Chapter 29
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The following morning, a heavy rapping at the door of the Blue Bell Inn announced the unexpected arrival of Mrs. Higgins.
The housekeeper looked out of place in the dirty hallway, her ironed uniform dress rustling as she stepped into Imogen’s cramped quarters.
She had expected a courier, or the post at most. To see Mrs. Higgins standing in front of her was a strike to the heart.
Mrs. Higgins didn’t offer a greeting or so much as a small smile. Instead, she reached into her reticule and pulled out a thick envelope sealed with the Duke’s heavy signet and handed it to Imogen.
“His Grace’s reference,” she said shortly. “Per the request in your resignation letter, Miss Lewis. He insisted I deliver it personally to see if there is anything else you require.”
Imogen took it, her fingers brushing the wax. It somehow still felt warm beneath her touch, and the thought of Ambrose seared her skin.
“How are they, Mrs. Higgins? The boys? Are they… are they eating? Are they minding themselves?”
The housekeeper’s face softened, but only slightly. “I will not mince words. They are most miserable, Miss Lewis. Lord Arthur barely leaves the schoolroom floor, and Lord Philip has taken to throwing his books at the walls.”
“It cannot be as bad as that, truly,” Imogen whispered.
“Quite a turn compared to their normal countenances, since you began working for His Grace.”
“I am sorry to hear that.”
“They ask for you with every breath. They don’t understand why the person who promised to stay simply vanished in the night, and especially without a proper goodbye.”
Imogen felt as though a cold blade had been driven into her chest. She knew as much, but to hear the words come from Mrs. Higgins, a woman she had grown to respect and care for, was more than she could take.
“I had to do it, Mrs. Higgins,” she whispered, a stray tear rolling down her cheek without her consent. “It is for their future. If I stayed, the scandal would follow them for the rest of their lives. Tell them… tell them I am sorry.”
“I’ll tell them no such thing, Miss Lewis…
and I am sorry for being so frank, but someone must be,” Mrs. Higgins replied, her voice stern and sharp.
“Apologies don’t fill an empty house. It was hollow before, and you filled it…
and now… I am going beyond my station saying this, but… ” she trailed off.
“What is it?”
“You have left a hole in that man’s heart, because what is a Duke other than a man? And a wider one in those children’s lives. Know loss only to overcome it, and then to be blindsided once more?”
“Oh, Mrs. Higgins,” Imogen said, tears prickling behind her eyes once more. “I never meant to hurt anyone!”
“It is a tragedy, Miss Lewis. Pure and simple. I can see you hurt as well, but it does not change things.”
“It is for the best,” Imogen insisted, though her voice wavered as the tears began to swell behind her emerald eyes. “One day, they will see that. When they are older, they will understand—”
“One day is a long time for a child to wait, let alone for adulthood,” the housekeeper said, turning to leave. “Good day to you, and good luck. I truly wish you the best.”
The door clicked shut, leaving Imogen alone in the stifling silence of the small room. She stared at the Duke’s seal, a mocking reminder of the world she had abandoned. Her throat grew dry at Mrs. Higgins’ words, which only continued to echo against the peeling wallpaper.
It is a tragedy… tell me something I do not know, Mrs. Higgins! Oh, how my heart aches!
The silence in the Blue Bell Inn didn’t just hang in the air.
It pressed down on her like a burial shroud.
Imogen lay back, letting the lumpy mattress swallow her, staring aimlessly at a water stain on the ceiling that bloomed like a dark, yellowing bruise.
She had no escape plan, no map for a life that didn’t involve the schoolroom at Welton.
All she had was the envelope, which she dared not open to read.
She clutched the Duke’s reference to her chest, her fingers digging into the thick, expensive parchment until it crinkled. The sharp corners of the paper bit into her palms, but she welcomed the sting. It was the only thing that distracted her.
It is for their own good, she told herself. She had lost so much in her life, and yet losing them was something different altogether.
She repeated that same phrase interminably as the words became a frantic prayer.
Yet, their own good was a concept she had been fed since she was a child, usually as a justification for her own erasure.
She closed her eyes, and suddenly she wasn’t in a drafty inn, but back in the cold, marble halls of Marden Manor.
She could almost smell the cloying scent of her stepmother’s perfume and hear the low, rhythmic thud of her father’s cane in the hallway as it smacked the floor.
Lord Marden, the Viscount who had sired her in a moment of “reckless indiscretion” with a lowly dancer, had been a man of rigid shadows and endless contradictions.
He had provided a roof over her head, yes, but he had denied her a voice, any real existence in the world beyond those halls.
Yet, there were times of kindness, as her mind flitted back to moments of poetry reading in the library and small tokens of affection, like her mother’s locket.
“You are a ward of this household, Imogen,” he had told her when she was seven, the memory interrupting her train of thought. “To the world, you are a charity. To me, you represent a debt I must pay. You will be educated and cared for, that is all. Never forget the distinction or what you are.”
For fifteen years, she had moved through the halls like a quiet shadow, the word Father a song she was never permitted to sing.
From the high gallery, she would watch him, a silent observer of a life she was meant to share, as he poured his more public warmth into Julia and the bright faces of the ton.
She lived in the soft sighs of the library, kept like a cherished but hidden tome.
She knew that there was affection in the way he held her at times when they were alone, reading sweet poetry with her.
Yet, it was an affection that lived only in secret.
And when he passed, the fragile safety of being his “ward” dissolved too quickly into absolute midnight black.
She pulled her shawl tighter, trying to ward off the memory.
Oh, the circumstances that have brought me to this very moment!
The image of Julia, the widowed Viscountess, flashed in her mind then. The woman’s face hardened into pure triumph the moment the Viscount was in the ground.
“The money your father left is for your ‘upbringing,’ Imogen,” Julia had sneered, tossing a maid’s apron at her feet.
“And since you are now of age to work, you shall earn your keep. No more freeloading for you, girl. You will be useful, or you will be in the gutter. Choose wisely. As you know, the world is not kind to women like you, or your mother…”
Imogen had chosen survival. She had learned to pin hair until her fingers bled, to move through rooms without casting so much as a shadow, and to accept that she was a creature of service, not of sentiment.
She would never know love or freedom. She had been conditioned to believe that her presence was a stain that had to be managed, much like the blot on the ceiling she stared at.
For as long as she could remember, she was a scandal that could only be mitigated by her own invisibility.
Useful, quiet, grateful, and never loved.
That was the mantra she had lived by until she reached the Duke’s household. Until Ambrose had looked at her not as a debt or a servant, but as a woman. Until Arthur and Philip had crawled into her lap, seeking the very warmth she had been denied her entire life.
“I am protecting them from becoming me,” she whispered to the empty room. “They will never know the pain that scandal can cause, not of my volition.”
If she stayed, the ton would eventually sniff out the truth of her birth.
They would whisper that the Duke’s governess was nothing more than the bastard brat of a dead Viscount and a stage girl.
The scandal would cling to the boys like soot, only adding to all they had suffered.
It would tarnish their names, their prospects, their very bloodline.
She thought of Philip throwing his books and Arthur huddled on the floor in the school room.
She knew in her heart that she was teaching them the hardest lesson she had ever learned, even though she was outside of those hallowed halls.
They would learn that the people who are supposed to stay are often the first to leave.
Imogen rolled onto her side, the Duke’s seal finally cracking under the pressure of her grip.
She had spent a lifetime being useful to others while remaining nothing to herself.
Now, for the first time, she had tried to be everything to a family, and the cost was proving more than her soul could afford.
“I am so sorry, boys,” she sobbed into the lumpy pillow, the ghost of a dancer’s daughter weeping for a life she would never know. “I am so, so sorry.”
“I won’t speak to her, Uncle!” Philip’s voice drifted down the stairs, shrill and shockingly defiant once more for the reserved boy Ambrose knew.
Ambrose sat in the drawing room, massaging his temples.
The air in the house felt heavy. The morning had begun with Miss Flaherty, a young Irish woman with a sharp tongue and a sharper wit, arriving for an interview as the next governess.
Ambrose had hope upon first meeting, but she hadn’t lasted twenty minutes before she fled the nursery.
“This place is haunted by an old duchess who walks the halls in a blue dress, the same color as your dress…” Arthur had teased, making ghostly sounds as he jumped around her.
“She sent the last governess away after she rained frogs on her!” Philip cried as they both threw small toads at the woman.
Miss Flaherty had turned pale and run out the front door before tea was even served.
Next came Mrs. Lowell, a formidable widow who boasted of “taming the wildest spirits” to Ambrose upon her entry. He wished her luck, then she emerged from the upstairs hallway ten minutes later, her eyes wide as saucers.
“Your Grace,” she had whispered, “the elder twin was sharpening a letter opener while staring at my neck. He told me he was practicing for the next French War.”
Ambrose merely waved her away, and she left with a huff.
Miss Ross had been the most optimistic. She lasted a full hour, mostly because she stayed in the drawing room, stalling with small talk, and refused to go upstairs.
However, when she finally ventured up to introduce herself, she returned soaked from head to toe.
The boys had rigged a bucket of icy wash water above the nursery door.
It was a classic, but effective, maneuver that had worked on their second governess.
Now, a middle-aged woman named Mrs. Forrest, in a pale green dress, scurried past Ambrose, looking as terrified as they all had. She was the fourth and final candidate of the day.
“Your Grace,” the woman squeaked as she gave a hasty curtsy. “Please pardon the intrusion, but the boys… they told me that if I touched their books, they would set my bonnet on fire. The small one was already striking a match!”
“Right.” Ambrose didn’t even look up. “Leave your details with Mrs. Higgins on your way out. Next,” he called out absently, though he knew there was no one left.
I am hopeless, he thought to himself as he rose to his feet to pour himself a much-deserved snifter of brandy from the bar cart. He took a long sip and walked over to the fireplace, leaning an arm onto the mantle as he stared down at the swirling fire.
What will I do without a governess? Better yet, what will I do without… her?
Silence finally descended on the house as a most painful day finally turned to night, but it was not a peaceful one.
Ambrose spent the hours after the interviews just sitting in the drawing room, staring at the spot on the settee where Imogen used to sit with her embroidery when she would accompany the boys there for a short diversion after supper.
The fabric there seemed less worn than the rest, a preserved island of her presence that mocked his efforts.
I am wallowing.
And he knew it. He felt restless as he stormed out of the drawing room and made his way upstairs.
He threw open the mahogany door and began pacing the confines of his study like a caged beast. The boys were lashing out because they didn’t know how to navigate the dark world without her light, and he was failing them because he was lost in the same darkness.
Every time he closed his eyes, he felt the ghost of her touch, her taste. It was a phantom warmth that mocked his current isolation. It felt all the worse that she had left after they had been so close, how his body ached to feel her.
He looked at the empty doorway. The boys needed a governess, certainly, but as he listened to the defiant thud of boots upstairs, he realized he needed someone who wasn’t afraid of the fire.
For he knew that his nephews were currently intent on burning the world down, just to see if the smoke would bring her back.