Chapter 29
Damon had spent many years keeping everyone, even his children and sister, at bay.
He breathed because his body demanded it. He slept because his body required it. He ate because his body necessitated it. It would have been easier to cease all of it, or at least it would have been simpler before Payton walked into his life—their lives.
There was no doubt he could open himself to her, tell her all his deepest, darkest musings, give her the heart he hadn’t known he still possessed, and she could still walk away.
Leave him devastated and destroyed as Sarah’s death had: alone, terrified, and uncertain how to continue on—or if he wanted to continue.
Perhaps it wasn’t his being alone that worried him most. He’d survived the last four years without anyone, but what of Joy and Abram? They deserved better than an absentee father. Truly, they deserved a mother who was still living. It should have been Damon who perished.
They’d gone after Payton when he was too scared to admit that he couldn’t imagine living without her. How could children so young be so wise?
It was Joy and Abram who’d learned to press on, to grab hold of what they wanted and refuse to let go. That was precisely what they’d done while he reverted to his old ways: solitude and distraction. Anything to not experience the pain and anguish of loss once again.
“You cannot return as my children’s governess,” he paused, drawing on Joy and Abram’s courage. “You are so much more than a governess, both to the children and me.”
Her blue eyes clouded with confusion, and he responded by pulling her ever closer, allowing his fingers to move from her chin to her cheek. He hesitated for a single breath at the feel of her smooth skin, more perfect than the string of pearls adorning her neck.
“I don’t understand.”
Damon struggled for the right words, knowing if he misspoke, she could turn and walk out of Ashford Hall forever.
She could disappear into the night, leaving him reeling in her wake.
Every time he grasped on to a word, a feeling, they were overtaken by another, until his thoughts were scattered and disorganized.
“Payton, I need you.” He shook his head, begging his mind to come together.
“No, this goes beyond need. For many years, I’ve lived in such solitude that I forgot how it felt to need someone—not purely physical need, but emotional.
Someone I can talk to, take my meals with, depend on when I am not feeling myself.
Sarah was that person before, and I never, ever dreamed there would be another woman who so completely captured me.
But this”—he placed his hand against his chest before moving it to rest on her bodice over her beating heart—“whatever this is between us, is so much more than anything I’ve ever experienced.
No matter how hard I hid, how often I attempted to push you away, or the distance we created between us, we have found a way to return—to this moment. ”
“I shouldn’t be here,” she sighed.
“Yet, here we are.” Did she understand as he did? “You were never meant to be a governess. I was never meant to meet you, long to know you, or to kiss you.”
On the word kiss, Payton took the final step until they stood so close their breaths mingled.
“You still want to kiss me?”
“With ever-increasing fervor,” he confessed.
Damon lowered his head until his lips were a mere inch from hers.
He knew if he closed his eyes, he could imagine with vivid detail how her lips would feel against his.
Yet, that was no longer enough for him. Dreaming of her—them—together was no longer enough.
Had never been enough he realized. “But…”
“But you cannot?” She glanced away, her chin lowering in defeat.
“Not until I’ve said everything I need to say,” he replied. “And then, only then, it is you who will need to decide if you want to kiss me.”
She took a step back, and his hand slipped from her shoulder.
His confidence fell with her retreat.
It could not stop him from speaking. He needed, they needed, his honesty before they moved forward, and she fled, no matter the outcome. Acceptance or rejection. This moment was worth a thousand years of sorrow and despair.
Payton was worth Damon risking everything.
He had to know if she cared for him, too.
“When I settled your debt with Catherton, it wasn’t because of any scheme to have you beholden to me.
The duke was determined to find you, and his methods of punishment are rumored to be vile.
I could not allow him to learn your name.
Not because you worked in my household. It had nothing, and yet everything to do with your place here.
“I saw the way you treated my children, interacted with them, and knew you were what’s best for them,” he confessed.
“I couldn’t stand to lose you because of some wager you’d lost. It didn’t matter why you were here that night.
It only mattered that you remained here, at Ashford Hall, with my children.
You have given them more than I was able to in years.
To be honest, I was jealous and captivated by your relationship with Joy and Abram all at the same time. ”
“They want the same connection with you,” she said. “They want—need—your love and attention.”
“Until you came into our lives, I didn’t know if I had any love to give them.
” As he spoke, the pieces—all the fragments of his being—started to come together.
“With you here, giving them the love I couldn’t, it was enough.
It was more than I’d ever hoped for until I realized I longed to be a part of it, too. ”
Payton turned, walking slowing to the lounge by the hearth. As she pivoted back toward him and sat, her cream skirts flared around her legs. It was difficult to ever envision her in the simple, everyday attire of a governess again. She was every inch the lady: poised, graceful, and stunning.
“I envied your connection with my children.” Damon sat in the chair across from her, knowing he should give her space—the opportunity to listen without having him so near.
“After—after—” He couldn’t repeat the words.
Sarah and her memory shouldn’t be a part of his attraction to Payton, yet they were unequivocally intertwined.
There was no future for him—or for them—without his past. “After I lost Sarah, I was resigned to exist as the lost soul I’ve been all these years.
Eating, sleeping, breathing…but not living.
I feared she’d taken the best part of me with her. ”
Payton’s stare moved from her clenched hands back to his face. Damon expected to see hesitation, discomfort, or possibly irritation in her eyes, but what shone back at him was something akin to compassion. Could this woman understand all he was struggling to grasp?
“The best part of you, the two best parts of you are sleeping upstairs,” she whispered. “The best parts of you came in search of me long after they should have been safely in bed.”
“Mayhap they know me better than I can ever hope to know myself.” Damon massaged the back of his neck.
“What I am attempting to explain, though I’m making little progress, is that it wasn’t your relationship with my children I coveted.
It was the way they embraced you. And you, them.
It was as if the three of you were a family.
A family I wasn’t part of…and I’ve greatly missed being part of such a unit. ”
“Family is very important, Damon.” She leaned forward toward him. “When all is gone, family is left. I am uncertain what I would’ve done without my siblings after my mother passed away. I can only imagine the pain of losing your wife.”
“Family?” he muttered, an unmistakable question in his tone.
“After Sarah, I had my children and my sister. Joy and Abram were young, I should have been there to comfort them, but I could think of nothing comforting to offer. My sister thought that moving on, marrying again, and returning to societal life would make me whole again. Was she right?”
He held Payton’s pitying stare. He hadn’t anyone but himself to blame for being reduced to needing someone so much he accepted their pity.
“Partly, I think yes, and in so many ways, no.”
“Have I failed everyone?” Damon asked. He couldn’t move past the fact that he’d failed his children, displeased his sister, and betrayed Sarah’s memory.
The determination to push everyone who depended on him away had been overpowering for so many years, he wasn’t sure how to let it go, to even begin to allow his children back into his life.
They were his children, yet they’d attached themselves so readily to Payton, a stranger, not many weeks before.
Could he blame them? He longed for Payton to remain in his life, as well.
Would he go to the lengths Joy and Abram had to keep her?