Chapter 2 #3
But that was easier said than done. When the carriage rolled to a halt before the house’s main entrance, every instinct she possessed told her to flee.
To run. To escape the agony that surely awaited her inside.
Had he known? Had he ever imagined that it might be her who Mrs. Baxter would send?
Instantly she dismissed the notion. She had been so careful.
She’d avoided working with any families that had been known to either of them before, staying primarily with landed gentry who remained in the countryside or even working with the bourgeois who so desperately longed to bridge the divide between the haute Ton and themselves.
For several moments she remained exactly where she was. At last the door opened and the footman lowered the steps. "Miss Mercer."
Twelve years. Twelve long years. She was no longer Miss Lydia Whitby. She certainly was not Lady Charlotte. There was one role for her to fulfill within the walls of that esteemed house. She was Lydia Mercer, a most excellent governess. And there was a child inside—his child—who needed her.
She accepted the offered hand, though she scarcely trusted her own feet to carry her.
The moment she stepped onto the gravel she became acutely aware of the house itself, every familiar window seeming to watch her return.
For all her bravado about being needed there, she felt very small and very insignificant.
Because he had moved on, had he not? He’d married another, as she’d hoped he would.
But hoping for it in theory and facing the painful reality of it were two very different things.
The front door stood open. Another servant waited just inside.
Stedmore, the butler who had tended the family for three generations.
His slightly rheumy eyes met hers only briefly before widening in unmistakable recognition.
The expression vanished almost instantly beneath impeccable discipline, yet she had seen it.
Neither age nor tired eyes had dulled him.
He knew her. Within a second of looking at her. He knew.
As she crossed the threshold, she became conscious of other glances. A maid carrying fresh linen slowed almost imperceptibly.A groom passing through the entrance hall looked twice before remembering himself.
Not a single one of them spoke. In fact, a pin drop would have sounded like the crack of thunder in that hall.
Stedmore appeared almost immediately, his expression revealing nothing whatever. "My lord is expecting you, Miss Mercer."
The deliberate use of her assumed name afforded a measure of relief she had not expected. "If you would be so kind."
He inclined his head and led her across the entrance hall. The familiar scent of beeswax mingling with lavender drifting through the open windows. It would have been her home.
Every step, limited as they were, felt like a canyon. Every second between her current location and the door that stood between her and fate was torture. She alternately wanted to run to it and from it.
When they did finally reach the study door, her pulse had become so violent she feared Stedmore must surely hear it.
He knocked softly and waited to be bade enter.
Only then did he open the door. There he stood, blocking her entrance and her view—keeping her from seeing the man who had haunted her dreams for a dozen years. Another obstacle.
"My lord... Miss Mercer has arrived."
"Show her in."
The voice beyond the door had deepened with the passing years, yet she knew it instantly. Stedmore opened the door wider, urging her in. On legs that trembled, Lydia crossed the threshold.
Oliver stood before the windows with his back toward her, one hand resting lightly upon the mantel as he looked across the lavender fields beyond the lawn.
For one impossible moment she saw not the gentleman before her but the young man who had once stood in this very room arguing, with entirely unwarranted confidence, that chartreuse wallpaper had redeeming qualities if only she would permit him to prove it.
As shocking as the site of him was the room itself. It was like stepping backward into time. The study itself seemed scarcely altered. The same desk stood before the windows. The same books lined the shelves. The same globe occupied its place beside the hearth.
Of course. Oliver had always been stubborn. If he had once determined that nothing ought to change, she could think of no force on earth likely to persuade him otherwise.
The door closed quietly behind her and she jumped even at the low snick of the latch. Her nerves were fraught from the day, from the realization that she could no longer run from her past.
Oliver turned. The years had marked him. There were threads of silver at his temples and a gravity to his expression that youth had never known, but it was unmistakably the same face she had carried in memory for twelve years.
His expression betrayed nothing. Neither surprise nor satisfaction showed on the hard planes of his face or within the fiercely blue gaze that had locked solidly on her.
Then he spoke, his tone as dry as if they were just being introduced at Almack’s.
”Hello, Lydia.” He allowed only the briefest pause before continuing with quiet civility.
"You are looking well. I trust your journey was a pleasant one? "