CHAPTER ELEVEN
The fourth week began, and still he did not leave.
Mr. Grieves’s letters grew more emphatic as there were estate matters requiring attention and social obligations he was neglecting. There were whispers in London about the Duke of Trevane’s extended absence and speculation about what might be keeping him in Cornwall.
Let them speculate, Rhys thought. Let them wonder. For the first time in fifteen years, he was doing something that mattered, and London’s gossip sheets could write whatever they pleased.
The evening study sessions had become the fixed point around which his days revolved.
They began after the children were asleep, when the house had settled into its nighttime quiet and the only sounds were the crackle of the fire and the distant murmur of wind through the garden.
Rhys would be in the study, pretending to read correspondence or examining estate reports, and Mel would appear in the doorway with her particular knock, two quick raps that had become as familiar as his own heartbeat.
Their main topic of conversation was about the children.
Anna’s advancing studies and her increasingly sophisticated organisational systems. Viola’s emerging confidence, the way she had begun to speak in full sentences rather than whispers, the drawings that now included not just her sisters but herself.
Thistle’s latest expeditions and the growing menagerie of creatures she had convinced Mel to help her classify.
“She wants to write to the Royal Society,” Mel reported one evening, her voice carrying that particular blend of exasperation and admiration that Thistle seemed to inspire in everyone.
“She has compiled a list of observations about toad behaviour that she believes will revolutionise natural philosophy.”
“Will it?”
“It is a remarkably detailed account of Brutus’s eating habits and preferred sleeping positions. I doubt the Royal Society will be moved to revolution, but I have not discouraged her from attempting it.”
“You never discourage any of them from attempting things.”
“Discouragement is the enemy of learning. Children should be allowed to fail at ambitious projects; it teaches them more than success at easy ones.”
These conversations stretched longer with each passing evening. The children gave way to books, to philosophy, to the wider world beyond Hartfell’s walls.
He discovered that she read Hume and Locke, that she had opinions about the social contract that would have scandalised most drawing rooms in London.
She discovered that he had actually read the parliamentary reports he was supposed to be attending to, that he had views on tenant reform and agricultural improvement that did not align with the dissolute rake persona the gossip sheets had constructed.
“You read Adam Smith?”
The question came on an evening in the fourth week, when they had somehow wandered from discussing Anna’s mathematical aptitude to the broader question of education and its relationship to economic prosperity.
Mel was seated in her usual chair, a cup of tea cooling beside her, her expression caught between surprise and reassessment.
“I read everything.” Rhys set down his own cup and met her gaze.
“Being a rake leaves a lot of empty hours. When one is not actively gambling or scandalising society, there is quite a bit of time for reading.”
“That may be the saddest thing you’ve ever said.”
“Wait. I have more.”
Something shifted in her face. The careful composure cracked, and what emerged was… the sound of laughter.
It was brief and had escaped her lips clearly against her will, clamped down almost as soon as it began. But he heard it. He heard the genuine amusement in it, the surprise at her own response and the brief liberation from the control she usually maintained.
It was the most beautiful sound he had heard since Celeste sang to the girls.
“You should do that more often,” he said, before he could stop himself.
The laugh disappeared, replaced by her more familiar guarded expression.
“Do what?”
“Laugh. Let yourself find things amusing without immediately suppressing it.”
“I don’t suppress…” She stopped, apparently recognising the absurdity of denying something she had just demonstrated.
“I am simply… measured. In my responses.”
“You are measured in everything. It’s one of your more frustrating qualities.”
“I wasn’t aware that my qualities were the subject of your evaluation.”
“You evaluate everyone. You told me so yourself. ‘I observe. It’s what I do.’ I am simply observing in return.”
She was quiet for a moment, her fingers wrapped around her teacup in that particular way she had when she was thinking carefully about what to say next.
“And what do your observations tell you?”
“That you have spent a very long time protecting yourself from disappointment by refusing to expect anything good.” He leaned forward slightly, holding her gaze.
“That you have built walls around your capacity for joy with the same precision you apply to lesson plans and household schedules. That somewhere along the way, you decided that it was safer to be measured than to be moved.”
“That is quite an assessment from a man who has spent fifteen years hiding behind scandal and charm.”
“It requires a kindred spirit to recognise its own likeness.”
The silence that followed was different from their usual silences. There was something charged in it, something that crackled beneath the surface like lightning gathering in clouds.
“You presume a great deal,” she said finally.
“I presume nothing. I merely observe.” He allowed himself a small smile.
“It’s what I do.”
Her expression changed for a brief moment, he thought he might have pushed too far, might have crossed some invisible line that would send her retreating back behind her walls. But instead, something in her posture softened.
“You are impossible,” she said. “You know that.”
“I have been told. Frequently. By many people. You would be in excellent company.”
“I have no desire to be in company with the many people who find you impossible.”
“And yet here you are, every evening, in my study, having conversations that extend well past any professional necessity.”
The words hung between them, naming something they had both been carefully not naming. These evening sessions had long since stopped being about the children’s progress. They had become something else, something that neither of them had acknowledged but both of them understood.
“The conversations are educational,” Mel said, but her voice lacked its usual conviction.
“They are. I have learned a great deal about philosophy, about economic theory and the proper classification of British insects.” He paused. “…about you.”
“What have you learned about me?”
“That you take your tea with one sugar, never two, because you consider excess sweetness an indulgence. That you read philosophy because it helps you make sense of a world that has often been unkind. That you came to Hartfell expecting nothing and found something you hadn’t expected. ” He held her gaze steadily.
“That you care about those children more than you ever intended to. And that you are terrified of caring about anything that might be taken away.”
She set down her teacup with careful precision. Her hands, he noticed, were not quite steady.
“You have no right to see those things.”
“I have no right to many things. And yet here we are.”
She rose from her chair, and for a moment he thought she was going to leave, was going to retreat to her room and rebuild the walls he had been slowly dismantling over weeks of careful conversation. But instead, she moved to the window, looking out at the darkness beyond.
“When I was sixteen,” she said, her voice quiet, “My father promised he would come home from a meeting with his creditors and take me to see a play. It was to be my birthday gift. I had been looking forward to it for months.”
Rhys said nothing, he simply waited.
“He didn’t come home. Not that night, not ever. He had taken what money we had left and fled to avoid debtor’s prison. My mother and I discovered the truth three days later, when the men came to take our furniture.” She did not turn from the window.
“I learned, that day, not to expect things. Not to want things that might not come. It was safer to prepare for disappointment than to be surprised by it.”
“Mel…”
“You asked what your observations tell you about me. They tell you that I am a woman who has been failed by people she trusted. That I have built walls, as you say, because the alternative is to be devastated again and again by hope that comes to nothing.” She turned from the window to face him.
“You are asking me to lower those walls. You are asking me to hope for something when I have learned, repeatedly, that hope is dangerous.”
“I am asking you nothing.” He rose from his chair, closing some of the distance between them.
“I am simply… present. I am staying, because I choose to stay. I am talking to you every evening because I want to talk to you. What you do with that information is entirely your decision.”
“And what if I decide that it’s safer to maintain my professional distance?”
“Then I will respect that decision. And I will continue to stay, and to talk to you, and to demonstrate through action rather than words that not everyone who makes promises breaks them.”
She was quiet slowly. He could see her processing, weighing and calculating the risks as she calculated everything.
“You have children,” she said finally.
“Your attention should be on them, not on their governess.”
“My attention is large enough to encompass both. Remarkably, I find that caring about one thing does not diminish my capacity to care about another.”
“That is not how attention works.”
“Perhaps not for most people. But I have spent many years not caring about anything important. I do confess to a few private hesitations.”