“Let’s get you ready for bed, shall we?” She said to Gemma. “Shall I braid your hair so it doesn’t become a veritable nest of tangles and snarls in the morning?”
Gemma nodded. “I hate when that happens. It takes so long to put it to rights.”
Lydia was smiling to herself as she sat down and began brushing out those lovely red-gold curls and twining them into a thick plait which she then secured with a length of ribbon. Afterward, she helped Gemma change into a nightdress of white linen. It was beautifully embroidered with lavender around the ruffle at the neckline and repeated at the cuffs. “Did your Grandmother make this for you?”
“Oh, heavens no. Grandmama says if she wanted to poke herself with needles all day, she’d just do so without making herself miserable with embroidering something in the process.”
Lydia laughed at that. “Indeed, I am not a fan of embroidery myself, though you will need to learn it eventually… All young ladies must.”
Gemma wrinkled her nose. “I’d rather learn archery. Can we do archery, instead?”
“In addition to,” Lydia offered. “It’s an unpleasant truth that ladies will be forced to learn things they do not wish to and denied the opportunity to learn things they’d like to.”
“That doesn’t seem very fair!”
“Very little is, I’m afraid,” Lydia confirmed for her. “But I am certain that your father and your Grandmama, and I, shall do everything we can to be certain that such unfairness inhibits you as little as possible.”
With the little girl’s nightgown straightened, her hair tucked into a neat braid, Lydia ushered her into her bed and pulled the covers up. “Now, you should rest because, as your father said, if the weather permits, we shall have a very big day tomorrow.”
“Miss Lydia, why does my Grandmama seem so very angry at you?”
Out of the mouths of babes, she thought. “I think perhaps your grandmother is worried that I am not a very good governess, or that perhaps I am not the governess that you need to have. But I promise to do my absolute best teaching you all that you need to know.”
Gemma nodded, seemingly accepting that answer. And no more was said on the matter because there was a soft knock from the doorway. Glancing past her, Gemma’s face broke into a bright smile. “Papa! Have you come to kiss me goodnight?”
“Indeed, I have,” Oliver said, stepping deeper into the room. He paused long enough to pick up a particularly lovely doll and carried it to the bed. There, he tucked it up under Gemma’s arm and placed a kiss on her forehead. “Now, you will sleepall through the night and you absolutely will not dream of butterflies and lemon cakes and kittens.”
Gemma giggled. “Those are the only things I like to dream about!”
“Well, then I suppose you must think about them very, very hard until you go to sleep and perhaps you might be able to make that transpire,” he teased her.
During the exchange, Lydia had stepped away. She was still very aware of everything that was being exchanged between them and she was unaccountably charmed by it. He was precisely the sort of father she had always imagined that he would be. A fact which both gratified her and cut her to the core.
After tidying up the space, she stepped out into the hall and Oliver followed immediately after, closing the door behind them.
“You are rather remarkable with her,” Lydia commented as they made their way down the corridor. Her room was at the end. His was much further away, down another wing and so she stopped near her door as did he.
“It’s easy enough,” he said with a self-deprecating smirk. “I simply try to do everything exactly the opposite of my own father. I find it to be a surprisingly effective strategy.”
Lydia smiled at that. “I understand what it is to be disappointed by one’s father. I find it a very lovely notion to think Gemma will never have to be.”
“I must apologize about mother again. She does mean well… Amelia was—well, mother loved her very dearly. She was her godmother, after all. And she worries for Gemma.”
“There are many people in this world who have had loved ones that suffered melancholia and remained untouched by it themselves for all their lives,” Lydia argued as she placed her hand on his arm. It was only intended to be a comforting gesture, but she became immediately aware of the firmness of his flesh beneath her fingertips. “There is no indication, nothingthat I have yet seen in Gemma, that would lead me to believe she would ever be given over to such dark moods.”
“Thank you for that,” he said, turning to face her completely. But there was a note in his voice, one that had little to do with what she’d just said to him, and everything to do with their proximity. They were now standing only inches apart, in a dimly lit corridor, with nearly the entirety of the household already abed. It was unwise, to say the least.
“Lydia…”
“Oliver, this is not… I did not intend for this,” she said.
“I should say that I did not either,” he replied. Then he stepped forward, that small distance shrinking further. “But there is something about this moment, here with you, that was inevitable. I knew, whether I chose to admit it or not, that I could never be near you and not want this.”
It wasn’t Oliver who took that next minuscule step, but her. Lydia leaned in, rising on her toes, until she could reach his lips with her own. She pressed herself against him, feeling the strength and the firm muscle beneath his elegant dinner clothes. And despite their surroundings, well dressed and in elegant and well-appointed manor house, it all felt very raw and primitive. There was no tenderness in it. Only sharp, aching need. She needed his kiss with the same sort of desperation she needed air after running uphill.
In that kiss, with his hands on her body and his mouth moving hungrily on hers, she found herself again. She found all that she thought she’d lost of herself in the past dozen years. It felt glorious and it felt right. For the first time in a very, very long time, Lydia felt as if she were finally right where she belonged, where she should have been all along.
Chapter
