Chapter 2
Chapter
Two
Oliver had discovered years ago that composure, once cultivated, became difficult to distinguish from genuine calm.
The distinction mattered very little to those around him.
His steward expected decisions whether his employer happened to be troubled or not.
Tenants arrived with questions that required answering.
Estate accounts neither balanced nor refused to balance according to the disposition of the gentleman reviewing them.
Hartwell demanded constancy above all else, and so he had become a constant man.
Those who knew him casually mistook it for an even temperament.
Those who knew him well understood that he simply possessed an uncommon ability to set his own feelings aside until duty permitted him to examine them.
While it had served him well for twelve years, it had been rather less so on that particular morning.
The ledger open upon his desk detailed the previous quarter’s receipts from the lavender distillery, the figures neatly entered in his own hand only the evening before.
They ought to have commanded his full attention.
Years earlier he would have devoted an hour to studying them, considering where production might be increased without diminishing quality and whether another drying barn ought to be erected before the next harvest. Instead he found himself reading the same column for what must have been the fourth time without retaining so much as a single number.
Irritated more with himself than with the interruption to his concentration, he closed the book altogether and rose to cross the room.
The study overlooked the south lawn and, beyond it, the long sweep of lavender that had become almost as closely associated with Hartwell as the house itself.
The plants were only beginning to flower in earnest, a sea of pale violet stretching in orderly rows toward the stone wall that marked the edge of the estate.
It rippled in the breeze, the intensity of the color varying with the direction of the wind.
His mother had once planted lavender merely because she liked its fragrance.
Oliver had seen an opportunity in that and seized it.
But his attention was not on the lavender that occupied his field of vision.
Instead it was focused on the carriage visible just beyond the trees.
Glimpses of it flashed in the afternoon sun.
It was something he felt as though he’d waited a lifetime for.
A reckoning of sorts. He would, at last, have the answers to the questions that had plagued him for so many years.
The knowledge afforded him remarkably little satisfaction.
When Mrs. Baxter’s letter had first confirmed that Miss Lydia Mercer was indeed Lydia Whitby, he had imagined certainty would accompany the discovery.
Instead it had produced only more questions than before.
He had believed himself prepared to confront them.
He had rehearsed the conversation often enough over the years.
Occasionally she explained everything before he had spoken a single word.
And conversely, she might deny she had ever loved him at all and that was why she had run.
He was no longer certain which outcome he desired, but it was a task he had begun and he could not leave it unfinished.
There was one significant obstacle. He was not the same man he had been twelve years earlier. Life and circumstance had changed him dramatically, as no doubt Lydia had changed as well. Whatever confessions she made, they belonged to a woman who existed only in memory.
The woman he would meet that day would not be the girl who’d once teased him about a chartreuse wall covering in the blue room.
She would not be the young woman who had confessed herself half tempted to elope simply to be spared another interminable discussion about wallpaper and furniture.
He’d replayed that moment in his mind a thousand times and each time he asked himself what would have happened if he’d said yes to that.
Would nerves have gotten the better of her and she’d have left him at the altar?
Or would the entirety of his life now look like the fantasy he had once held.
He had long since abandoned any expectation that the meeting would restore what had been lost. Life had taught him too much for such foolish optimism.
What it had never managed to teach him was how to live contentedly with uncertainty.
For twelve years one question had remained stubbornly unanswered, refusing to loosen its hold however thoroughly he attempted to reason his way beyond it.
Had any of it been real? The question itself had become almost offensive through repetition.
His feelings for her had been. And until that moment he’d never had any reason to doubt she felt the same.
His intentions had been entirely sincere as he’d thought hers were as well.
The why of it all had been maddening and the question had plagued him for years.
Along with another question that pained him more than he wished to admit: Had she accepted his proposal because she wanted to be his wife, or because it was the thing others expected of her?
What he no longer knew was whether Lydia had ever intended the same future or whether he had merely mistaken affection for love because, at five-and-twenty, he had been too inexperienced to distinguish one from the other.
The memories themselves offered no assistance.
Every smile, every lingering glance, every stolen kiss was now in question—had those moments been real?
Sincere? And it varied day by day what he chose to believe.
Some days he was convinced no woman could have looked at him as Lydia once had without loving him.
On others he wondered whether he had willfully blinded himself to an obvious truth simply because he wanted her to love him.
It was an intolerable way to remember the happiest months of his life.
A discreet knock interrupted his thoughts before they could wander any further. “Come.”
Stedmore entered with the same measured dignity he had displayed ever since Oliver was old enough to remember him.
“The hired carriage for the new governess has just turned through the south gate, my lord, and will arrive momentarily. Do you have any instructions you wish carried out upon her arrival?”
“Just do things in the normal way, Stedmore… Show her into the study when she arrives and we will see to the formalities of her employment.”
“Certainly, my lord,” Stedmore replied, then bowed before exiting the room.
Alone once more, Oliver reached for his coat and donned it. He hadn’t yet decided if he would reveal that he’d hired Miss Mercer knowing she was in fact Miss Whitby. To that end, it behooved him to present a formal and reserved front until he made a decision.
The journey had begun without incident. She’d left London in a hired carriage that had been arranged by the mysterious employer with the aid of Mrs. Baxter. And it all seemed to be orderly and efficient, which, in and of itself, was somewhat reassuring.
Lydia had settled herself into the hired carriage shortly after sunrise with a book she scarcely opened and a small basket of provisions Mrs. Baxter's housekeeper had thoughtfully insisted she take.
The weather proved agreeable, the roads surprisingly good for the time of year, and by midday she had almost succeeded in convincing herself that this appointment would be no different from the half dozen others she had accepted over the preceding years.
Every new position carried its own uncertainties.
Every unfamiliar household required a period of adjustment.
There seemed no reason to suppose this one would prove otherwise.
And yet, she hadn’t been able to fully dismiss the sense that something was not wrong, but certainly out of the ordinary. It was only after luncheon that true uneasiness began to settle over her.
At first she attributed it to fatigue. She’d journeyed to London from Somerset to meet with Mrs. Baxter and after only a single day was once more on the road.
That was not aided by the fact that she had slept poorly the previous night, as she often did before undertaking a journey.
Naturally, several hours confined within a carriage afforded ample opportunity for the mind to wander where it ought not.
Yet the farther they traveled, the more persistent the feeling became until she found herself abandoning her book altogether in favor of watching the countryside pass beyond the window.
There was nothing remarkable about it save for its terror-inducing familiarity.
Rolling fields gave way to small villages clustered around ancient churches whose weathered towers had watched over the surrounding countryside for centuries.
Sheep grazed peacefully behind low stone walls.
Farmers paused in their work as the carriage passed before returning to whatever task occupied the afternoon.
It was England precisely as she had always known it.
And yet… Something tugged insistently at her memory.
She frowned, searching the passing landscape for whatever had stirred the feeling.
A distant copse. A bend in the road. The outline of a village nestled within the valley below.
None of it seemed distinctive enough to account for the growing certainty that she had traveled this way before.
But that did not ease the knot which had formed in her stomach.