Chapter 15
Damon rested his face in his open palms, listening to the deep rumbling of Joy’s breathing.
Bathed, hair dried, and tucked into bed, she once again appeared the angel she always was in his eyes.
Only in sleep was his daughter at peace, her forehead smooth and without worry lines.
As her father, it was his responsibility to remove all her burdens. A duty he’d failed to do.
And he hadn’t only failed at the park, but every day since her mother had passed.
Their day had been wonderful. It had even given him hope that he’d begun his climb out of the dark place he’d lived in the last several years.
It wasn’t until he saw his daughter’s head slip under the water that he knew—knew—how utterly he’d failed his children. Joy could have been lost forever—and thinking he didn’t love her.
He’d told her…over and over on their ride home.
When she awoke in the morning, he’d tell her again. And then he would go to Abram and repeat the words that hadn’t escaped him for so many years.
A throat cleared behind him, and Damon turned to see Miss Samuels standing in the doorway, her candle casting a soft glow about her.
As soon as they’d gotten home, he demanded she return to her chambers and change while he saw to Joy and Abram with Mrs. Brown’s assistance.
He’d made sure his daughter was well and that the hearth in her room was stoked until the heat reached every corner of her chambers before he allowed himself to find dry clothes himself.
His tight shoulders eased at the sight of the governess.
If he hadn’t been there, he knew she would have saved Joy. He was positive. His children meant as much to her as they did to him. It was obvious.
It had taken only a second, Joy lost in the water of the pond, to bring back the helplessness he’d felt all those years ago with Sarah. He would have risked everything in that pond if only to not repeat his failures from the past.
Safety. Security. The two things he’d strove to provide for his children. And he’d nearly failed them.
“How is she doing?” Miss Samuels whispered, stepping into the darkened room.
Mrs. Brown, with the help of a maid, had pulled all the curtains tight, blocking out the waning late-afternoon light.
“She is asleep. But her breathing is labored, and her chest sounds heavy,” he confided. “The water was dreadfully cold. Mrs. Brown made her a tonic to ward off illness after the doctor saw to her. Pure fright, he proclaimed. Nothing more. She needs rest now. And warmth.”
Damon had been petrified to think of Joy falling prey to the fevers and chills that had overtaken her mother.
“And what of you?” She pulled a chair close on the opposite side of Joy’s bed. “You will likely face sickness, too.”
He grimaced at her concern. “I will be well.”
His shoulders tensed. Just as he’d remained well as Sarah battled for her life.
Damon watched the woman smooth Joy’s blond hair away from her face and adjust the blankets at her throat. How had she gone from battling his children to this affection, this seemingly innate connection?
Perhaps it was the governess who’d fallen under Joy’s and Abram’s charms.
Either way, it didn’t matter. Miss Samuels truly cared for his children, and that brought him a measure of peace he hadn’t felt in a long, long time.
“Abram is reading in his room,” she said. “Cook will bring a meal to him shortly.”
“Thank you for tending to him.” Gratitude filled him. Damon had seen the boy to his room, quickly changed into dry clothes, and then returned to Joy.
“My wife passed four years ago.”
As if he needed to share this detail—or bring up the topic at all with everything that had transpired at the park. It was difficult to live under his roof without being reminded of Sarah’s absence. It was likely the same for everyone living at Ashford Hall.
“It is the reason I’ve hired governess after governess,” he said, turning to stare at Joy, a new tenderness blossoming within him. “I am not the right man to care for my children, to teach them, to be…anything.”
“I think you are the only man to do all those things. You are their father.”
His heart pulled in his chest, and he fought against the tears that blurred his vision.
“After Sarah died, I retreated. My grief was all-consuming. It still consumes me. Every day. Every hour. And my guilt over it all is far more severe. I let Sarah down, and I let my children down.” He sighed.
“However, today, for just a few minutes, I forgot my hurt, my pain, my loss. We visited the menagerie, we stopped on Piccadilly, and we rested at the park. For once, my children and I were away from Ashford Hall and the constant reminders of everything we’ve suffered.
“I think they forgot, as well. Yet with a blink of an eye, we were all reminded of how fragile life can be. I’ve spent so many years wallowing in my own shattered dreams, burdened with my own regrets and guilt, that I’ve neglected to realize my children still have a future ahead of them—even if mine was ripped from me.
It took you, a most unlikely woman, to come into my household and begin to mend the damage Joy and Abram have lived with since Sarah’s death. ”
Damon lifted his gaze back to Miss Samuels when she remained silent. Unease and trepidation flooded him. He shouldn’t be telling her any of this. If she hadn’t been frightened off by the disaster at the pond, his candid confession would surely send her running for new employment.
“How did you manage to break through their anger and change their troublesome ways?”
The hint of a smile touched her mouth, and he noticed the plumpness of her bottom lip. “I have my own siblings, and we are a very quarrelsome bunch. Fortunately for you, they want to love you. They want to forgive and forget the past—although they are too young to express it.”
He zeroed in on her initial statement regarding her family. It was the first she’d shared about herself with him. “You’ve mentioned your siblings before. Do they often give you trouble?”
His question was meant to distract them both from the colossal mistakes he’d made with Joy and Abram.
“No,” she said, her eyes darting to her hand that rested on the side of the bed.
“I have always given them trouble. You see, I was an unruly child my whole life. Heeding another’s rules has never been a strong suit of mine, and that has never sat well with my sisters and brother.
I was the youngest, I was the baby, and they knew what was best for me—or so they told me over and over. ”
Joy’s head lolled to the side, and she sighed in her sleep. Damon hoped she found herself in a beautiful dreamland and not amidst the terrors that had awoken her the other night.
Damon watched Miss Samuels look upon Joy with a degree of tenderness he hadn’t seen before.
“You will make a wonderful mother one day,” he muttered.
She shook her head. “No, I do not think that is in my future, my lord.”
“Why ever not?” He should have ended the conversation long before this point.
What she had planned for her future was none of his concern, only that she remained in his employ for the foreseeable future, at least until Joy and Abram reached an age suitable for going away to school.
However, he did know that becoming a mother had undeniably changed everything about Sarah, similar to how it had altered him as a man.
“My apologies. You needn’t answer that.”
Damon shoved to his feet, attempting to push from his thoughts the way the governess had changed in the short time she’d been in his life as a part of Joy’s and Abram’s lives.
“My siblings and I—five of us in all—have three different fathers,” she confessed. “My mother was never one to settle or remain in a situation if it no longer benefited her. In turn, none of us had any relationship with our sires. I never met mine before I was told he passed away.”
“Again, I am sorry—”
She waved away his words, also pushing to her feet.
She glanced over her shoulder at the door.
“Do not fret about my upbringing. My mother taught me strength and perseverance. I am, and always have been, steadfast in my resolve: that a woman can live a life of her own choosing…on her own terms. She can run a business, raise children, and still find contentment and happiness.”
She’d shared more than she planned, he could see it written on her face: remorse, regret, and no small amount of annoyance.
But if that final emotion were aimed at herself or him, Damon did not know.
Her openness had him thinking of all the things he hadn’t shared with her during her stay at Ashford Hall.
He moved around Joy’s bed to where the governess stood.
“As I would tell my daughter,” he whispered with a small grin, “yes, a woman can do anything she sets her mind to. And that is no different for you, Payton.” He started inside at how natural it felt to use her given name.
“However, having children and a family is not an inferior path in life. Some days, I do not know what I would do without Joy and Abram…they are all I have.”
“What happened with your wife? If you don’t mind me asking,” she whispered, glancing at Joy, sound asleep in her bed. “I—I know she passed when the children were very young, but nothing beyond that.”
No one spoke of Sarah; not him, not the servants, and rarely Joy and Abram.
Damon squeezed his eyes shut, begging the tears to remain at bay and not fall as they commonly did when he thought back to that night.
“I convinced Sarah that an early evening sleigh ride to a neighboring town would be a grand adventure. It was nearly the new year, and the children were safely nestled in their beds, their nurse close by. And so, Sarah and I started out, unwittily oblivious to the storm pushing toward Falconcrest, my country seat. Our horse took a misstep, and our sleigh was caught in a rut with the snowfall increasing.”