CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“His Grace has returned.”
Mrs. Kemp delivered this news like a servant trained to keep her opinions to herself about her employer’s comings and goings. She stood in the doorway of the schoolroom with her hands folded before her and her expression revealing nothing.
Mel looked up from the geography lesson she had been conducting.
Anna was labelling a map of Europe with her customary precision.
Viola was drawing the coastline of Italy with more artistic flair than cartographic accuracy and Thistle was supposed to be copying the names of capital cities but had become distracted by a spider that was making its way across the windowsill.
“Thank you, Mrs. Kemp.” Mel’s voice was as neutral as the housekeeper’s expression. “Please inform His Grace that the children will be available after their lessons conclude at four on the hour.”
“Very well, Miss Grace.”
Mrs. Kemp withdrew. Mel returned her attention to the lesson, her hands steady on the table, her face composed into the mask she had been wearing for a week.
He was back. He had gone to London and caused a scandal and now he was back, presumably to continue the pattern of presence and absence that characterised his relationship with his children and with her.
No… this would not happen with her. There was no relationship with her.
There had never been a relationship with her.
There had been evening conversations and a moment in a garden and the particular intimacy that developed between two people who cared for the same children, but none of that constituted a relationship.
A relationship would imply promises and expectations.
She had long learned her lesson about expectations.
The geography lesson continued and Mel corrected Anna’s placement of Vienna, praised Viola’s rendering of the Mediterranean Sea and reminded Thistle that spiders were not part of the curriculum.
She was patient and encouraging and entirely professional, and if some part of her was aware of Rhys’s presence in the house like a physical weight on her consciousness, she did not allow that awareness to affect her teaching.
The lesson ended at four precisely. Mel dismissed the children to find their father, watching as they scrambled from their seats with the particular excitement that his returns always inspired.
Thistle was out the door first, shouting “Papa!” at a volume that would have been excessive in a field and was absolutely inappropriate indoors.
Anna followed at a more dignified pace, though her carefully composed expression could not quite hide her eagerness.
Viola lingered for a moment, looking back at Mel with those quiet, knowing eyes.
“Are you coming, Miss Grace?”
“Later, perhaps. I have matters to attend to here.”
Viola nodded, accepting this explanation, and went to join her sisters. Mel listened to the sounds of reunion drifting up from the entrance hall, Thistle’s excited chatter, Anna’s formal greeting that couldn’t quite disguise her pleasure, Viola’s soft voice saying something too quiet to hear.
And Rhys’s voice, warm and familiar, telling them he had missed them.
Mel gathered the geography materials and began organising them for tomorrow’s lesson. This was what she did, this was who she was, the governess who maintained order while the family reunited. The employee who kept her distance while others embraced.
It was perfectly fine. She had spent a week preparing for this moment, and she was prepared.
The afternoon passed in the particular way afternoons passed when there was nothing to do but wait for time to move forward.
Mel retreated to her room after tidying the schoolroom, claiming a need to review lesson plans.
In truth, she simply needed to be somewhere that did not require her to maintain a composed expression for an audience.
Her room was quiet and familiar, the shell still sitting on the windowsill where she had placed it after Viola gave it to her. She did not look at the shell. Looking at the shell made her think about trust and connection and all the things she had been foolish enough to hope for.
Instead, she sat at her small desk and wrote out vocabulary lists for next week’s French lessons.
Anna was progressing rapidly, her systematic approach to language acquisition proving as effective as her approach to everything else.
Viola was beginning to show interest as well, her artistic sensibility responding to the musicality of French pronunciation.
Even Thistle had consented to learn a few phrases, though she insisted on knowing the French words for beetle, toad, and scientific investigation before anything else.
The vocabulary lists took an hour. Mel moved on to arithmetic exercises, then to reading comprehension questions, then to a detailed plan for introducing basic Latin grammar to all three children rather than just Anna.
The work was familiar and soothing, the kind of task she could perform without engaging the parts of her mind that wanted to think about other things.
At six exactly on the hour she went downstairs for dinner.
The dining room was arranged as it always was when Rhys was in residence: the children at one end of the table, their father at the other, with a place set for Mel between them.
It was an arrangement that blurred the lines of her position, placing her neither with the family nor apart from it, and she had never quite known how to feel about that ambiguity.
Tonight, the ambiguity felt sharper than usual.
Rhys rose when she entered, a gesture of courtesy that he had adopted somewhere in the course of his extended visits.
He looked tired, she noticed he had acquired dark circles under his eyes and a tension in his shoulders that had not been there when he left.
His smile, when he offered it, did not quite reach his eyes.
“Miss Grace. I trust the children behaved in my absence?”
“The children are always a pleasure, Your Grace.”
The title came out automatically, the formal address she had adopted since learning the truth about his identity.
She saw him register it, saw the slight tightening of his expression, but he said nothing.
What was there to say? She was his employee.
He was her employer. “Your Grace” was the appropriate form of address.
Dinner proceeded in the usual fashion. The children recounted their activities during their father’s absence: Anna’s progress in French, Viola’s completed drawings, Thistle’s discovery of what she continued to insist was a fossilised dinosaur tooth.
Rhys listened and responded with appropriate interest, asking questions and offering praise, being the father they wanted him to be.
Mel ate and contributed to the conversation when directly addressed but otherwise remained quiet. She could feel his attention on her, the weight of looks she did not return, but she kept her eyes on her plate and her expression neutral.
After dinner, the children went upstairs with Mrs. Kemp for their evening routine. Mel would normally join them for bedtime stories and final tuck-ins, but tonight she lingered in the dining room, hoping that Rhys would take himself elsewhere.
He did not.
“Miss Grace. Might I have a word?”
She looked up to find him standing near the doorway, his posture uncertain in a way she had never seen from him before. The confident duke, the charming rake, seemed to have been replaced by a man who did not quite know how to begin the conversation he wanted to have.
“Of course, Your Grace. What do you require?”
“I require…” He stopped, seemed to reconsider, and tried again.
“I would like to explain. About London… about what you may have read.”
“I have read nothing that requires explanation.”
“You’ve read the gossip sheets. Mrs. Kemp mentioned that they arrived last week.”
Of course Mrs. Kemp had mentioned it. The housekeeper saw everything, understood more than she let on, and apparently reported what she observed to the master of the house.
“The gossip sheets are entertainment, Your Grace. I place no stock in their contents.”
“Even when their contents concern me?”
“Your activities in London are not my concern.” Mel rose from her chair, smoothing her skirts with deliberate precision.
“If you’ll excuse me, the children will be expecting me for their bedtime routine.”
“Mel…”
“Miss Grace.” The correction came out sharper than she intended. She saw him flinch, saw the impact of the formal address land like a blow, and felt a complicated mix of satisfaction and regret.
“I am the children’s governess, Your Grace, nothing more.”
She left before he could respond, climbing the stairs to the nursery with careful purpose, not fleeing, simply moving forward.
The bedtime routine was soothing in its familiarity.
Stories and songs and the particular rituals that each child required: Anna’s precise arrangement of blankets, Viola’s whispered good nights, Thistle’s extended negotiations about whether Brutus could sleep on her pillow.
By the time all three children were settled and the nursery was quiet, nearly an hour had passed.
Mel made her way back downstairs, intending to retrieve a book from the study before retiring to her room. The house was quiet, the servants retired to their quarters, the only sound the distant crackle of a fire somewhere on the ground floor.
She was passing the drawing room when she heard voices.
Rhys’s voice, and another voice she recognised: Lord Benedict Vane, who must have accompanied Rhys from London. She had not known he was here as she had not seen him at dinner, which meant he must have arrived after the meal and been received privately.
It was proper to proceed without delay, go toward the study, fetch her book and retire to her chambers.
To linger and listen was quite beneath her dignity, and a direct violation of the professional integrity she had so long endeavoured to uphold.