Chapter 21 - Stephen
Stephen
The silence after her departure was a living thing.
Stephen remained in the hidden passage, his back pressed against cold stone that did nothing to cool the fever in his blood. He could smell her on his clothes, the scent lingering where she’d pressed against him.
“Turner!” Mr. Phillips’s voice cut through the walls, sharp with fury. “Where is that damned boy?”
Panic slammed into him. The champagne he had promised to fetch from the cellar. How long ago had that been? Twenty minutes? Half an hour? Long enough for his absence to be noted, certainly. Long enough for questions to be asked that he had no good answers for.
Stephen pushed off the wall and ran.
His footsteps echoed too loudly in the narrow space, each impact reverberating up through his legs. Stone scraped his shoulder as he took a corner too fast. His fingers fumbled with the coat buttons, trying to unfasten them while he moved, but his haste made them impossible to work free.
“Damn it.” The curse came out harsh and breathless as he forced himself to stop, just for a moment, hands shaking while he yanked the buttons free. The coat came off, and he tucked it carefully under his arm even as panic screamed at him to move faster.
Finally, he reached the hidden panel that would let him back into the lesser-used corridor near the servants’ stairs.
Stephen leaned against the cool wood, forcing air into burning lungs.
When he could breathe quietly again, he pressed his ear to the wall and waited, listening for movement before carefully opening the panel.
His stashed livery waited exactly where he’d left it.
The gentleman’s clothing came off in seconds, replaced by the servant’s uniform he knew so well.
Fingers moving quickly, he smoothed the last crease just as footsteps echoed down the passage.
Too slow to be a fellow servant. Too deliberate.
The unmistakable rhythm of authority he knew all too well.
Stephen steeled himself, squaring his shoulders as Mr. Phillips rounded the corner, the butler’s expression dark with fury.
“Turner.” Phillips’s voice carried a fury Stephen had never heard from him before.
In the years they’d worked together, he’d witnessed the butler’s disapproval, his stern corrections, even his rare disappointments.
But never this. Never anger. “Where have you been? Lady Jersey’s guests have been waiting for fresh champagne for the past quarter hour. ”
Stephen’s hands were conspicuously empty, no bottle or tray or anything to support whatever excuse he was about to manufacture.
“My deepest apologies, sir.” He kept his voice steady, holding Phillips’s gaze rather than looking away. “There was some confusion in the cellar. Several bottles appeared to have been misplaced, and given Lady Jersey’s specific request for the French vintage—“
“Stop.”
The single word cut through Stephen’s excuse. Phillips stepped closer, taking in every detail of Stephen’s disheveled state. His voice dropped to barely above a whisper.
“I hoped you wouldn’t do something foolish, Turner.” The words came out softer now, almost like a plea. “Please tell me you haven’t done something foolish.”
Stephen’s throat closed. He couldn’t form words, couldn’t manufacture another lie under the weight of that knowing gaze.
Phillips had been his father’s friend. Had promised to look after him.
Had offered him an escape, and Stephen had thrown it back in his face by doing exactly what they both knew he shouldn’t.
Phillips closed his eyes briefly, composing himself, and when he met Stephen’s gaze again, something had shifted. The plea was gone, replaced by grim resignation. His hands moved to Stephen’s collar, adjusting the crooked fabric.
“Your cravat is a disaster,” he said quietly. “And you’ve fastened your buttons wrong. Middle two.”
Stephen’s fingers moved to the buttons, fixing them while Phillips stepped back. The older man’s expression had gone carefully blank.
“The champagne is in the eastern cabinet. Top shelf. Behind the Italian spirits. As you well know.” He straightened, and something in his posture shifted back to the formal distance of butler to footman. “Fetch it. Now.”
“Yes, sir.”
Stephen moved to step past him, but Phillips’s hand caught his arm—not roughly, but with enough pressure to stop him.
“I tried to give you a choice. I wanted it to be your decision. But I see now that was a mistake.” A pause. “You leave next week. I’ll make the arrangements myself. This is no longer a suggestion, Turner. It’s an order.”
“Sir—“
“Next week. And until then, you will perform your duties flawlessly. You will be invisible. You will not—“ He stopped himself, took a breath. “You will not make this worse than it already is.”
Stephen wanted to argue, but he knew Phillips was right.
He was meeting Charlotte back at Penrose Hall in three days, which meant a week was enough time to help her find the documents, to hand her the proof she needed to escape. After that, there was no reason for him to stay.
Even if he wanted to.
Because what future did he imagine for himself?
That Charlotte would sacrifice her family’s security for him?
Throw away her position, her prospects, her entire future, for a man who earned his living in service?
She’d kissed him tonight, but she’d kissed William Fletcher—the gentleman she believed him to be, who met her in libraries and spoke to her as an equal.
Not Stephen Turner, who would have to bow and call her “miss” if their paths crossed.
She didn’t even know who he really was.
And when she learned the truth—because eventually she would, even if tonight he could hide in the servants’ passages where she’d never see him—what would happen then?
The girl who’d grabbed his face in that passage, who’d kissed him like he was worth something, would realize their entire connection had been built on deception.
That the man she’d trusted, perhaps even started to care for, was nothing more than a servant who’d lied to her from the first moment they’d spoken.
He didn’t deserve her. Would never deserve her. The kindest thing he could do was help her find those documents and then vanish before she learned the truth and looked at him with the disgust he’d earned.
She would thank him once Penrose no longer had power over her family.
Would smile at him one last time, that smile that made his chest ache, before they parted ways forever.
Then she would go back to her life among people who mattered, and he would disappear.
By the time she eventually learned the truth, he’d already be gone.
It was the only way this could end.
“I understand, sir,” he managed, though the words felt like swallowing glass.
Phillips held his gaze a moment longer, then stepped back. “The champagne. Now.”
The wine cellar’s stone steps descended into cool darkness. Stephen’s hands moved automatically, selecting bottles he could identify by touch alone, but his mind remained trapped in that corridor with Phillips’s words echoing endlessly.
Seven days. Seven days before a coach would carry him north to a new household, to a life where Charlotte didn’t exist and London was just a memory. Seven days to exist in the same city as her and pretend the world hadn’t fundamentally changed the moment he’d seen her.
The weight of the bottles in his arms felt like chains as he climbed back toward the light.
Toward the glittering music room where Charlotte would be sitting among Lady Jersey’s guests, her lips still swollen from his kisses, her skin still flushed.
Where Lord Penrose would be watching her, dancing with her.
Stephen paused at the top of the stairs, closing his eyes against the sharp sting of tears he refused to let fall.
In seven days, he would leave London forever, carrying nothing but the memory of her touch and the lie that it could ever be enough.