Amelia blinked.
Straight to the execution. No trial whatsoever.
“With respect, Your Grace,” she replied, lifting her chin slightly, “I barely know everyone’s names.”
Gabriel’s expression remained unchanged.
“I have known your family for approximately a couple of hours,” Amelia continued, gesturing lightly with one hand. “I do not yet understand their habits, preferences, fears, or temperaments.”
“You are the governess,” Gabriel said, as though saying it might finally anchor her into place.
“I am aware,” Amelia replied evenly, resisting the urge to point out that she was not suffering from memory loss.
“Then govern,” he said.
Amelia stared at him for a moment, genuinely unsure whether he understood the limits of human capability. “I cannot perform miracles,” she said at last.
Gabriel raised one eyebrow, as though she had offered him a particularly weak excuse. “No?”
“No,” she repeated, folding her arms. “I cannot solve years of family difficulties between breakfast and tea.”
The words left her mouth cleanly, and only a heartbeat later did she realize precisely what she had admitted to a man who looked as though he collected failures and stored them for later use. Amelia watched his expression harden.
Oh, excellent. I’ve done it again. Why can't I keep my words to myself?
“I am not asking for miracles,” Gabriel said quietly.
The calmness of his tone was worse than anger; it carried the weight of something already decided. “I am asking you to take your duties seriously.”
“I do take them seriously,” Amelia replied at once.
“Do you?”
His grey eyes held hers without wavering, and Amelia suddenly felt as though she were no longer speaking but being assessed. Every hesitation, every breath, every unguarded instinct seemed to be placed under scrutiny.
Judged. Measured. Found wanting.
“If I believed otherwise,” Gabriel continued, taking a single step closer, “I would not have offered you the position.”
Amelia swallowed, suddenly aware of how much smaller the room felt than it had moments ago. Or perhaps it was not the room at all. Perhaps it was simply the fact that Gabriel Warring occupied space as though it belonged to him by right.
“My family has already endured enough disappointment,” he said, his voice lower now, stripped of its earlier sharpness. “I refuse to disappoint them again.”
The words altered something in her attention. No disappointment in them. Disappointment from them. The distinction mattered more than she expected.
Amelia studied him more carefully then, the irritation giving way, reluctantly, to something closer to understanding. There was something genuine beneath the severity, something restrained and tightly held. Concern, certainly. And beneath that, something heavier she could not quite name but recognized all the same.
Before she could stop herself, curiosity overtook caution.
“Have you ever considered marrying?” she asked.
Gabriel blinked once, slowly, as though recalibrating the conversation after an unexpected disruption. Amelia sensed she had not followed the approved conversational path. Still, she pressed on before she could reconsider.
“The children have suffered terrible losses,” she said. “Surely they might benefit from having a mother.”
Silence settled over the study at once. Gabriel’s expression shifted, becoming unreadable in a way that was almost immediate, as though he had deliberately closed a door she had not realized was open.
“No,” he said flatly. The word landed with finality.
