CHAPTER TWELVE #2
“You haven’t made anything harder. You have simply… named it. The thing we have both been avoiding.” She took a breath, and he saw her composure reassert itself, the walls rebuilding with practiced efficiency.
“It would be better if we did not walk in the garden at night anymore.”
“Would it?”
“It would be wiser.”
“That is not the same thing.”
“No. But wisdom is what we require.”
She turned and walked toward the house, her footsteps steady on the gravel path. He watched her leave and the moonlight catch her grey dress and her brown hair and the particular straightness of her spine, and he did not follow.
He remained in the garden.
The oak tree was solid against his back, the bark rough through his coat. The roses continued their slow process of dormancy around him. The owl called again in the distance, and the house remained dark, and the world continued turning as though nothing significant had happened.
But something had happened. Something was happening still, inside his chest, where a realisation was forming with the force of something he had been refusing to see.
He found himself utterly captivated by Mel Grace, his every thought and endeavour becoming an homage to the affection she had inspired within him.
Though he was quite undone by his affection for her, she possessed a most formidable strength of will, ensuring that his sentiments remained unrequited and, more painfully and unacknowledged.
Not because she did not feel something in return.
He had seen it in her eyes, in the moment before she had stepped back.
He had seen the quickened breath and the parted lips and the effort it had cost her to name the impossibility rather than surrender to the possibility.
She felt something. He was certain of it.
But she was also practical and clear-eyed and completely aware of what the world would do to a governess who forgot her place.
She understood the rules in a way he never had, because the rules had never been enforced against him.
She knew what it meant to have no family, no fortune, no protection beyond her own competence and reputation.
She would not risk everything she had built for a man who had spent so many years demonstrating that he could not be trusted with anything important.
She was perfectly justified. Indeed, one could not find a single fault in the steady resolve of her character. He had failed Celeste, he had failed his children, he had failed everyone who had ever relied on him to be better than he was.
Yet the attachment remained, leaving him utterly at a loss as to how he might dispose of a devotion so vast, yet so unwelcome.
He stood in the garden until the moon had moved across the sky and the chill had seeped through his coat.
He thought about Celeste, who had bestowed her heart upon him and had passed away waiting for him to become the man she deserved.
He thought about his daughters, who cherished him despite his failures and required him to be a father who stayed with them.
He thought about Mel, who saw him clearly and cared for him anyway and would not allow that caring to destroy her.
He thought about the man he had been and the man he was trying to become and the vast distance between them.
And he made a decision.
He would not press her. He would not make declarations or demand acknowledgments or force her to confront something she had clearly chosen to avoid. If she required distance, he would give her distance. If she needed boundaries, he would respect them.
But he would also not pretend. He would not return to the performance of not caring, of treating their connection as merely professional, of hiding behind the rake persona that had protected him for so long.
His affection remained an unspoken vow. Though the words were forbidden and her heart had been barred against their consequence, he resolved to manifest his devotion through the silent language of his presence.
With a steadfast constancy, he would apply himself to the arduous task of shedding his former pretenses and strive to become the man she had so keenly identified: he who had previously lacked the courage to be his truest self.
It was a ray of hope and determination to become a better father, and man for the woman he had given his heart to.
When he finally went inside, the house was silent and dark.
He climbed the stairs to his room and paused outside the door to the nursery, listening to the sound of his daughters breathing in their sleep.
Three small lives that depended on him. Three small hearts that had already forgiven him more than he deserved.
He would be better for them. He would be present and constant and real. He would learn to stop hiding behind his worst self, because they deserved a father who was willing to try.
And maybe, if he became that man, if he proved through years of steady presence that he could be trusted with important things, maybe someday Mel would look at him and see someone worthy of the risk.
It was an endeavour of the most protracted nature, but the Duke of Trevane, London’s most notorious rake, had discovered something that all his gambling had never taught him: some things were worth wagering everything on, even when the prospects were unfavorably set against you.