Chapter 20
Chapter Twenty
The following Tuesday, Ambrose reached for the handle of the morning room door. From inside, he heard the soft, melodic lilt of Imogen’s voice as she helped Arthur with his French declensions.
“That is good work, Arthur,” she said softly. “But try to put the accent on the E this time.”
“Oui, Mademoiselle Lewis,” he repeated as he went through his declensions once more.
Ambrose froze. His hand hovered over the brass, his knuckles white. He stood there for a long minute, his eyes closed, simply breathing in the muffled sound of her presence.
I cannot hide away like a specter in my own house forever.
Just as the latch began to click under his unintentional pressure, he pivoted on his heel like a whirling dervish.
Or can I?
He retreated down the hallway with the desperate, hurried stride of a man fleeing a burning building. His boots struck the marble with a sharp, hollow rhythm.
Just last evening, he shared a drink with Morgan at White’s. Kirkhammer had been uncharacteristically talkative while nursing his brandy, his eyes meeting Ambrose’s with a look that bordered on pity.
“Enough with the small talk about Lord Featherton’s latest escapade with the actress,” Ambrose barked, effectively ending Morgan’s tall tale.
“Ouch, tough crowd.”
“Something is on your mind, and you are avoiding it,” Ambrose said with a raised brow as he finished his brandy and motioned for another. “Out with it, Morgan.”
“I saw Miss Lewis while I was out earlier…” Morgan remarked, his voice smooth and overly casual.
“Did you? And? She is permitted to leave the premises, you know.”
“She looked… worn. Like a lamp burned nearly to the wick. I thought you might wish to know. She was… quite upset.”
“I am… I am sorry to hear that.”
“You would do well to check in on her, especially after how diligently she cared for Lord Philip. And there was also the matter of her running into that viper—”
“Do not tell me how to run my household.”
And that was that. Morgan spoke no more on the subject, and they finished their brandies in perfect silence.
Inside the breakfast room, Imogen had heard the distinctive weight of his step. It was the haunting, deliberate cadence that she could now identify through three layers of floorboards and a heavy oak door.
She went silent, the air in her lungs turning to lead, her finger tracing the same line of French text three times without absorbing a single syllable.
When the sound of his retreat finally faded toward the front hall, she let out a breath she had not realized she was holding, her shoulders sagging with a mixture of relief and a devastating, hollow disappointment.
“Miss Lewis? Is the word le chateau or la chateau?” Philip asked, tugging at her sleeve with the persistence of a child sensing a lapse in authority. “I am working on this here, but the ending seems so feminine.”
“I am sorry, I was lost in my thoughts for a moment. It is masculine, Philip,” she whispered, her heart hammering a frantic beat against her ribs.
She looked at the small boy, like his uncle in the set of his jaw, and felt a wave of dizzying vertigo.
“Like everything else in this house, it is bloody unyielding,” she whispered to herself, the bitterness of the realization tasting like copper on her tongue.
The rest of the day passed without consequence, a grueling exercise in performing the role of the composed, invisible governess.
Wednesday followed in much the same way. It was a blur of lessons, walks, and the constant, neck-prickling awareness of Ambrose’s proximity. But by Thursday, the library became the site of a different torture.
Imogen entered the room to return a volume of poetry, choosing the time she knew he was usually at his club, seeking the safety of his absence, much as a small part of her yearned for a chance encounter.
She found the room empty of his person, but the scent of his sharp, clean shaving soap hung heavily in the air, encircling her like a wreath.
The room felt charged, as if he had only just stepped through a secret door.
Her eyes were drawn, as if by a magnet, to the green leather armchair by the hearth.
It still bore the faint, circular indentation on the velvet armrest where his signet ring had pressed into the fabric while he brooded.
He is everywhere in this house…
She felt him in the draft that rattled the window, heard him in the creak of the floorboards, and saw him in every shadow that flickered against the wall.
The library, once her sanctuary, had become a temple to his ghost. Before she realized what she was doing, her legs gave way, and she sat on the floor beside the chair, her skirts billowing around her like a dark cloud.
Her fingers trembled as she reached out to trace the indentation on the armrest, her touch feather light, as if she were tracing a lifeline. She hated herself for the desperation of it, for the way she was scavenging for crumbs of a man who was right upstairs.
She rested her cheek against the cool leather, then, closing her eyes and breathing in the essence of him that lingered in the fibers.
The coolness was a sharp, grounding contrast to the feverish heat rising in her skin.
She imagined, just for a heartbeat, that his hand was resting on her hair instead of the mahogany frame.
She stayed there, suspended in a state of agonizing, beautiful grief, until the grandfather clock chimed the hour.
The sound was a cold splash of reality, a reminder that she was the ghost in this scenario, not him. She was a phantom in a house that belonged to a man she could never truly touch, and perhaps no one could.
He was a Duke, a sovereign of his own world, and she was merely a tenant of his mercy.
What a shame, she thought, that such a vast capacity for tenderness was locked behind the bars of a title.
And with that intimate moment of surrender, her yearning became a living thing, a restless, prowling creature pacing the narrow hallways between their rooms, waiting for the sun to set so it could hunt for him again in the dark.
That evening, they met by accident on the landing.
A candle in Imogen’s hand flickered, casting long, dancing shadows against the wood paneling. Ambrose was dressed for a ball he clearly did not want to attend, evidenced by his grunting. His cravat was tied with clinical perfection that masked his inner turmoil.
“Your Grace,” she murmured, flattening herself against the wall to let him pass. “Good evening to you.”
Ambrose stopped short. The space between them was barely a foot, yet it felt like a canyon. He looked at her, really looked at her. For a second, the Duke of Welton vanished, and he was only Ambrose.
He reached out, his gloved hand twitching as if he meant to tuck a stray lock of hair behind her ear before he pressed it against the wall, leaning over her.
This is dangerous…
“Imogen,” he breathed, the name a jagged prayer.
It has been too long; I cannot help myself.
She looked up, her lips parting, her pulse visible in the hollow of her throat. The air between them hummed, thick with the memory of the hallway and the taste of salt and desperation.
Then, the front door opened downstairs. The sound of his carriage arriving acted like a bomb, the moment exploding into embers and dust. Ambrose’s hand dropped to his side. His face shuttered, the iron-clad reserve of his station slamming back into place.
It must be this way.
“Good evening to you, Miss Lewis,” he said, his voice a flat, distant baritone. “See that you have a piece of chocolate gateau from the kitchen.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Um, yes,” he said awkwardly, wishing he had thought of something cleverer to say.
He brushed past her, desperate to exorcise the memory of her lips. And so, Ambrose threw himself into the social season vigorously.
The ballroom of Lady Elderwell’s mansion was a dizzying swirl of silk, candlelight, and the scent of hundreds of hothouse lilies.
He stood near a fluted column, his hand tight around a glass of champagne he had no intention of drinking.
It was too sweet for his taste, and he craved something dark and strong.
His gaze drifted toward the exit for the tenth time in as many minutes as he sighed and downed the glass in a single sip.
So much for that.
“Your Grace,” a voice purred from behind him, sharp and bright as a gemstone, as it stole his attention.
Lady Honoria sashayed into his line of sight, her fan clicking open with the precision of a duelist’s blade. She was a diamond of the first water, her golden hair intricately coiled and pinned with pearls.
“Good evening, Lady Honoria,” he sighed as he grabbed another flute from a passing footman.
“I heard you have become quite the family man lately,” she said, her voice as soft as the coo of a dove.
“Oh, have you?” He said drily.
“How do you find the quiet life? Or have the little terrors finally driven you to seek asylum in Mayfair?”
Ambrose looked at her, but his mind’s eye was miles away.
He didn’t see Lady Honoria’s perfect, powdered skin.
He closed his eyes and saw Imogen’s face as it had looked yesterday in the schoolroom, as he had passed, smudged with ink, a stray dark curl falling over her eye as she patiently explained a sum to Philip.
He breathed in deep and could still smell her lingering lavender scent as he had used every reserve of self-control not to press against her in the hallway before he stormed out.
“Caring for my young wards is demanding, and is… educational,” he said, his voice flat as he settled on the words.
Ever since Imogen entered his household, he was tongue-tied more often than not. He used to excel at having such conversations, but now the desire to engage in small talk with ladies of the ton had lost its appeal.