return—and the abundance of it left her almost unsteady.
They were careful. They had to be.
The household could not know—not yet, not while everything remained what it was: duke and governess, master and employee, an imbalance that society would condemn without hesitation. If word travelled beyond Rovewood, Lorraine’s reputation—already fragile—would be destroyed entirely. And Dominic, for all his rank, would not escape unscathed; their attachment would be reduced to something coarse, misread as convenience or indulgence.
So they performed.
By day, they were unchanged. Courteous. Correct. He visited the nursery under the guise of assessing the governess’s work. She reported progress over tea in the morning room. They spoke of schedules, books, and instruction with impeccable propriety.
But beneath that surface, everything had altered.
A glance across the breakfast table—his eyes finding hers while Thomas spoke, holding a moment too long before he looked away. A brush of fingers when passing a book—brief, deliberate, charged. The sound of her name in his voice—Miss Weston—weighted with a meaning that belonged only to the night.
And at night, the pretence dissolved.
She came to him after midnight, once the house lay still and Thomas slept soundly. She learned the path by heart—seventeen steps to the end of her corridor, left at the gallery, down the main staircase, across the first-floor passage, through the heavy oak door leading to his rooms. She learned which boards creaked and which held their silence. She learned to carry her shoes.
She learned other things as well.
The sound he made when she pressed her lips to the scar along his ribs. The way his hands trembled when he loosed her hair, as though unwrapping something rare. The precise touch that could unmake her entirely.
And she learned the quieter things—the hours after, when the fire burned low and they lay close together, speaking in low voices.
He told her of his childhood: a solitary boy in a vast house, raised by servants after his mother’s death, guided by tutors his father scarcely noticed.
He spoke of Eton—of Julian and William, and the first sense of belonging he had ever known. He spoke of the army—not the horror, not the ravine, but the other parts: the camaraderie, the dark humour, the absurdity of men facing death with laughter. The way William could lift spirits with a single remark.
And she told him of herself.
Of her father—the gentle scholar who loved too deeply. Of Lydia—beautiful, reckless Lydia, who had let Lorraine bear the cost, and now sent money that was always returned. Of the long years as a governess—the careful navigation of other people’s homes, the quiet discipline of needing nothing.
“I was so proud of it,” she said one night, her cheek against his chest, his fingers tracing idle patterns along her shoulder. “Not needing anyone. I had built myself into something unassailable. And then I walked into your study, and you could not tell me a single thing about the boy in your care, and I thought:this man is as broken as I am. Only far less discreet about it.”
His laughter stirred beneath her ear. “Less discreet?”
“Entirely without subtlety. I had years of practice. You were making no effort at all.”
“I was not.”
He laughed again—warm, unguarded.
They fell into a quiet that was not empty but full—of shared breath, of ease, of something newly and quietly certain. His arm tightened around her, drawing her closer, and she went without hesitation, settling against him as though she had always belonged there.
For a long moment, neither of them spoke.
***
In the days that followed, the three of them found a rhythm that felt, to Lorraine, like the opening notes of a song she had been waiting her entire life to hear.
Mornings were for lessons. Thomas was flourishing—reading beyond his years, showing a genuine talent for watercolours, and asking questions with the eager curiosity of a child newly at ease in the world. He was working now on a series of bird portraits, each more detailed than the last, and had begun keeping a journal of his observations, which Lorraine helped him compile each evening.
