Chapter One #2
“Do you?” He leaned forward slightly, his grey eyes intent.
“Miss Collard, I shall be frank with you, for I have learned through bitter experience that euphemism serves no one. My nieces and nephew have endured a great deal in the past two years. They are not easy children. They are grieving, they are angry, and they have learned to trust no one who enters this house, because everyone who enters it eventually leaves.” He paused, and something that might have been pain flickered across his features before being ruthlessly suppressed.
“I cannot promise that this will be a pleasant position. I can only promise that it is a necessary one, and that you will be compensated fairly for your troubles.”
Serena considered his words. They struck her as, perhaps, the most honest any employer had ever been with her.
“My lord,” she said slowly, “may I also be frank?”
His eyebrows rose slightly—not in offence, she thought, but in surprise. “By all means.”
“I have been a governess for four years. In that time, I have worked for families who treated me as invisible, families who treated me as a servant, and one memorable family who treated me as a potential wife for a male relation—which was flattering until I discovered that he was sixty-three years old and had already buried three wives under circumstances that were never adequately explained.”
The corner of Lord Greystone’s mouth twitched. “Good grief.”
“Indeed. My point, my lord, is that I have learned to manage difficult situations. I have learned that children who are labelled ‘impossible’ are almost always children who have not been properly understood. And I have learned—” She paused, selecting her words with care.
“I have learned that a governess who expects to be liked is a governess destined for disappointment. I do not require the children to like me, my lord. I require only that they learn from me, and that they are cared for while they do so.”
Silence settled between them. Lord Greystone studied her with an expression she could not quite decipher—assessment, certainly, but something else as well. Something that resembled hope, though it was carefully guarded.
“You speak as though you have given this considerable thought,” he said at last.
“I have had considerable time for reflection, my lord. Mail coaches offer few other diversions.”
That earned her something that was almost, but not quite, a smile. “Very well, Miss Collard. You are hired.”
“I believe I was already hired, my lord. That is why I am here.”
“Yes—but now you are hired with my full confidence, which is a different matter entirely.” He rose, and Serena rose with him, for that was what one did when a marquess stood.
“Mrs McConnor will show you to your rooms and acquaint you with the household routine. Dinner is at seven. The children dine in the nursery, but you are welcome to take your meals there as well, or in your rooms if you prefer solitude.”
“And yourself, my lord?”
He stilled, if only for a moment. “I take my meals in my study, Miss Collard. I find my appetite suffers less when I am not distracted by… conversation.”
There was something in the way he spoke the word conversation that made Serena suspect he meant something else entirely. Company, perhaps. Or connection. Or any of the things human beings were meant to require, yet which some found too painful to endure.
“Of course, my lord,” she said, and did not press the matter.
Lord Greystone crossed to the door and opened it, revealing a corridor just as grey and quiet as the rest of the house.
“Mrs McConnor,” he called, and within moments an elderly woman appeared—sturdy and practical, with iron-grey hair drawn back severely and a face that suggested she had seen a great deal in her lifetime and had not been impressed by most of it.
“My lord?”
“This is Miss Collard, the new governess. Please show her to her rooms and introduce her to the children. All of them,” he added, with a slight emphasis that Serena did not yet understand.
“Yes, my lord.” Mrs McConnor turned to Serena with an expression that was not unfriendly, but certainly reserved. “If you will follow me, miss.”
Serena retrieved her travelling case and moved towards the door, but paused at the threshold. “My lord?”
Lord Greystone had already returned to his desk, his attention apparently absorbed by the papers before him. He looked up with the air of a man who had forgotten she was still present.
“Yes?”
“You mentioned several children. Miss Ella, and…?”
“Samuel and Rosie.” Something shifted in his expression as he spoke their names—something tender, something painful, swiftly concealed.
“Samuel is eight. Rosie is five. You will find Samuel… quiet. He does not speak much these days. And Rosie—” He stopped, cleared his throat, and began again.
“Rosie is very young. She does not always understand.”
Serena waited, but he did not continue.
“I shall look forward to meeting them,” she said, because it seemed the appropriate thing to say.
Lord Greystone inclined his head once and returned his attention to the papers before him.
Serena followed Mrs McConnor out of the study, the door closing behind her with a soft but decisive click.
***
The nursery wing, Mrs McConnor explained as they climbed the stairs, was located in the east section of the house. It had its own schoolroom, its own sitting room, and four bedrooms—one for each child and one for the governess.
“His lordship had the governess’s room redone last year,” Mrs McConnor said, her tone carefully neutral. “New curtains, new linens, a writing desk by the window. He wished it to be comfortable.”
“That was very thoughtful of him.”
Mrs McConnor’s lips pressed into a thin line that suggested she held opinions on his lordship’s thoughtfulness, but was not inclined to share them with a stranger. “The children’s rooms are adjacent to yours. You will hear them when they wake in the night.”
Serena noted the phrasing—when they wake, not if—but made no comment.
They reached the top of the stairs and turned into a corridor lined with more portraits, smaller and more intimate than those in the entrance hall.
Children’s portraits, Serena realised. A dark-haired boy with a mischievous smile.
A young woman in white, her expression serene.
A family group, frozen in time: father, mother, and three small children arranged about them like precious ornaments.
“The late marquess and marchioness,” Mrs McConnor said, following Serena’s gaze. “Lord Greystone’s brother and his wife.”
“They were very young,” Serena observed quietly.
“Not yet thirty, either of them.” Mrs McConnor’s voice remained controlled, though the grief beneath it was unmistakable.
“The carriage accident was two years ago this autumn. His lordship brought the children here immediately afterwards. He was named their guardian in the will, you see. The marchioness had family in Bath, but they…” She trailed off, her expression souring.
“Well. His lordship felt the children belonged here, and here they have remained.”
Serena looked at the portrait again—at the smiling parents, at the children who had been too young to understand how much they were about to lose.
The boy in the portrait must be Samuel, she realised.
He looked no more than six in the painting, his face alight with the uncomplicated joy of childhood.
The girl was Ella, recognisable even then by her sharp grey eyes and determined chin.
And the smallest child, barely more than a baby in her mother’s arms, must be Rosie.
“It must have been very difficult,” Serena said. “For everyone.”
“It was.” Mrs McConnor turned away, her spine rigid. “But we manage. We always manage. This way, Miss Collard.”
They continued along the corridor, past doors Serena suspected she would soon learn to navigate, until they reached the nursery wing.
The transition was marked by a subtle shift in atmosphere: the walls were painted a paler shade of grey here—though still grey, Serena noted with mild resignation—and someone had attempted to add warmth with vases of dried flowers and cheerful landscapes in gilt frames.
The schoolroom door stood open, and through it Serena saw a long table surrounded by child-sized chairs, a globe on its stand in one corner, and shelves lined with books that appeared to have been genuinely used.
It was, she thought, a proper schoolroom—the sort her father would have approved of, with all the necessary tools of education at hand.
“The children take their lessons here from nine until noon,” Mrs McConnor explained. “Luncheon follows in the small dining room, then quiet time—reading or needlework for Miss Ella, rest for the younger ones. Afternoon activities vary with the weather. Dinner at six, bed by eight for all three.”
Serena nodded, committing the routine to memory. Structure, she had learned, was essential for children who had lost their footing; it offered something solid to grasp when everything else felt uncertain.
“And Lord Greystone?” she asked. “Does he spend time with the children?”
Mrs McConnor’s expression smoothed into careful blankness. “His lordship is much occupied with estate matters. He inquires after them regularly and ensures they have everything they require.”
Which, Serena noted, was not quite the same as spending time with them at all.
“I see,” she said, and did not pursue the matter.
They moved past the schoolroom to a comfortable sitting room—this one painted a soft yellow, with cushioned chairs arranged before the fireplace and a window seat overlooking the gardens below. And there, arranged like figures in a tableau, were the remaining two children Serena had come to teach.