CHAPTER ELEVEN #2
A second peal of laughter escaped her; though more tempered than the first, it possessed a genuine warmth which she, for once, did not attempt to stifle.
“You are impossible,” she repeated.
“So you’ve said.”
“And frustrating.”
“Also noted.”
“And somehow, despite all evidence and good sense, I find that I don’t wish you to leave.”
The words landed in the space between them, weighted with everything they implied. She had said it. The thing they had been circling around for weeks, the truth that neither of them had been willing to voice.
She didn’t want him to leave.
“Then I won’t,” he said simply.
She looked at him through the silence, her expression complex and unreadable. Then she nodded once, the gesture carrying more weight than any words could have.
“It’s late,” she said. “The children will be awake early. Anna has scheduled a comprehensive review of the week’s lessons, and Thistle has announced plans to introduce Brutus to a promising new cricket.”
“I should let you rest, then.”
“You should.” But she did not move toward the door. Instead, she stood there, looking at him with something in her eyes that he had not seen before. Something that might have been hope.
“Good night, Rhys.”
She had used his name and not “Your Grace.” Not the title that had cut like glass but his name, offered quietly, deliberately, as a gift.
“Good night, Mel.”
She retreated and he went to the window where she had stood, looking out at the same darkness, and felt something unfamiliar settle in his chest.
He was staying not because of obligation or guilt or the desperate need to make amends.
He was staying because he wanted to because this house had become something like home, and these people had become something like family, and there was a woman with walls around her heart who had just told him she didn’t want him to leave.
It wasn’t affection, not yet. It was too soon for that, too fragile, too weighted with the baggage they both carried.
But it was something worth staying for, something worth building.
The letters from London remained unanswered on his desk. Mr. Grieves could wait. The ton would definitely gossip and the scandal sheets could write whatever they pleased.
Rhys was exactly where he wanted to be.
The schoolroom was quiet at the hour Rhys usually chose, which was late enough for the children to be asleep and early enough that Mel had not yet gone up. He had found, without admitting it to himself for some weeks that this was the hour he looked forward to most in the day.
He knocked. He had begun knocking since the title reveal and he had kept knocking afterwards, even when she had told him it was unnecessary.
“Come in.”
She was at the writing desk by the window with a chart spread before her and her quill moving in the brisk, precise strokes that he had learned to associate with her worst nights. Mel did not fret aloud, she charted.
“Anna’s comparative study of European succession law,” he said, reading over her shoulder.
“Should I be worried?”
“She has requested additional source material. I am drawing up a list for the next order of books.”
“My daughter is six.”
“Your daughter is functionally the age of two and forty. The two facts are not related to her chronological age.”
He laughed, though he had not meant to. It escaped him in the way small things did in this room, where she sat with her sleeves pushed up and ink on her third finger and her hair coming down by degrees from whatever arrangement she had started the morning with.
“May I see,” he said, leaning down.
“The chart, or the list.”
“Both.”
She slid the chart toward him. He bent further to read it, bracing one hand on the desk beside hers, close enough that he could see the small freckle at her wrist that he had never permitted himself to notice before.
His cuff caught the rim of the inkwell.
The whole world did what objects do when one of them has decided to fall.
The inkwell tipped over and the ink spread across the chart, her hand, across her sleeve from wrist to elbow in one elegant, devastating streak across the chart.
A single black droplet settled on the edge of her jaw, as precise as if someone had placed it there on purpose.
“Oh,” she said. “I am so very sorry.”
“The chart is ruined.”
“I will replace the chart.”
“The ink is French. Anna selected it for its superior permanence.”
“Then I have done quite a thorough job.”
She was looking at her sleeve. She lifted her hand slowly, turned it over and studied the black tributary running down the side of her wrist. He looked up at her, half expecting anger and a crisp, cold reprimand that he had been receiving from her in various gradations for weeks.
He braced himself for it.
She began, very quietly, to laugh.
“Mel.”
“I am laughing at you.”
“I had gathered.”
“You are the Duke of Trevane. You negotiate with Parliament. You have been knighted by a monarch. And you have just destroyed a chart, a sleeve, and a week’s worth of French ink by leaning over a desk.”
“I refuse to negotiate with objects smaller than myself. It is a principle.”
“Your principle has left me looking as though I have lost a fight with an octopus.”
He pulled his handkerchief from his pocket. It was linen, initialed, freshly pressed, and it was about to meet the same fate as her sleeve, but he held it out to her anyway.
She took it and dabbed at her wrist. She made, he observed, very little progress.
“You have missed one,” he said.
“Where.”
“Your cheek.”
“My cheek.”
“Yes, your cheek.”
She reached up and missed. Her fingers passed half an inch beneath the offending droplet, which sat stubbornly on the angle of her jaw, winking at him in the candlelight with what he could only describe as encouragement.
“Here,” he said. “If you will permit.”
She went still. He had expected that. He had expected her to tell him, with her particular brand of frost, that she could manage her own cheek, thank you, and he had been prepared to step back and let her. He had said “permit” for exactly that reason. It was a word with a door in it.
She did not close the door.
“Permitted,” she said.
He took the handkerchief back from her and lifted it to the small black mark at her jaw. He touched it, very carefully, with the corner of the linen. The droplet came away on the first pass. He did not move the handkerchief.
“It is gone,” she said.
“I am ensuring thoroughness.”
“Your thoroughness is uncharacteristic.”
“I have been accused of many things, Miss Grace. Thoroughness is rarely among them. I am making an effort.”
“An effort.”
“In the slightest measures imaginable. One cheek at a time.”
She was looking at him and he was looking at her. The handkerchief was still against her jaw, and his knuckles were very close to her skin, and neither of them was breathing in any of the usual rhythms.
“Rhys.”
“Yes.”
“You are no longer removing ink.”
“No.”
“You are largely lingering.”
“I am.”
“Is this what one does in a schoolroom.”
“I have no previous data. I was sent down from Eton before this particular situation arose.”
“I am utterly confounded.”
“Are you.”
“I am quite overcome. I may require smelling salts.”
“I have none. I have only a handkerchief. It is regrettably occupied.”
She laughed again, low, under her breath, and this time she did not try to hide it. He let the handkerchief fall from her cheek. He did not step back.
“The truth is,” he said, because he had been carrying it around for a week now like a stone in his pocket, and the stone had begun to make a hole, “I do not come to the schoolroom to review charts.”
“No.”
“No.”
“Then why do you come.”
“I believe you know the reason why I come.”
“I would like to hear it.”
He had not expected her to say that. He had expected her to spare him the words, to meet him halfway as she always did, to acknowledge what was between them with her sharp, sideways mercy and leave him the dignity of not having to name it.
She was looking at him quite directly, and she was not sparing him anything at all.
“I come,” he said, “because you are the only person in this house who asks me hard questions. And because you are the only person who has ever laughed at one of my mistakes without using it against me. And because you have ink on your jaw and I would like, very much, to keep standing here until Anna wakes and reports us to the authorities.”
“Papa.” The word came from the doorway.
They moved apart. He with considerable haste, she with that quality of speed that Mel possessed which was simultaneously instant and unhurried, so that she was back at her desk before he had quite registered the voice.
Anna stood in the doorway in her nightdress, holding a register that had no business being out of her room at this hour.
“I heard voices,” she said. “I came to investigate. Miss Grace, your sleeve is ruined.”
“Your father has been making an effort,” Mel said.
“His efforts are expensive.”
“They are.”
Anna regarded them both for a long, assessing moment. Rhys felt, with absolute conviction, that his ears had gone red. He did not know whether Anna could see it in the candlelight. He suspected she could. Anna could see most things.
“I will return to bed,” She said, “And record this entry as unresolved.”
“Anna.”
“Goodnight, Papa.”
She went. The door closed.
Mel looked at the ruined chart. He looked at Mel.
“Unresolved,” he said. “So she has decided.”
“I am inclined to agree with her.”
“Yes,” Mel said, after a small, careful pause, and she did not look up. “So am I.”