The conclusion was simple. It was the only one available to a man who loved two people and believed he could protect them only by letting them go.
“Close the door,” he said.
She did. Folded her arms. Waited.
He had rehearsed this. In the long hours between midnight and morning, he had constructed his argument with the same cold precision he had once applied to battle—every word chosen, every objection anticipated, every weakness accounted for. It was rational. Impeccable. Unassailable.
It lasted twelve seconds.
“The Hardings will take Thomas,” he said. “That is what will happen. The law supports their claim. The barrister has confirmed it. And nothing I have seen since their arrival suggests they will be persuaded otherwise. They loved William. They want Thomas. They are capable people who will give him a home.”
“I know all of this,” Lorraine said evenly. “You are not telling me anything new.”
“I am telling you what follows from it.” He rose and moved to the window, because he could not do this while looking at her. “When Thomas goes, your position here ends. A governess without a charge has no reason to remain. If you stay—in any capacity—it will be remarked upon. The staff already suspect. Mrs Potter certainly knows. And if the Hardings learn that the Duke and the governess—”
“They will not.”
“They might. James Harding is observant. He watches everything.” Dominic fixed his gaze on the window, seeing nothing beyond it. “If the nature of our—association—becomes known, it damages you. Irrevocably. Your reputation, which you have already sacrificed once—”
“Do not presume to manage my reputation.”
“—will be destroyed entirely. You will not find another position. You will not find another household willing to employ a governess known to have been intimate with her employer. The previous scandal was a rumour. This would be fact.”
The silence that followed had weight.
Lorraine did not move. Did not speak. Did not do any of the things he had braced himself for—tears, persuasion, the fierce emotional force she wielded so effectively.
“Is that all?” she asked.
“No.” He turned from the window. The sight of her—composed, pale, her eyes fixed on him with an unreadable steadiness—nearly broke him. “Thomas. If I contest this and lose—which I will, because I have no standing—the process will be ugly. Courts. Barristers. Arguments conducted in his hearing. He will be caught in the middle. He will believe it is his fault, because that is what children do.”
“You do not know that.”
“I know him. I know what loss does to him. The worst thing I could do to William’s son is turn his leaving into a battleground.” His voice remained steady—too steady, the product of too many hours spent shaping it. “The kindest thing I can do—the only responsible thing—is to let him go cleanly. Let the Hardings take him without conflict. Let him remember Rovewood as a place of kindness, not contention.”
“And me?” Lorraine’s chin lifted—the gesture he knew too well. “What is the kindest thing you can do for me?”
Let you go, he thought, and the words were so vast, so annihilating, that for a moment he could scarcely breathe.
“End this,” he said. “Before it does more harm.”
“End this.” She repeated it, quietly. Testing it. “You wish to end this.”
“I wish to protect—”
“Do not.” The word cracked through the room. “Do not stand there and call this protection. Do not pretend that destroying the best thing that has ever happened to either of us is an act ofkindness.”
“Lorraine—”
“You are not protecting me. You are not protecting Thomas. You are protecting yourself.” She stepped toward him, and the composure she had carried into the room began to fracture. He saw it—in the brightness of her eyes, the tremor in her jaw, the tension in her hands. “You are doing exactly what you didafter Badajoz. Exactly what you did after the letter. You are faced with something that frightens you, and instead of fighting, you freeze.”
“This is not the same—”
“It is precisely the same. It is the same pattern you have followed for four years. Something begins to matter, and you seal it off before it can wound you. William mattered, so you sealed off Thomas. Thomas began to matter, so you shut yourself in your study. I began to matter, so you—”
She broke off, drawing a breath that trembled.
“So you stand here and call it an arrangement, and speak of ending it cleanly, as though we were dissolving a business agreement. As though I did not hold you in the dark while you wept for men whose names you carry like a burden. As though you did not kneel on a nursery floor and promise a child you would not leave him.” Her voice dropped. “As though you did not tell me you loved me.”
