CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“The delivery wagon’s arrived, Miss Grace. Shall I have Cook check the supplies?”
Mrs. Kemp stood in the kitchen doorway, her expression carrying the particular blend of efficiency and deference that characterised all her interactions with the governess.
Over the past four months, the two women had developed an understanding: Mrs. Kemp managed the household, Mel managed the children, and both of them pretended not to notice the complications introduced by the master’s extended presence.
Or, now, his absence.
“Yes, please,” Mel said, not looking up from the lesson plans she was reviewing at the kitchen table.
“And if the gossip sheets have arrived, you may leave them here. I’ll look through them later.”
It was a small indulgence, one she did not allow herself to feel guilty about.
The gossip sheets were frivolous, certainly, filled with speculation and scandal and the petty dramas of people whose lives bore no resemblance to her own.
But they were also a window into the world beyond Hartfell’s walls, a reminder that society continued to turn even when one was occupied with Latin conjugations and nature expeditions.
And, if she was honest with herself, they were a way of knowing what he was doing in London. Not that she cared or that it mattered. But knowing seemed better than imagining, and imagining was what she had been doing for three days since his departure.
Mrs. Kemp returned twenty minutes later with a stack of papers and a knowing look that Mel chose to ignore. The housekeeper set the gossip sheets on the table and retreated without comment, leaving Mel alone with her lesson plans and her small indulgence.
She finished the review of mathematics exercises before allowing herself to reach for the papers.
This was discipline, she told herself. This was demonstrating that she could wait, that her curiosity was not urgent and that she was perfectly capable of prioritising her responsibilities over her personal interests.
The first sheet contained nothing of note. A marchioness had worn an unfortunate gown to the opera. A viscount’s son had eloped with a merchant’s daughter. The usual parade of failures and scandals that constituted high society’s endless entertainment.
The second sheet was more of the same. Mel skimmed the columns with practiced efficiency, looking for nothing in particular, certainly not looking for any specific name or title.
The third sheet stopped her cold.
The Duke of Trevane, London’s most notorious rake, has returned to the capital after an extended sojourn in Cornwall that had society wondering if he had finally reformed.
Those hopes were dashed at Lady Dearborn’s ball, where His Grace was seen in the company of the beautiful widow Hartington throughout the evening.
The pair departed together in circumstances that left little doubt as to their intentions.
It seems the leopard has not changed his spots after all.
Mel read the paragraph once and then again, more slowly each reading slower than the last, as though careful attention might reveal some alternative interpretation, some way to understand the words that did not mean what they obviously meant.
Departed together. In circumstances that left little doubt.
She set the paper down on the table with exaggerated care.
Her hands, she noticed distantly, were perfectly steady.
Her breathing was perfectly even. She was perfectly composed, as she had trained herself to be through years of surviving disappointments that would have destroyed someone less disciplined.
She stared at the kitchen wall. It was whitewashed plaster, clean and unremarkable, the same wall she had looked at every morning when she came down for breakfast. There was a small crack near the ceiling that she had noticed on her first day and had been meaning to mention to Mrs. Kemp.
She had never mentioned it. It had never seemed important enough.
Nothing seemed important enough, in this moment, except the task of keeping her breathing steady and her face composed.
She should not be surprised. She had warned him about this.
In the garden, under the moonlight, she had told him exactly what he was: a man who hides behind his worst self because he’s afraid his best self will fail.
She had named his pattern with perfect clarity, and he had stood there and absorbed it, and she had thought, foolishly, that naming might be the beginning of changing.
But here was the proof. The moment he left Cornwall, the moment he was away from the children and from her, he had gone back to exactly what he was, the notorious rake, the scandal. The man who cannot be trusted.
The widow Hartington was extremely beautiful, the gossip sheets said. Beautiful and available and entirely willing to provide the Duke of Trevane with whatever distraction he required.
Mel had met women like Mrs. Hartington. Women who saw opportunity in scandal, who calculated their advances with the precision of chess players, who understood that a notorious duke was a prize worth pursuing regardless of the complications involved.
She did not blame Mrs. Hartington for pursuing what was clearly on offer.
She blamed herself for believing that what had passed between her and Rhys in the garden had meant anything at all.
He had looked at her as though she mattered.
He had spoken her name as though it contained everything he wanted and could not have.
He had stepped closer, close enough that she could smell him, close enough that she could feel the warmth of his body, close enough that she had almost forgotten every practical consideration that made such closeness impossible.
And then he had gone to London and found comfort in the arms of a beautiful widow.
Mel allowed herself five minutes.
She discovered, to the peril of her peace, that her heart was utterly surrendered to him: a truth she could no longer conceal from her own reflections.
The realisation arrived with the particular clarity of things that have been true for some time but only now become visible. She had allowed her affections to become deeply entangled with Rhys, not the duke, not his title, she had surrendered her heart to Rhys himself.
The man who read bedtime stories in different voices. The man who carried Thistle’s rocks in his pocket. The man who had looked at her in the kitchen and seen something worth staying for.
She cherished him deeply, and he had gone to London and confirmed every fear she had ever had about him being capable of truly committing to anything.
The five minutes ended and Mel folded the gossip sheet with precise movements, creasing the paper along its original lines until it was a neat rectangle that could be set aside and never looked at again.
She stood from the table, smoothed her skirts, and checked her reflection in the small mirror by the door.
Her face was composed and her eyes were clear. No one looking at her would know that anything had changed.
She went upstairs and taught Latin.
Anna was conjugating verbs with her usual systematic approach, creating elaborate charts to track her progress through different tenses.
Viola was working on a translation exercise, her pencil moving slowly but steadily across the page.
Thistle was supposed to be practicing her letters but had somehow acquired a cricket that she was observing with scientific intensity.
“Thistle,” Mel said, her voice perfectly even.
“The cricket will still be there after lessons. For now, please return to your work.”
“But Miss Grace, it’s doing something very interesting with its legs. I think it might be a new species.”
“All crickets are interesting. That does not excuse you from completing your letters.”
Thistle sighed dramatically but complied, relocating the cricket to a small box she had apparently prepared for just such an eventuality. Mel watched her with the familiar blend of exasperation and admiration that Thistle always inspired, and felt nothing.
That was not quite true. She felt everything. But she had learned, long ago, how to feel everything while appearing to feel nothing, and that skill was serving her now as it had served her through every crisis of her adult life.
The lesson continued. Mel corrected Anna’s verb charts, praised Viola’s translation and reminded Thistle three more times that the cricket would survive an hour of neglect. She was patient and encouraging and entirely professional, every word and gesture exactly what it should be.
They held their father in the highest of their esteem and they deserved to keep adoring and cherishing him without the complications of adult failure.
That afternoon, Mel took them for a walk along the cliffs. The October wind was sharp, carrying the salt spray from the waves below, and the children ran ahead with the boundless energy of young creatures who had been confined to a schoolroom for too long.
Thistle found an interesting rock formation that she insisted on documenting in her nature journal.
Anna collected several shells that met her exacting standards for symmetry and colouration.
Viola walked beside Mel, her small hand tucked into Mel’s larger one, her quiet presence a comfort that required no words.
“Miss Grace?”
“Yes, Viola?”
“When is Papa coming back?”
The question landed like a blow, but Mel’s expression did not change. She had known this question would come. She had been preparing for it since she read the gossip sheets that morning.
“Soon, I expect. He had business to attend to in London.”
“I miss him.”
“I know you do.”
“Do you miss him?”
Mel looked down at the child beside her, at the dark eyes that saw too much and understood too little, at the face that carried echoes of the father who had abandoned her without meaning to.
“I hope he returns safely,” she said, which was not an answer but which was also not a falsehood.