Chapter Five
He flummoxed her, and Maeve hated that. The last man who had flummoxed her had ruined her once beautiful life, and she needed to remember that as she sat across from the charming, handsome Mr. Nelson, who seemed nothing at all like the man she’d known at home. But he’d been wonderful at first, too.
No, she couldn’t be wooed by a picnic at the shore or sweet cakes or kind words.
She had left the past behind and had only herself to depend upon now, and she could not—and would not—do anything to endanger her position.
The only reason she’d landed the position in the first place was because no one else wanted to work for the dragon lady, as they called Mrs. Nelson in servant circles.
Mr. Nelson had promised to run interference for her with his mother, but she would believe that when she saw it. His first loyalty would always be to his family over a lowly housekeeper.
She blotted her lips with the creamy linen napkin and then folded it, brushed the crumbs off her skirt and stood. “I must get back to work.”
“But you haven’t even taken an hour for yourself.”
“I’m not paid to take time for myself in the midst of a workday, Mr. Nelson.”
“Aubrey. You can call me Aubrey.”
“I prefer to call you Mr. Nelson.”
He sighed deeply as he realized his picnic hadn’t changed anything between them. He was still her employer and she a member of the household staff.
“Thank you for the picnic. I enjoyed it very much.” With that, she left him and headed up the stairs and back along the path they had taken.
It would take some time for him to clean up, so she anticipated a clean getaway.
Pounding footsteps behind her disabused her of that notion.
Maeve kept her head down and continued to walk briskly toward the house.
“Miss Brown! Wait. Please wait.”
She shouldn’t stop. She knew it, but stopped anyway, turning to face him. “Yes, Mr. Nelson?”
“I wanted to share something with you. Something personal that I haven’t spoken of in years.”
Tell him it’s not appropriate for him to share personal things with you. Walk away. Though her inner voice urged the opposite, she stayed put, intrigued and curious despite the many reasons she shouldn’t be.
“I was to be married.” He cleared his throat.
“Her name was Annabelle, and we were best friends from childhood. We wrote to each other while I was in school at Choate and then at Yale, and during the Christmas break of my final year of school, I asked her to marry me. The wedding was planned for spring. It would’ve been ten years today, in fact. ”
Maeve gasped when she realized the import of the date. She didn’t want to be interested but was nonetheless. “Wh-what happened?”
“Four days before the wedding, she went to sleep with a headache and never woke up. The doctor said it was a vessel in her brain that had probably always been defunct.”
“I’m so sorry, Mr. Nelson.” Her heart broke for him and the grief that was readily apparent, now that she looked more closely, even after all this time.
“Thank you.” He looked down before again bringing his gaze up to meet hers. “I haven’t spoken of her in many years. Not even to my dear friends in London.”
The significance of his statement wasn’t lost on Maeve. He’d told her but not his close friends. “Why did you tell me this?”
He took hold of her hand.
She let him.
“Because when you have been through something so painful, you recognize that pain when you see it in others. I see it in you. And I want you to know that if you need someone to share it with, I’m here, and I understand.”
Maeve could only stare at him. If he had stripped her bare, she couldn’t have felt more seen.
Sometimes she felt that no one ever saw her.
They usually looked right through her. Mr. Nelson, this man she had only just met, saw the very heart of her, and she simply couldn’t have that.
She pulled her hand free, turned and walked away, keeping her head down and her eyes peeled for hazards along the path.
As the house came into view, she began to run, desperate to escape the fierce longing he’d inspired in her for things she could not have.
He’d looked so sad telling her about the woman he’d loved and lost and the wedding that should’ve happened ten years ago today.
She’d wanted to hug him, to pat his back and tell him everything would be okay, even if she had no way to know if that was true.
She wanted to offer comfort she had no right to give to a man who was so far off limits to her he may as well have lived in a different world.
The world she lived in required her to work in order to stay alive. She entered the house through the kitchen and encountered Mrs. Allston tending a huge pot on the stove.
“How was the picnic?” she asked, her smile friendly and free of judgment. Or so it seemed, anyway.
“The luncheon was delicious. Thank you for preparing it.”
“I’m glad you got a spot of fresh air. It can’t be healthy to breathe in so much dust and refuse.”
Maeve studied the other woman, looking for some sign of disapproval, but couldn’t detect anything but genuine concern.
“Yes, I suppose you’re right. Well, I must get back to work.
” She went upstairs and picked up where she’d left off, atop the ladder cleaning the spiderwebs from the chandeliers in the ballroom and thinking about a handsome man with warm brown eyes who saw far too much.
She worked until she was so tired she couldn’t see straight, ate a solitary dinner in the staff dining room and passed an all-but-sleepless night, tossing and turning and wishing for things that could never be.
Perhaps she could find a way to avoid him completely, but that didn’t seem feasible with only four people in the house and more work to do than could be completed in a month of twenty-four-hour days.
Awaking from a restless doze when the sunrise filtered into her room, she rose to wash and dress for another day of scrubbing.
Her hands ached from the days of hard work, and the harsh soap that seeped through the thin gloves, leaving her skin red and raw.
She had badly burned her right hand in the incident that resulted in her fleeing Ireland, and two months later, the new skin on her palm was still pink and tender.
She worried all the time about contracting an infection where the burn had been, which is why she wore the gloves while working.
In addition, her back ached and she had an odd crick in her neck, probably from hours of looking up at the chandeliers the day before.
She hadn’t seen Mr. Nelson since she left him at the shore yesterday and hoped she could get through this day without having to encounter him.
A soft knock on her door had her hoping it wasn’t him, coming to tempt her some more with that face and those eyes and the lips that made her want things she had no right to. Not anymore.
She opened the door to Mr. Plumber.
“Pardon the interruption, Ms. Brown, but there are men at the kitchen door, claiming to have been hired by Mr. Nelson to assist in preparing the house for the Season.”
“Ah, yes. I’ll be right down.”
“I, um, would be remiss if I did not inform you that they seem rather . . . rough.”
“I’m sure they are, Mr. Plumber, but in these desperate circumstances, I’m afraid we can’t afford to be fussy about whom we hire.”
“As you wish, ma’am.” He nodded and departed, but his concerns stayed with her as she headed downstairs to see what the cat had dragged in.
Aubrey woke with a sore head, a dry mouth and a stiff neck.
The copious amounts of whiskey he’d consumed the night before had gotten him through the difficult day and torturous night full of memories of a young woman who’d been lost far too soon.
Per his tradition, he allowed himself to wallow in the grief on one of the two dates that arrived four days apart every year with maddening regularity.
He couldn’t bear to mourn the day she died, so he instead descended into the pits of despair on what should have been their wedding day.
After all this time, his memories of Annabelle had grown fuzzy.
Sometimes, he couldn’t remember the sound of her voice or recall specifics about her.
It all ran together in a stream of disconnected thoughts that showed up to torture him this time every year.
He’d grown accustomed to it by now, but knowing it was coming didn’t make enduring it any easier.
He felt like death itself as he dragged himself out of the chair he’d slept in, picked up the empty bottle from the floor and placed it on a sideboard before pouring himself a glass of water that he downed in greedy gulps.
Where would they be now, he wondered, if Annabelle had lived?
Would they have remained in New York to raise their family or perhaps headed west in search of new adventures?
She had been an adventurous sort who’d craved travel and experiences and new people.
They would’ve had a jolly good time, for sure.
But in the last few days, something else had nagged at him, something dark and disturbing and altogether disrespectful of Annabelle’s memory.
It had started the first moment he caught sight of Miss Brown’s delightful neck and had continued unabated every time he’d been in her presence—desire.
Hot, desperate desire, the likes of which he had never once felt for his beloved Annabelle.
Shame had his stomach turning with disgust at the direction his thoughts had taken.
How could he admit such a thing to anyone, even himself?
In the desperate hours, days, weeks, months and now years since Annabelle’s sudden and tragic death, he’d vowed to protect her memory and to love her always.
How was he to do that if he was forced to admit that what he’d felt for Annabelle paled in comparison to the fiery passion the lovely housekeeper had inspired in him over the course of two short days?