Chapter Sixteen #2
“You matter to me, Miss Collard. Not just your well-being, but you. Who you are. What you think. How you see the world.” The words were coming faster now, tumbling out before he could summon caution.
“I have spent weeks trying to deny it, trying to convince myself that what I feel is merely gratitude or admiration or professional respect. But it is more than that. I know it is more than that.”
“My lord—”
“Nathaniel. Please. You called me Nathaniel last night.”
“That was...” She looked away, her cheeks flushing. “That was a lapse. An intimacy I should not have taken.”
“It was not a lapse. It was honest. And I find I prefer honesty to propriety.” He took a step closer, not touching her, but near enough to feel the warmth of her.
“Serena. I am not asking for anything. I am not making demands. I am simply telling you the truth, for you deserve to know it. For I am tired of pretending.”
Serena was silent for a long moment. When she finally spoke, her voice was barely above a whisper.
“And what is the truth, Nathaniel?”
The sound of his name on her lips—deliberate this time, a conscious choice—made his heart stutter.
“The truth is that I think about you constantly. That I look for you in every room I enter. That when you smile, something in my chest feels lighter, and when you are in pain, I want to fix it more than I have ever wanted to fix anything.” He paused, gathering courage for the final confession.
“The truth is that I am falling in love with you, and I do not know how to stop.”
The silence that followed was absolute. Even the birds seemed to have stilled, as though the whole world were holding its breath.
Serena’s face had gone pale, her grey eyes wide and unreadable. For a terrible moment, Nathaniel thought he had made a dreadful mistake—that he had misread everything, that she did not return his feelings, that he had just destroyed the fragile connection between them.
Then she said, very quietly: “You cannot love me.”
“And yet I do.”
“I am a governess. You are a marquess. The distance between us—”
“Is a matter of social convention, not natural law.” Nathaniel held her gaze, willing her to see his sincerity.
“My brother married outside his rank. Everyone said it was a mistake, but it was the best decision he ever made. He was happy, Serena. Truly, completely happy. And I find I want that for myself. I want a partner, not a suitable match. I want someone who sees me as I am, not as my title suggests I should be.”
“You could have anyone. Any woman in England would—”
“I do not want any woman in England. I want you.”
Serena’s breath caught audibly. He saw her throat work; saw the emotion she was fighting to contain.
“I am not asking you to answer me now,” Nathaniel said, when the silence stretched on. “I am not asking you to make decisions or commitments. I am simply telling you how I feel, so that you can... so that you can know. Whatever you choose to do with that knowledge is your own affair.”
“And if I choose to do nothing?” Her voice was strained. “If I choose to pretend this conversation never happened, to go on as we were?”
“Then that is what we shall do.” The words cost him something, but he meant them.
“Your comfort and security are more important to me than my own feelings. If you want me to keep my distance, I will. If you want to leave Greystone Hall, I will provide you with excellent references and ensure you find a position worthy of your abilities. I will not make this difficult for you, Serena. I will not let my feelings become a burden you are forced to carry.”
She was crying now—silent tears slipping down her cheeks, though she made no move to wipe them away.
“You are making it very difficult to be sensible,” she said.
“I apologise.”
“No, you don’t.”
“No,” he admitted. “I don’t.”
A choked laugh escaped her—half sob, half genuine amusement. “I cannot think. I cannot... you have said so much, and I do not know how to respond, and my head is still aching from yesterday, and none of this is fair—”
“I know. I know. And the moment could scarcely have been more ill-chosen. But I could not keep silent any longer.” Nathaniel reached out, very carefully, and took her hand.
She did not pull away. “Take whatever time you need. Think about what I’ve said.
And when you are ready—if you are ever ready—I will be here. ”
Serena looked down at their joined hands—her slender fingers wrapped in his larger ones, his thumb tracing small circles against her skin.
“Last night,” she said slowly, “when you came to my door... when you brought me tea and tended my fire and did not flinch from the reality of what I was experiencing... I thought to myself, ‘This is not how employers behave. This is not how marquesses behave.’”
“How do marquesses behave?”
“They remain at a distance. They maintain propriety. They certainly do not fetch monthly cloths in the middle of the night.” A tiny smile flickered across her face. “But you did. You did all of it, and you did not seem to mind.”
“I did not mind. I was glad to help. Glad to be trusted.”
“That is what made me realise...” She looked up at him, her grey eyes swimming with tears and something else—something that looked very much like hope.
“You are not just an employer to me, Nathaniel. You have not been for some time. I have been fighting it, telling myself it was inappropriate, that I was imagining things, that a man like you could never truly see a woman like me—”
“I see you.” His voice was fierce. “I see you, Serena. Every part of you. And what I see is remarkable.”
She laughed again—a wet, broken sound. “You are going to make me cry even harder.”
“I will fetch you a handkerchief. I am becoming quite adept at fetching things.”
“Do not jest.” But she was smiling now, really smiling, through her tears.
“I am not jesting. I am simply observing that the past twelve hours have significantly expanded my domestic capabilities. I can now build fires, prepare tea, and locate linen closets with reasonable efficiency. I am practically a housekeeper.”
“You are ridiculous.”
“So I have been told.”
They stood there in the rain-washed garden, hands still joined, smiles fading into something quieter and more serious.
“I do not know what happens next,” Serena said finally. “I do not know how to navigate this, or whether it is even possible. Everything you have said—everything I feel—it terrifies me.”
“It terrifies me too.”
“Does it?”
“Enormously.” Nathaniel squeezed her fingers gently. “But I have discovered, recently, that terror is not always a reason to retreat. Sometimes the things that frighten us most are the things most worth pursuing.”
Serena was quiet for a long moment. Then, slowly, she reached up with her free hand and touched his face—a feather-light brush of fingers against his jaw.
“We should go inside,” she said. “Before someone sees us and starts the gossip that will ruin us both.”
“Probably wise.”
Neither of them moved.
“I am not saying yes,” Serena said carefully. “I am not agreeing to anything, not yet. There is too much to consider, too many obstacles to overcome. But I am also not saying no. I am saying... I am saying that I need time. To think. To understand what I feel and what it means.”
“That is all I ask.”
“And in the meantime?”
“In the meantime, we continue as we have been. I shall attempt—attempt—to behave with appropriate decorum. And you shall continue to care for the children and transform my household and make me question everything I thought I knew about myself and my life.”
Serena smiled, and it was like sunrise.
“That,” she said, “I can do.”
She released his hand and stepped back, composing herself with visible effort. When she spoke again, her voice was steadier, more controlled.
“I should return to the children. I have already neglected my duties shamefully this morning.”
“You were ill. No one expects you to—”
“I expect it of myself.” But her tone was gentle, not sharp. “That is who I am, Nathaniel. Whatever else happens between us, that will not change. I am a governess. I take my responsibilities seriously.”
“I know. It is one of the things I lo—” He stopped himself. “One of the things I admire about you.”
Serena held his gaze for a moment longer, something warm and complicated in her eyes. Then she turned and walked toward the house, her steps measured and careful but steadier than they had been the day before.
Nathaniel watched her go, his heart pounding, his thoughts in chaos.
He had told her. He had actually told her the truth about how he felt.
And she had not rejected him.