CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“You’re leaving.”
Viola’s voice was barely above a whisper, but in the silence of the early morning entrance hall, it carried with the force of an accusation.
She stood at the bottom of the stairs in her nightgown, her feet bare against the cold stone floor and her dark eyes fixed on the trunk that Mel had just set down by the front door.
Mel froze with her hand still on the trunk’s handle.
She had planned this carefully as she had risen before dawn, dressed in the dark and carried her belongings down the servants’ staircase to avoid detection.
She had composed the letter she would leave for the children, the careful lies about a family emergency that would explain her sudden departure without breaking their hearts.
She had not planned for Viola.
“I have to go,” she said, her voice steady despite the fracturing sensation in her chest. “There’s been an emergency and my family needs me.”
“You don’t have any family.” Viola’s whisper was soft but certain.
“You told me. Your mother and father are both gone. There’s no one left.”
Of course Viola remembered. Viola remembered everything, filed away every conversation and confidence with the quiet attention that characterised all her interactions with the world.
Mel had told her, one afternoon when they were cataloging leaves for Thistle’s nature collection, about the circumstances of her life and having no one in her life.
She had not thought, at the time, that the information would be used against her.
“Sometimes family means different things,” Mel said, knowing the words were weak, knowing Viola would see through them.
“There are people who need me elsewhere.”
“We need you here.”
The words landed with devastating simplicity. Viola did not cry, did not raise her voice and did not employ any of the dramatic tactics that Thistle would have used in the same situation. She simply stated the truth, as she always did, and waited for Mel to respond.
Mel could not respond as her throat had closed around the words she might have said, the explanations and justifications and careful lies. She could only stand there, her hand on the trunk, her heart breaking in ways she had not allowed herself to imagine.
“Viola.” She made herself speak, made herself maintain the composure that had always been her armor.
“Sometimes adults have to make difficult decisions. Sometimes we have to leave places we cherish and the people we care about. It doesn’t mean we want to leave… It means circumstances require it.”
“What circumstances?”
“I can’t explain them to you. You’re too young to understand.”
“I understand more than you think.” Viola’s voice was still quiet, still controlled, but there was something new in it now. A determination that Mel had not heard before.
“I understand that Papa came back from London looking sad. I understand that you’ve been avoiding him since he returned. I understand that something happened that made you want to leave, and I don’t think it’s a family emergency at all.”
The assessment was remarkably accurate for a six-year-old. Viola had inherited her father’s eyes and her mother’s name, but she had developed, somehow, a perceptiveness that was entirely her own.
“You should go back to bed,” Mel said. “It’s early. You need your rest.”
“I’m not going anywhere until you tell me why you’re really leaving.”
“Viola…”
“Miss Grace is leaving?”
The new voice came from the top of the stairs.
Anna stood there in her own nightgown, her hair in the neat braid she insisted on wearing to bed, her expression caught between confusion and alarm.
Behind her, rubbing sleep from her eyes, was Thistle, with Brutus the toad clutched against her chest like a talisman.
Mel’s heart, which she had thought could not break further, shattered into additional pieces.
“Girls,” she said, her voice carefully controlled.
“This is not, you should all be in bed. Mrs. Kemp will be wondering where you have gone.”
“Mrs. Kemp is asleep,” Anna said, descending the stairs like a child calculating her every move.
“We heard footsteps in the corridor. Thistle thought it might be a ghost. I thought it was more likely to be someone attempting to leave the house undetected.”
“You were correct.”
“I usually am.” Anna reached the bottom of the stairs and came to stand beside her sister, forming a united front.
“You’re leaving. Without saying goodbye. Without telling us why.”
“I was going to leave a letter.”
“A letter is not the same as a goodbye.” Anna’s voice carried the particular precision that characterised all her speech, but there was something underneath it now. Something that sounded almost like anger.
“You taught us that communication requires honesty and presence. You said that written words are no substitute for spoken ones when matters are important.”
“This is different.”
“How is it different?”
Mel did not have an answer. She could see, with terrible clarity, how this must look from their perspective: the governess who had promised never to leave, who had earned their trust through months of patient attention, attempting to slip away in the darkness without a word of explanation.
She had become exactly what she had promised not to be. Another adult who abandoned them. Another person who made promises she could not keep.
“I’m sorry,” she said. The words came out rough, stripped of the polish she usually maintained.
“I did not want you to find out this way.”
“How did you want us to find out?” Anna crossed her arms, a gesture so reminiscent of her father that it made Mel’s chest ache.
“Did you want us to wake up and find you gone? Did you want to read about it in a letter? Did you want to spend the rest of our lives wondering what we did wrong?”
“You did nothing wrong.”
“Then why are you leaving?”
“Because…” Mel stopped.
Because your father possesses my entire affection, yet he regards me with indifference. I have been made privy to his true opinion, that I am of too humble a birth for his consideration, and such a realisation makes my continued presence here insupportable.
Because being here, with all of you, is too painful when I know I can never truly belong.
She could not say any of those things. They were adult complications, adult heartbreaks, and the children standing before her deserved better than to be burdened with them.
“Because sometimes people have to go,” she said instead.
“Even when they don’t want to. Even when leaving hurts more than staying.”
“That’s not a reason.” Thistle spoke for the first time, her voice carrying the particular intensity that characterised all her observations.
“That’s an excuse. You taught us the difference. A reason is based on evidence and logic. An excuse is what people use when they don’t want to tell the truth.”
Mel stared at her youngest charge, at the wild hair and the clutched toad and the fierce, intelligent eyes that saw too much.
“You’re right,” she admitted. “It’s an excuse.”
“So tell us the real reason.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because the real reason would hurt you more than my leaving.”
Viola made a sound, somewhere between a gasp and a sob.
“You think leaving won’t hurt us?”
“I think…” Mel’s voice cracked. She had spent a lifetime learning to control her emotions, to present a composed face to a world that offered no mercy to women who showed weakness.
But standing here, in the cold entrance hall, facing the three children who had somehow become the centre of her world, she could not maintain the pretense.
“I think that I have done something very foolish,” she said slowly.
“I have allowed myself to care about things I cannot have. I have let myself imagine a future that was never possible. And now I find that staying here, pretending everything is as it was, is more than I can bear.”
“What things can’t you have?” Anna asked.
“That is not a question I can answer.”
“Because we’re too young?”
“Because the answer involves your father.”
The words fell into silence. The three children exchanged glances, the kind of rapid, wordless communication that only siblings who had grown up together could manage. Something passed between them, some understanding or agreement, and then Anna stepped forward.
“Miss Grace,” she said, her voice taking on a formal quality that reminded Mel of court proceedings.
“I would like to present empirical evidence.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“You taught us that conclusions should be based on empirical evidence. Observable facts that can be verified and analysed. You said that people often make decisions based on emotion rather than evidence, and that such decisions are frequently wrong.”
Mel felt her lips twitch despite herself. Hearing her own lessons quoted back to her was disconcerting, but also strangely touching. She had taught them well.
“I seem to recall saying something similar to that…”
“Then I submit the following evidence for your consideration.” Anna cleared her throat, assuming the posture of a barrister presenting a case.
“Evidence item one: you have been the most effective governess we have ever had. Prior to your arrival, we had driven away seven governesses in four years. None of them stayed longer than three months. You have been here for four months and have shown no signs of wishing to leave until now.”
“That is accurate.”
“Evidence item two: our behaviour has improved significantly since your arrival. Thistle no longer releases insects in the dining room. I no longer organise coups against household authority. Viola speaks in complete sentences rather than whispers. These improvements are documented in my records.”
Mel thought of the attendance register that Anna maintained so carefully, the charts and graphs she created to track everything from vocabulary acquisition to behavioral incidents. The child was nothing if not thorough.
“Your records are meticulous.”