Chapter Three
The day after Lord Montrose’s visit to the nursery, Sophia stared into the mirror in her room, feeling a thousand years old. Her eyes were red and puffy from crying herself to sleep for the second night in a row. Her stomach had been off, thus she’d only picked at her dinner the night before.
Nevertheless, she washed her face and fixed her hair into a simple knot at the nape of her neck.
She put on one of her gray gowns, buttoning it up the front, listening for the sounds of Amelia’s waking.
The child slept soundly and almost always woke up mimicking the sun, all beams and light.
Sophia always woke an hour before to make sure she was prepared for the little one’s energetic disposition.
Her days had been full of happy routines, all centered around her little charge.
What would Amelia eat for breakfast? Was she warm enough?
Was she happy? Without those questions filling her days, Sophia would be hollow, purposeless, a shell going through motions that no longer mattered.
Sophia’s room occupied the northwest corner of the top floor, a modest space that had housed governesses for generations.
The narrow window overlooked the kitchen garden rather than the sea, but on clear mornings, she could glimpse a sliver of blue horizon if she pressed her cheek to the glass.
The room held the essentials and little more: a single bed with a faded quilt in muted blues, a plain oak wardrobe that required a firm hand to close properly, and a washstand with a chipped porcelain basin.
Her greatest luxury was the small writing desk positioned to catch what light the window offered, its surface scarred from years of previous occupants but sturdy enough for her needs.
A braided rug, worn thin in the center, provided some warmth against the bare floorboards.
Worse than her own grief was imagining Amelia’s. The child had lost both her parents before she even had a chance to know them, just as she’d lost her mother. What would it do to her, waking one morning to find Miss Sophia simply gone? Would she think she’d done something wrong? Would she cry?
She knew, bone-deep, what it felt like to be ripped from the one parent you loved. How it hollowed you out. How you lay awake wishing it were all a nightmare from which one would wake.
She would miss everything. Amelia’s first lost tooth.
The day she learned to write her name. Her fifth birthday, her tenth, her wedding day.
Someone else would braid her hair and hear her secrets and sit up with her when she was sick.
Someone else would be there for all the moments Sophia had been foolish enough to imagine would be hers.
Her brothers thought they were saving her, offering her a future beyond the nursery. They didn’t understand they were asking her to amputate part of herself. There was no future that mattered if Amelia wasn’t in it.
A tap on the door startled her. She hurried to see who it was, surprised to find Mrs. Bromley waiting in the hallway.
“Sorry to disturb you at such an early hour, Miss Ford, but I have this for you.” She held out a folded piece of paper.
“Lord Montrose asked me to bring this to you first thing this morning.”
Her heart skipped a beat. A note from Lord Montrose. Would he ask her to leave today? The idea made her hands tremble with fear. “Thank you, Mrs. Bromley.”
“He’s asked me to wait until you read it so that I might report back to him.”
“Yes, of course.” Her voice shook as much as her hands as she opened the note.
Miss Ashford,
Would you join me in the library at ten o’clock this morning. There is a matter of some importance I wish to discuss with you.
Montrose
“He wants to see me,” Sophia said. “Mid-morning.”
“I’ll ask Lucy to look after the child,” Mrs. Bromley said.
Mrs. Bromley was the type of woman who made everything run smoothly, without ever drawing attention to herself.
Her figure was trim, and she moved through Montrose Manor’s corridors without sound.
Sophia had heard the maids complain that they could never hear her coming.
Her soft brown hair, threaded liberally with silver, was always neatly pinned beneath her housekeeper’s cap, and her gray-blue eyes, intelligent and observant, were also sensitive and kind.
She dressed impeccably in black bombazine with a chatelaine of keys at her waist that clinked softly when she walked.
A sound that had become to Sophia as much a part of Montrose Manor as the sea wind against the windows.
“Thank you,” Sophia said. “Should I pack my things? Will he be asking me to leave?”
An odd look passed over Mrs. Bromley’s face, as if she knew something she could not say. “I do not believe that will be necessary.”
“Do you know why he wants to speak with me?”
“You’ll learn of it soon enough, Miss Ashford.”
Ashford. Emphasized. She knew.
“Did the lord tell you?” Sophia asked.
“Just this morning.” A hint of hurt showed in the older woman’s eyes.
“I am sorry, Mrs. Bromley. When I came here, I needed the work very much and I didn’t think it would ever prove necessary to share my true identity. It was not meant to cause any harm to anyone.”
“It is a shame what they did to your father, Miss Ashford. I am truly sorry. Eight years old. It’s not right. What they did to your family.”
“It has been righted now.”
“And yet there is a part of you that wishes it had not?” Mrs. Bromley asked.
Sophia’s eyes filled with tears, hot on her tender eyelids that had not yet recovered from the crying jag the night before. “I do not wish to leave Amelia. It feels as if someone will cut off both my arms. Or perhaps just carve my heart out of my chest.”
Mrs. Bromley looked down at the floor for a moment, shifting slightly from one foot to the other.
When she looked up, her eyes were full of sympathy but also a glimmer of something else.
Dare Sophia think hope? As in, something could be done so that she didn’t have to leave Amelia?
But as quickly as the thought came, she dismissed it.
There was nothing to be done. Except live with a broken heart for the rest of her life.
“I’ll send Lucy up a little before then,” Mrs. Bromley said.
“Thank you.” The sound of Amelia’s high-pitched voice came from the adjacent bedroom. “I must go now.”
“Yes, go.” Mrs. Bromley bobbed her head and turned to leave but seemed to change her mind at the last second. “Miss Ashford, the darkest hour is always just before dawn. You must have faith that everything will end up as it should. Eventually.”
With that, the housekeeper headed silently down the hallway, leaving Sophia to her morning tasks, starting with getting Amelia dressed.
*
Sophia’s hands trembled as she descended the main staircase at precisely five minutes to ten. She’d changed from her morning dress into her second-best gown—the dark green wool that made her look somewhat less like a governess. Lucy had promised to keep Amelia occupied until Sophia returned.
If she returned to the nursery at all. Perhaps Lord Montrose had found a replacement already. Perhaps Sebastian had written to him, demanding her immediate release.
She reached the library door and paused, pressing one hand against her churning stomach. Through the partially open door, she could hear nothing but the soft patter of rain against windows and the distant cry of gulls. Taking a breath that did nothing to steady her, she knocked.
“Come.”
His voice sounded strained. Sophia pushed the door open and stepped into a room she’d only ever entered alone.
The library was brighter this morning than she’d expected, even with only gray morning light filtering through rain-streaked windows.
Books lined every wall from floor to ceiling—a glorious, chaotic abundance of them that made her fingers itch to explore.
She’d borrowed volumes from these shelves hundreds of time since she’d arrived, always when his lordship was elsewhere, always returning them precisely where she’d found them.
But she’d never seen the room like this, lived in and warm despite the weather.
A Turkish carpet in faded jewel tones covered most of the floor.
Two deep leather chairs faced each other before an unlit fireplace, and between them sat a small table bearing a crystal decanter and glasses.
The massive windows overlooked the lawn and the steel-gray sea beyond.
Lord Montrose stood near those windows, his back to the drizzle, and for a moment Sophia forgot why she was there.
He looked different from yesterday. Scattered?
Worried? His dark hair was slightly disheveled, as though he’d been running his hands through it.
His coat hung open, unbuttoned, and his cravat was slightly loosened at his throat.
Small details, but on a man normally so meticulously turned out, they spoke of considerable agitation.
He was sending her away. She fought the urge to run back up the stairs and gather Amelia close. Maybe run away with her.
“Miss Ashford.” He moved away from the window with visible effort. “Thank you for coming. Please, sit.”
He gestured to one of the leather chairs, and Sophia moved toward it on unsteady legs, acutely aware of his eyes on her.
Above the fireplace hung a portrait of a young woman with tumbling fair curls and laughing blue eyes, caught mid-smile as though the artist had just said something amusing.
Rebecca. Amelia’s mother. How beautiful and alive she looked in the painting.
It was hard to believe that she had perished, leaving Amelia without a mother.
“I trust Amelia is well occupied?” Lord Montrose remained standing, one hand braced against the mantel, the other shoved into his pocket.