CHAPTER FIVE #2
He excused himself from Lady Forsythe’s company with practiced grace and made his way to the terrace, where the cool night air provided relief from the press of bodies and the weight of social obligation.
The city stretched out before him, a thousand lit windows and dark shadows, the distant rumble of carriages and the closer murmur of conversations drifting through open doors.
He stood alone in the darkness and thought about choices.
Three years ago, when Celeste had passed and left him with three infant daughters he had no idea how to raise, he had made a choice.
He had chosen to hide them, to protect them, to build a wall of secrecy and deception that would keep the world from discovering his shame.
He had told himself it was for their benefit, that society would destroy them if it learned the truth, that illegitimate children of a duke and an actress would face cruelties he could not allow them to experience.
But the truth, as Miss Grace had so precisely identified, was that he had been protecting himself as much as them.
Protecting himself from the judgment of his peers, from the dismantling of his carefully constructed persona, from the vulnerability of being known as a man who had given is heart unwisely and lost.
You are too afraid to be a full-time father, she had said. You’re too afraid to stop being a rake because then you’d have to be real.
She was right, she was devastatingly, unarguably right.
And for the first time in three years, Rhys found himself considering what it might mean to be real instead.
The terrace doors opened behind him, and he turned to find Benedict approaching with two glasses of brandy.
“You looked like you needed this.” Benedict handed him one of the glasses and joined him at the railing. “Also, you looked like you were about to do something dramatic, and I thought I should intervene before you threw yourself off the balcony.”
“The balcony is six feet above a flower bed. To depart in such a manner would be a dreadful bore for the survivors.”
“All the more reason to prevent it. The scandal would be embarrassing for everyone.” Benedict took a sip of his brandy, his eyes on the city lights below.
“My dear fellow, you appear positively haggard.”
“I always look haggard. I just usually dress it better.”
“That’s a falsehood and we both know it. You’re one of the most annoyingly handsome men in London, and the fact that you manage to look terrible tonight suggests something significant has happened.” Benedict turned to face him fully.
“Something transpired in Cornwall.”
Rhys considered deflecting, offering one of the practiced responses that had served him so well for so long. But Benedict knew him too well for that, and besides, he was tired. Tired of performing, tired of pretending, tired of carrying the weight of secrets that had grown too heavy to bear alone.
“The new governess happened.”
“She quit?”
“No.” Rhys took a long drink of brandy, letting the burn settle in his chest.
“She stayed. And she told me I’m failing my children.”
Benedict absorbed this in silence. He was the only person in London who had met the triplets, having accompanied Rhys on one of his early visits when the grief of Celeste’s death was still fresh and he had needed someone to witness that his daughters were real, that they existed, that they were not simply a dream he had invented to torture himself.
“She said that?” Benedict asked finally.
“She said it with considerably more precision and considerably less drama. Which made it worse.” Rhys stared into his glass as though the brandy might offer answers.
“She’s been there three weeks. Three weeks, and she knows more about my children than I do.
She knows that Anna keeps a calendar counting down to my visits.
She knows that Viola asks every morning if today is the day I’m coming.
She knows that Thistle saves her best rocks to show me and won’t let anyone else see them. ”
“And you didn’t know any of this.”
“I knew they were happy to see me. I didn’t know the shape of their waiting.” The words came out rough, unpolished and stripped of the wit that usually protected him.
“I didn’t know what my absence looked like from inside their experience of it.”
Benedict was quiet carefully. The sounds of the ball drifted through the terrace doors behind them, laughter and music and the rustle of silk, all the trappings of a world that suddenly seemed very far away.
“She’s right, you know,” Benedict said finally.
“I am aware.”
“You’ve been playing at fatherhood, Rhys. Visiting when it suits you, leaving when it becomes inconvenient, telling yourself that three days a month is enough because the alternative would require you to change everything.”
“I know.”
“So what are you going to do?”
Rhys stared at his cards. He had been holding the brandy glass the same way he held cards at the table, assessing its weight, calculating its worth.
He had a winning hand in this game too, if he chose to play it.
He had money, connections and the power that came with being a duke in a society that valued dukes above almost everything else.
He could change things. If he wanted to badly enough. If he was willing to pay the price.
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “But I’m going back to Cornwall in two weeks instead of four.”
Benedict raised an eyebrow. “That’s twice as often.”
“It’s still not enough. But it’s more than I’ve been doing.”
“It’s a start.”
“It’s not enough,” Rhys repeated, the words carrying the weight of everything Miss Grace had made him see.
“No,” Benedict agreed. “But it’s a start.”
They stood in silence for a moment, two men looking out over a city that had never asked either of them to be honest about anything. The ball continued behind them, the social machinery grinding on regardless of private revelations.
“Tell me about her,” Benedict said. “This governess who has managed to do what I’ve been failing to do for three years.”
Rhys considered the question. How did one describe Miss Grace to someone who had never met her?
“She’s plain,” he said finally.
“Grey dress, brown hair, hazel eyes, nothing remarkable to look at.”
“That’s a description of her appearance, not a description of her.”
“She’s honest.” Rhys turned the brandy glass in his hands.
“Not diplomatic or tactful or any of the things women are supposed to be. Just honest. She looks at you and tells you exactly what she sees, without apology or embellishment.”
“And what did she see when she looked at you?”
“A man who hides behind his worst self because he’s afraid his best self will fail.
” The words came out before he could stop them, and he realised with surprise that they were true.
That was what Miss Grace saw. That was what she had reflected back to him with her steady gaze and her devastating accuracy.
“That’s quite an assessment from someone who’s known you for less than a week.”
“She sees clearly. It’s unnerving.”
Benedict was silent for a moment, processing this. When he spoke again, his voice was careful.
“Have you taken a liking to her?”
The question caught Rhys off guard.
“She’s the children’s governess.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“I don’t know what I think of her.” It was the truth, or close enough to it.
“She’s not like anyone I’ve ever met. She doesn’t perform. She doesn’t flatter or flirt or try to charm. Her tongue is governed by unflinching honesty, and she grants no quarter to those who find the truth inconvenient.”
“That must be very disconcerting for someone who has built his entire adult life on performance.”
Rhys laughed, though there was little humour in it.
“I assure you, you possess not the slightest inkling of the truth.”
The terrace doors opened again, and Lady Serena Vane emerged, her elegant gown catching the candlelight from the ballroom behind her. She spotted her husband and the duke and made her way toward them with the graceful efficiency that characterised everything she did.
“There you are.” She slipped her arm through Benedict’s with the ease of long affection. “I’ve been looking everywhere. Lady Thornbury is asking after you, and I ran out of excuses several minutes ago.”
“Tell Lady Thornbury I’ve been claimed by diplomatic emergency.”
“Diplomatic emergency with a brandy glass. Very convincing.” Serena turned her attention to Rhys, her sharp eyes assessing him with the same directness her husband had displayed. “You look troubled, Trevane. Is everything quite well with the children?”
Serena knew about the triplets too, of course.
Benedict kept no secrets from his wife, and Serena had proven herself trustworthy countless times over the years of their friendship.
She had never met the girls, but she had helped Rhys through the worst of his grief after Celeste’s death, and she had been the one to suggest hiring a proper governess rather than relying solely on the housekeeper.
“The children are well,” Rhys said. “There’s a new governess who seems competent.”
Serena’s eyes narrowed slightly, catching something in his tone.
“Merely competent?”
“More than competent.” He heard the admission in his own voice and found he could not take it back.
“She’s remarkable, actually. The girls adore her.”
“And you?” Serena asked, with the directness that made her simultaneously terrifying and invaluable.
“I barely know her.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
Rhys thought about Miss Grace standing in the study doorway, telling him she knew what it was to wait for someone who did not come. He thought about the way she had looked at him, seeing past the performance to something underneath that even he had lost track of.
“She makes me uncomfortable,” he said finally.
“In ways I can’t entirely explain.”
Serena and Benedict exchanged a glance, the kind of marital communication that required no words.
“Interesting,” Serena said. “Perhaps we should meet this remarkable governess sometime.”
“Perhaps.” Rhys drained the last of his brandy and set the glass on the terrace railing.
“For now, I should return to the ball before my absence generates speculation.”
He left them on the terrace and made his way back into the glittering chaos of the ballroom, but he carried their conversation with him like an additional weight.
Benedict’s assessment was perfectly just. Serena’s intuition was equally sound, and Miss Grace, too, perceived the truth with singular clarity.
He had been playing at fatherhood, and his children deserved better.
The next morning, before the household had fully stirred, Rhys sat at his desk in the quiet of his study and composed three letters.
The first was to Anna, written in simple language that a five-year-old could understand, telling her that he missed her already and that he would be returning to Hartfell in two weeks instead of four.
He told her he was proud of her attendance register and asked her to keep careful track of the time until his next visit, not because he wanted her to count the days, but because he valued her organisational skills.
The second was to Viola, shorter and gentler, asking about her drawings and her books and promising to bring her a new sketchbook when he returned.
He told her he had been thinking about Robinson Crusoe and wondering what happened next in the story.
He told her he missed her quiet presence and her watchful eyes.
The third was to Thistle, and it was the hardest to write.
How did one capture Thistle in a letter?
How did one match her energy and her fearlessness with words on a page?
He told her about the stones in his pocket, the ones she had left on his desk, and promised to carry them with him until he saw her again.
He told her Brutus would be proud of her for sharing her treasures, and asked her to find him something even more remarkable for his next visit.
When the letters were finished, he sealed them with wax and addressed them to Miss Grace’s care, knowing she would read them to the girls or help them read for themselves. It was not enough. Three letters could not replace presence, could not fill the gaps that his absence created.
But it was more than he had done before.
It was a start.