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“I’m glad their mother sent the children to you,” she said.
“I’m not sure the children are glad of it,” he said. “They run away every chance they have. I’m afraid... I’m afraid they’ll decide to run away forever.”
“Have faith, Your Grace. I believe anything broken may be mended. While we yet breathe, there is hope.”
“You’re a woman of strong convictions.”
At nine and twenty, he’d made far too many mistakes to hope for new beginnings.
Firelight played across her skin, bathing her freckles in golden light.
“I’m beginning to understand now,” she said. “The complicated nature of your relationship with your offspring. You think of them as mistakes. If you think of them as regrets, you’ll never see them any other way.”
“I don’t...” he began vehemently, and stopped.
Could that be true?
“It’s more that I see them as the innocent results of a mistake. Nothing about my interlude with Sophie was pure or innocent, except the results. These two beautiful children, raised in hardship and poverty. I will ensure the rest of their lives are lived in comfort and security.”
“Maybe this guilt isn’t something you’re supposed to carry. Maybe you don’t need to wallow in it.”
“Wallow? Pigs wallow. Dukes never wallow.”
“I chose my wording poorly. Perhaps revel. It’s almost an indulgence, isn’t it? To repeat one’s missteps over and over in one’s mind until that’s all one can see? If you’re not careful, you could become stuck in a continuous loop in your mind, going over and over the dark, bad things and never moving forward, into the light.”
How had she become so wise? Her words solidified in his mind like molten metal cooling into a new shape. But it was too late for him to be reshaped. “What light? There’s no light to find. Why don’t you go and tell the twins a story with a happy ending? Because there is none to find here, do you understand me?”
She took a step backward.
“I understand.” Tension played along her jaw. “Because I’m merely the governess. Not fit to give a duke advice.”
“Something like that.”
She glared at him, and then gathered her pile of books and left the library without a backward glance.
Which should have made him happy. He’d achieved his aim of driving her away.
He sat in the chair she’d been sitting in, remembering the way she’d eaten the grapes with such gusto and pleasure. She was so vibrant and opinionated.
So beautiful and intelligent.
They’d had such a far-ranging discussion.
They’d covered death, lost love, children’s education, marriage, rights for women... it had felt like a year’s worth of conversations fit into one evening. India had been right, he reflected. Miss Perkins was exactly what his children required. The problem was, she was also precisely what he desired... and could never have.
The stars shining in her eyes were not for the likes of him. She was filled with light and conviction. Just on the beginning of her luminous path in life.
Any light in his heart had been snuffed out long ago, leaving him in darkness.
Take my books, Mari-rhymes-with-starry.
But leave my heart and my rules intact.
Chapter 9
“Wake up, Miss Perkins. Are you still abed?”
Mari rubbed her eyes.
