CHAPTER THIRTEEN #2
Rhys stood in the doorway, dressed in shirtsleeves and breeches, his hair disheveled in a way that suggested he had been lying awake rather than truly sleeping. His expression shifted when he saw her, surprise giving way to something more complicated.
“I heard the scream,” he said quietly.
“Is she all right?”
“A nightmare. Worse than the others. But she’s sleeping now.”
He nodded, not moving from the doorway, not coming closer. “You’re making warm milk.”
“It helps. My mother used to make it for me when I had bad dreams.”
“My mother believed in cold water and stern lectures.” A ghost of a smile crossed his face. “I’ve found your approach considerably more effective.”
She turned back to the stove, checking the milk, giving herself something to look at that was not him.
“You should go back to bed. There’s nothing you can do here.”
“I know.” But he did not leave. He stood there in the doorway, watching her, and she could feel his attention like a physical weight on her shoulders.
The milk was ready. She poured it into a cup and turned to leave, intending to take it back upstairs, intending to escape this moment before it became something she could not control.
But he was still standing in the doorway, and to leave she would have to pass him, and passing him would mean coming close, and coming close was exactly what she had been avoiding for a week.
“Mel.”
Her name in his voice stopped her more effectively than any physical barrier could have.
“Don’t,” she said, not turning to face him.
“Please.”
“I’m not going to do anything. I’m not going to say anything inappropriate.
I just…” He paused, and she heard the raw honesty in his voice when he continued.
“I need you to know that what you do for them matters. What you did tonight, sitting with her, holding her, promising to stay. That matters more than you can possibly understand.”
She did turn then, because she could not help herself. He was looking at her with such intensity, such desperate sincerity, that it made her chest ache.
“It’s my job,” she said.
“It’s not your job to cherish them. It’s not your job to hold them through nightmares and sing lullabies and promise them things that are beyond any governess’s power to guarantee. That’s not a job. That’s a choice.”
“I don’t have a choice.” The words came out more honestly than she intended.
“I cherish them deeply. I couldn’t stop if I tried.”
“I know.” His voice was soft.
“I watch you with them every day, and I know.”
The kitchen felt smaller suddenly, the candlelight creating a circle of warmth that contained only the two of them. The milk was cooling in her hands. The house was silent around them. And Mel felt, with terrible clarity, all the things she could not allow herself to feel.
“I should go,” she said. “Viola might wake again.”
“Of course.”
She moved toward the door, toward him, and he stepped aside to let her pass. But as she reached the threshold, as she was about to escape into the corridor and the safety of distance, she heard a small sound behind her.
She turned.
Viola was standing at the bottom of the stairs, wrapped in her blanket, her eyes still glazed with sleep and lingering fear. She must have woken when Mel left and followed her down, seeking the comfort she had been promised.
“Miss Grace?” Her voice was barely a whisper.
“I had another dream.”
Mel set down the milk and crossed to her, kneeling so they were at eye level.
“It’s all right. I’m here. I’m not going anywhere.”
She gathered Viola into her arms and lifted her, the child’s slight weight settling against her chest with perfect trust. Viola’s arms wrapped around her neck, her face buried against Mel’s shoulder, her body slowly relaxing as the contact provided the reassurance she needed.
When Mel turned back toward the kitchen, Rhys was still standing in the doorway. But his expression had changed. He was looking at her with something that went beyond admiration, beyond gratitude, beyond any emotion she knew how to name.
He was looking at her as though she were the answer to a question he had been asking his whole life.
She moved past him, carrying Viola, and he fell into step beside her without speaking. They climbed the stairs together, their footsteps synchronised in the darkness, and when they reached the nursery door, he stopped.
“She can sleep in my room tonight,” Mel said quietly.
“She’ll feel safer.”
“Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me. It’s my job.”
But they both knew, standing there in the darkened corridor with his daughter between them, that it had stopped being just a job a long time ago.
Rhys reached out and brushed a strand of hair from Viola’s sleeping face. His fingers came close to Mel’s cheek but did not touch her. The restraint was deliberate, obvious, and more affecting than any actual contact could have been.
“Good night,” he said softly.
“Good night.”
She carried Viola into her room and settled the child into her bed, tucking the blankets around her small form and lying down beside her. Viola curled against her immediately, seeking warmth and comfort and the steady presence that promised safety.
Mel lay in the darkness, listening to her charge’s breathing deepen into true sleep, and thought about the expression on Rhys’s face when he looked at her in the kitchen.
She knew what he wanted. She had known since the garden, since long before the garden if she was being honest with herself. He wanted this exact life, this woman, these children and this very kitchen at midnight.
Pray, have mercy, she wanted it too!
She wanted to belong here, not as a governess but as something more.
She wanted to sit across from him at dinner without the careful distance they maintained.
She wanted to walk with him in the garden without the fear of what they might say or do if they let their guard down.
She wanted to hold his children through their nightmares and know that holding them made her theirs in some permanent, irrevocable way.
But wanting was not the same as having. And the distance between a governess and a duchess was measured in more than social position.
It was measured in the judgment of a world that would never accept such a crossing, in the scandal that would follow them both, in the damage that might be done to three small girls who already carried the burden of illegitimacy.
She could not risk their futures for her own happiness. She could not allow him to risk everything he had built for a woman who had nothing to offer but herself.
But lying there in the darkness, with Viola’s small body warm against her side and the memory of Rhys’s expression burning in her mind, Mel found it harder and harder to remember why any of that mattered.
The heart, she was learning, had no patience for practical considerations.
The heart simply wanted what it wanted, and all the logic in the world could not make it stop.