Chapter 9 #2
Madeline’s breath caught so painfully that for a heartbeat she could not answer at all.
She had promised herself she would not get attached.
Madeline knew that she should always remain cautious because attachment made a person sloppy, and sloppiness could get her found.
Yet Tessa sat across from her with hope in her eyes, and Madeline realized with a quiet dread that her heart had already begun to soften in ways her mind did not approve of.
“I promise I will not leave without telling you,” Madeline said carefully, because it was the most honest promise she could make and keep the child’s faith intact.
Then, to lighten the mood between them a bit, she jokingly added, “Only if you swear that you will not leave the house without letting me know first, too.”
Tessa giggled. “I promise.”
“Very well.” Madeline tapped the little girl lightly on her hand as both a comforting gesture, but also to remind her that they had work to accomplish.
Tessa nodded briskly, indicating she was ready to move forward with their studies.
“Now,” Madeline said as she lifted a slate and held it between her thumb and forefinger, “if we are to become learned ladies, we must also become mischievous ladies.”
Tessa’s eyes brightened again immediately. “Mischievous?”
“Within reason,” Madeline said.
She turned arithmetic into a game, making Tessa add and subtract using colored beads, then turned the slate around and asked her to draw shapes and count their sides. When the girl grew restless, Madeline stood and moved toward the small shelf where she had placed a basket of charcoal and paper.
“I thought we might try something different today,” she said.
Tessa leaned forward. “Drawing?”
“Yes,” Madeline replied. “But not merely drawing something you think is pretty. I want you to draw something you feel.”
Tessa blinked, startled. “Feel?”
Madeline nodded. “You may draw fear. Or joy. Or anger. Or courage. You may draw whatever comes into your mind, as long as it is something real.”
Tessa stared at her as though she were waiting for the trick in the words. “No governess has ever asked me to draw my feelings before.”
“Then I shall be the first,” Madeline said, handing her charcoal.
The first few strokes were hesitant, but then Tessa’s hand began to move faster, surer, and soon the paper was filled with bold lines. Madeline watched, fascinated, as the child drew what looked like a small figure standing alone beneath a towering black shape.
“What is it?” Madeline asked softly.
Tessa’s mouth tightened. “It is a room,” she said. “And it is dark.”
Madeline did not ask why it was dark. She could see enough in the way Tessa’s shoulders had hunched, in the way her fingers gripped the charcoal like a weapon.
“You made the figure very small,” Madeline observed gently.
Tessa shrugged one shoulder. “That is how it feels.”
Madeline’s chest burned. “Do you want to make her bigger?” she asked.
Tessa glanced at the page, then hesitantly added to the figure, darkening the lines, giving it stronger legs, a straighter spine. The change was small, but noticeable.
Madeline smiled, warmth blooming in her chest. “There,” she murmured. “That is better. Fear is much smaller now that the figure is bigger.”
Tessa looked up, and for a moment her eyes shone with something that was not fear. “You think so?”
“I do,” Madeline said, and then she felt a subtle shift in the air that made her turn her head.
Wilhelm stood in the doorway.
He stood partially in shadow, as stiffly formal as always with his hands folded behind him like a suit of armor, yet his eyes remained locked on them, piercing and observant.
Madeline’s breath caught because she was suddenly conscious of herself in a way that made her skin feel too tight.
She felt the warmth in her cheeks and was conscious of the fact that he had already kissed her once, and that a part of her body remembered it with humiliating clarity.
Their eyes met.
For a heartbeat, the room seemed to contract around that single point of contact. There was no one else, no table, no books, no childish drawings, only the Duke of Kirkford watching her as though something about the scene puzzled him.
His gaze flicked briefly to Tessa. He nodded once and then he was gone, so quickly that, had she not already been braced for him, she might have thought the moment a trick of her own mind.
Tessa had not noticed, still bent over her drawing.
Madeline swallowed, forcing her fingers not to tremble as she picked up another sheet of paper.
“Shall we try another?” she asked, voice steady by sheer force of will.
Tessa nodded eagerly. “Yes. I want to draw courage now.”
Madeline smiled, but her pulse was still too quick, and her thoughts were suddenly a tangled mess of fear and relief and something far more complex than either. He had been watching her, but why?
“Courage,” Madeline echoed softly.
Tessa bent over the paper at once, charcoal scratching in quick, decisive lines, her earlier hesitation gone. Madeline watched her for a moment, then forced herself to look away, to breathe, to reassemble herself into the sensible governess she was meant to be in this house.
Yet the room no longer felt quite the same.
The place where Wilhelm had stood seemed charged still, as though his attention had left an imprint on the air, something Madeline could feel even now, faint and unsettling.
She told herself it was foolish, that she had imagined more than there had been, that a man like him did not linger in doorways for reasons that had anything to do with her.
And yet, she glanced toward the open doorway again. Empty.
Tessa hummed softly as she worked, absorbed in her drawing, the scrape of charcoal steady and confident. Madeline’s gaze drifted back to the child, to the way her shoulders were less drawn than they had been earlier, the way her movements carried less fear. That, at least, was real. That mattered.
If Wilhelm had been watching, perhaps it was only that. He was there for his daughter. He wished to monitor the progress Tessa made. Nothing more.
But when the lesson ended and Tessa proudly held up her drawing, when Madeline praised her and tucked the paper carefully aside, the echo of his gaze remained, quiet and insistent, refusing to be dismissed.