CHAPTER NINE #2
“Of course. Miss Grace says memory is a skill that can be developed through practice. I practice by memorising bug facts.”
“That’s a much specialised form of practice.”
“Specialisation is important. Miss Grace says generalists know a little about everything, but specialists know everything about something. I am going to be a specialist in bugs.”
“A noble ambition.”
They walked on, Thistle occasionally darting into the undergrowth to examine something that had caught her attention, Rhys following like a man learning to find joy in his daughter’s enthusiasms.
This was what Mel had taught him. Not through lectures or instructions, but through inclusion. She had made room for him in the children’s routines, shown him how to participate rather than merely observe, demonstrated that presence required attention rather than just proximity.
And now she would barely look at him.
He braided Anna’s hair that evening, badly. She stood before the mirror in the nursery, examining his handiwork as though reviewing battle formations.
“The left side is uneven,” she observed.
“I’m aware.”
“And the ribbon is twisted.”
“Also aware.”
“Miss Grace does it much better.”
“Miss Grace does everything much better. I am merely a novice attempting to learn.”
Anna considered this for a moment. Then, unexpectedly, she reached back and squeezed his hand.
“You’re improving,” she said. “Slowly. But improvement is improvement regardless of pace.”
He was still thinking about that small gesture of encouragement when the knock came at the study door that evening.
“Enter.”
Mel stepped into the room. She was dressed in the same grey dress she had worn all day, but something about her posture had shifted.
The rigid formality was still there, but beneath it he could sense something else.
Resolution, perhaps. Or the readiness to hear truths that had been too long withheld.
“I have questions,” she said.
“Ask.”
She moved into the room but did not sit. She stood near the fireplace, her hands clasped before her in that familiar position of professional composure.
“Who was their mother?”
The question lodged in his chest, demanding an answer that encompassed far more than a name. It demanded the whole story, the affection, the cowardice and the loss.
Rhys set down the book he had been pretending to read and met her eyes directly.
“Her name was Celeste Laurent. She was a French actress. She came to London in 1815, after Waterloo, seeking work and escape from the chaos of France.” He paused, gathering the memories that still ached after all these years.
“I met her at a party. She was performing excerpts from Molière, and she was magnificent. I couldn’t take my eyes off her.”
“An actress.” Mel’s voice was carefully neutral.
“The ton would not have approved.”
“The ton would have been apoplectic. A duke pursuing an actress was scandal enough. For a Duke to bestow his affections upon such a person was an unpardonable breach of his station.”
“You surrendered your heart to her keeping.”
“Completely.” He heard the roughness in his own voice and did not try to smooth it.
“She was everything I had never known I wanted. Brilliant and fierce and unafraid to tell me when I was being a simpleton, which was frequently. She saw through every performance I had ever constructed and cherished the man she found underneath.”
“And you didn’t wed her.”
It was not a question, but he answered it anyway.
“I didn’t wed her. I told myself I was protecting her. That if I made her a duchess, society would destroy her. That she would be happier remaining my mistress than becoming my wife.” He paused, the old shame pressing against his chest.
“It was a falsehood. I was protecting myself. I was afraid of what my peers would say, what my family would think, what it would cost me in position and reputation.”
“And then she passed away.”
“From a fever. When the triplets were two years old. I was in London when it happened. I had been in London for weeks, attending to ‘duties’ that could have waited, avoiding the reality of my situation because confronting it was too difficult.” His voice cracked slightly, but he pressed on.
“She passed before I could get there. She left this world alone, except for the servants and the children who were too young to understand what was happening.”
The silence that followed was absolute. Mel had gone very still, her expression unreadable.
“I cherished her with all my heart,” Rhys said, the words coming out raw and unpolished.
“I was too afraid of what it would cost me to take her as my wife, and then she passed and …I lost everything.”
“And the rake?” Mel’s voice was quiet now, stripped of its earlier coldness.
“The gambling, the women, the scandals that fill the gossip sheets. That’s your penance?”
“It’s my distraction.” He heard the distinction he was drawing and knew how hollow it sounded.
“I couldn’t face the grief. I couldn’t face the guilt. So I buried both under a performance that required so much energy there was nothing left for feeling.”
“From my vantage, the matter appears in a vastly different aspect.”
He met her eyes, accepting the judgment.
“It may be so.”
She was quiet for several seconds. Then, slowly, she moved to the chair across from his and sat down. The movement was deliberate and significant. She was choosing to stay.
“You are a deeply frustrating man,” she said.
“I’ve been told.”
“You make choices that are clearly wrong and then suffer for them in ways that are almost impressive in their thoroughness.”
“I have a talent for self-destruction.”
“You also have three daughters who adore you despite your absences, a household that runs efficiently in your service, and a capacity for affection that you have systematically buried under fifteen years of scandal and distraction.” She tilted her head slightly, that assessing gaze that had unsettled him from their first meeting.
“You are a better father than you believe you are, and a worse duke than you should be.”
“That’s the most balanced assessment anyone has ever given me.”
“I’m a governess. Balance is my profession.”
A ghost of a smile crossed her face. Not the almost-smile he had been catching glimpses of over the past weeks, but something clearer, more visible. A genuine expression of something that might have been amusement or might have been the beginning of forgiveness.
He saw it clearly this time. He allowed himself to see it.
“You still haven’t told them,” she said. “The children. About their mother, about any of it.”
“I didn’t know how.”
“You knew how tonight. You told me.”
“You’re not five years old.”
“No. But Viola asked you about her mother. Anna has questions she’s too proud to voice. Even Thistle, in her own way, wonders why she has a papa who visits and not parents who stay.” Mel’s voice was gentle now, but firm.
“They deserve to know. Not everything, not all at once, but something. Some piece of who they are and where they come from.”
“Your assessment is entirely just.”
“I usually am.” She rose from the chair, but she did not move toward the door. Instead, she stood looking down at him with an expression he could not quite read.
“The birthday celebration is in three days. I suggest you use that time to think about what you want to tell them, about their mother, about yourself, about the future you’re trying to build.”
“And what about us?”
The question came out before he could stop it, raw and unguarded.
Mel was quiet for a moment. When she spoke, her voice was careful.
“I am as yet undecided as I am still fraught with indignation and I am but beginning to comprehend that all I once held to be true regarding your character was, in fact, a most grievous misconception.” She paused.
“But, you told me the truth tonight. You disclosed things to me things that were painful and shameful and necessary. That means something.”
“Does it mean you’ll stop calling me ‘Your Grace’ as though the title is a weapon?”
The ghost of a smile again, clearer this time.
“That, remains to be seen.”
She left the study taking most of the frost with her .Rhys sat back in his chair and stared at the fire, he felt hope, something he had not felt since the night of Mrs. Kemp’s slip.
He had told her the truth and had allowed her to see the cowardice and the grief and the man he had been failing to become. She had listened, had sat down, and had offered an assessment that was brutal in its honesty and somehow comforting in its balance.
The birthday was in three days and he had a story to prepare, a truth to shape into something his daughters could understand. He had a future to imagine and a past to finally, properly, begin to grieve.
But for tonight, he had the memory of Mel’s almost-smile and the knowledge that the frost was beginning to thaw.
It wasn’t forgiveness as yet, but it was a start.