Chapter Eleven #2
The reaction it provoked was absurd. Andrew Fairfax was a respectable man, the son of a clergyman, with a clear future and an unassailable position. He would make some woman an excellent husband—steady, kind, dependable.
He would make Miss Collard an excellent husband.
The thought struck Nathaniel with unwelcome force.
He could see it all too clearly: Miss Collard presiding over a modest parsonage, her intelligence and warmth turned to parish duties and domestic comforts. She would be secure, respected, rooted. She would possess something she had never known as a governess—permanence.
She would have everything he could not offer.
For what could he offer her? An attachment that propriety would condemn. A connection between marquess and governess that could lead only to scandal. Marriage was impossible without destroying her prospects; anything less was unthinkable.
There was no path forward. No honourable way to want what he found himself wanting.
And here was Andrew Fairfax—pleasant, suitable, unencumbered—asking to be introduced.
“I shall inform Miss Collard of your wish,” Nathaniel said at last. The words tasted bitter. “I am certain she will be pleased to make your acquaintance.”
“That is most kind of you, my lord.” Fairfax rose. “I shall look forward to it.”
They exchanged a brief handshake, and Fairfax departed, leaving Nathaniel alone with thoughts he had no wish to entertain.
For a long moment, he stood where he was, staring at the closed door.
Then, without consciously deciding to do so, he crossed to the window once more.
Miss Collard had moved nearer the house. He could see her clearly now—laughing freely, her face bright, while Rosie spun in delighted circles and Samuel observed with that small, private smile that had become more frequent in recent weeks.
She was beautiful.
The realisation was not new, but it struck with renewed clarity. Beautiful, yes—but more than that: capable, kind, and quietly transformative. She had brought light back into a house long accustomed to shadow.
And Andrew Fairfax wished to meet her.
Nathaniel turned away and returned to his desk. The letter addressed to Miss Collard lay where he had left it, mute and accusatory.
He lifted it, weighed it in his hand, and—after a moment—rang for a servant to have it delivered.
It was none of his concern who wrote to Miss Serena Collard.
He would simply have to remind himself of that until it became true.
***
The letter haunted him for the rest of the morning.
Nathaniel attempted to focus on his correspondence, but his thoughts kept drifting to that masculine handwriting, that London postmark, that envelope now presumably in Miss Collard’s hands.
Was she reading it at this very moment? Was she smiling at its contents, or frowning, or—worst of all—blushing?
He found himself constructing increasingly elaborate conjectures.
A former employer, perhaps, seeking her return.
A scholarly acquaintance, sharing some item of intellectual interest. Or—a suitor.
The word lodged itself in his mind like a barb.
A gentleman from her past, writing to renew his attentions.
It was ridiculous. It was tormenting. It was entirely of his own making—and yet he could not seem to stop.
By the time the luncheon hour arrived, Nathaniel had accomplished very little and was in a decidedly sour temper. He made his way to the small dining room where the family customarily took their midday meal, hoping the children’s company might draw his thoughts from their unproductive course.
Instead, he found Miss Collard already seated at the table, a sheet of paper in her hand and an expression of pleased surprise upon her face.
The letter.
She was reading it—there, before him—leaving him no choice but to witness her reaction without the smallest notion of its cause.
“Good afternoon, Uncle Nate!” Rosie exclaimed, bouncing in her chair. “Miss Collard has had a letter!”
“So I observe,” Nathaniel replied, his tone carefully even.
Miss Collard looked up, and something fleeting crossed her features—colour, perhaps, though it was gone almost at once—before she folded the letter and slipped it into her pocket.
“Good afternoon, my lord,” she said composedly. “I beg your pardon for the distraction. I received some unexpected news.”
“Pleasant news, I trust?”
It was a perfectly civil enquiry. Entirely appropriate. The sort of remark any employer might offer upon observing correspondence.
It was not, in the least, an attempt to learn more than she had chosen to reveal.
“Yes—quite pleasant.” She smiled, though there was a note of reserve in it, as though she were holding something in careful abeyance. “An old acquaintance has written with news of mutual friends.”
An old acquaintance. Mutual friends. Words that conveyed everything and nothing at once.
Nathaniel resisted the urge to pursue the matter—to ask who this acquaintance might be, what news had been shared, what had prompted that fleeting colour in her cheeks. Instead, he merely inclined his head.
“How agreeable,” he said, and took his place at the head of the table.
The meal unfolded in its customary fashion. Rosie recounted her morning’s observations of butterflies with great animation; Samuel ate quietly, contributing the occasional thoughtful remark; Ella questioned Miss Collard with determined earnestness about the classification of various garden plants.
Nathaniel spoke little. His attention remained fixed upon Miss Collard, noting every expression, every hesitation, searching for some clue to the contents of the letter now concealed upon her person.
She was distracted. Cheerful, certainly—there was a lightness about her he had not observed before—but her thoughts seemed elsewhere. Twice she asked Ella to repeat herself. Once she reached for the salt when she clearly meant the sugar.
What had that letter said?
“Uncle Nate, you are not eating.”
He blinked, refocusing to find Rosie regarding him with solemn concern.
“I’m not very hungry, sweetheart.”
“Are you ill?” Rosie’s brow furrowed. “Miss Collard says we must eat properly or we shall become weak and sickly.”
“Miss Collard is quite correct. But I assure you, I am not ill. Merely preoccupied.”
“What does ‘preoccupied’ mean?” Rosie asked.
“It means he is thinking about something,” Ella supplied with the air of one imparting wisdom. “Grown-ups are perpetually preoccupied. It is one of the less attractive features of maturity.”
“Ella,” Miss Collard cautioned gently.
“It is true,” Ella persisted. “You are preoccupied as well. You have been contemplating the saltcellar for some time.”
Miss Collard coloured faintly. “I was merely… reflecting.”
“Upon the saltcellar?”
“It is a most curious object.”
Nathaniel felt the corner of his mouth lift despite himself. Even in distraction—even with whatever secret that letter carried—she remained quietly diverting.
“Perhaps we might change the subject,” he suggested. “Miss Collard, how do the children progress with their studies?”
It was safe ground. Professional ground. And Miss Collard took it readily, describing Ella’s work in French, Samuel’s improving hand, and Rosie’s recent mastery of the alphabet.
Nathaniel listened with one part of his attention, offering the occasional nod, while the rest remained fixed upon her. When she spoke of the children, she animated entirely—eyes bright, gestures fluid, her pleasure unmistakably genuine.
And yet, beneath it all, there remained a sense of divided thought. A pause here, a momentary distance there.
The letter. It must be the letter.
By the time luncheon concluded, Nathaniel was no nearer to understanding its contents and considerably nearer to losing all patience with himself.
He excused himself on the pretext of estate matters and withdrew to his study, where he spent the next hour accomplishing nothing whatsoever—staring at the wall and reflecting upon the singular talent Miss Serena Collard possessed for unsettling his carefully ordered life.