A hint of pink flushed the man’s swarthy face, discernible only because the gnarled scars across his left cheek stood starkly pale in comparison. “It’s... the new governess, master.”
The new governess. Yes. Alistair turned his gaze to the gardening shears in his hands in order to prevent his manservant from reading uncomfortable truths in his eyes. Like how much it hurt to have Lillian prefer the company of a total stranger to that of her own father. Or how guilty he felt to dare hope he finally had someone to share the load.
When he’d seen the young woman lying upon his doorstep, he had believed the wayward “Violet Smythe” a disoriented guttersnipe. Nonetheless, he’d ordered her a bath, ordered her tattered garments washed, and intended to order her back out to the streets after offering her cheese and biscuits and perhaps a farthing or two, which would as likely be spent on cheap gin as anything.
But the creature he’d been presented with in the prayer room had been anything but a guttersnipe.
He’d just finished innumerable unanswered pleas to God, and turned to behold a grown woman, in her mid-twenties. The gown she wore was shabby from overuse, but fell perfectly against her too-slender frame. Her skin was an unfashionable bronze, but flawless and smooth across high cheekbones and scandalously bare arms. Her eyes were a blue so deep one almost believed them purple—no doubt why she’d given herself the false name of “Violet”—and framed by eyelashes as thick and rich as her unbound hair. The auburn tresses had been damp and lifeless at first, but during the course of the conversation, they’d dried into big, looping curls about her face and shoulders. The ringlets tumbled halfway to her hips. She looked a perfect angel.
Miss Smythe, he had realized in shock, was stunningly beautiful. With a few more pounds on her frame and a decent gown to accentuate the results, she’d be breathtaking. She was the last thing he needed.
“What about the new governess?” he demanded gruffly.
Roper hesitated. “What do we know about her?”
“Absolutely nothing,” Alistair returned. “And by the grace of God, that’s precisely how much she knows about us. That is the only way this arrangement could even work.”
“But two pounds per week, Master. It’s...”
Ah. The money. Truth be told, any young lady who landed upon a doorstep in as ragged condition as had Miss Smythe, must be in far greater need of those two coins than Alistair. However, he could well understand Roper’s concerns. Regardless of Alistair’s flush pockets, two pounds per week was an outlandish sum to promise a strange woman of unknown origin.
“I will hardly miss it. And Lillian’s education is worth any price.” Nonetheless, Alistair recognized this hope as the fanciful dream that it was. In nine years, his daughter had never permitted him to teach her so much as basic sums. “If Miss Smythe manages to achieve any improvement with Lillian, she will walk out of Waldegrave Abbey having earned every penny.”
Roper nodded slowly. He might or might not agree with his master’s decision, but he understood the logic and the emotion behind it, and would suffer his role as silent watcher without complaint. “Where is the young lady now?”
Alistair motioned in the direction of the shadowed passageway. “With Lillian.”
His manservant choked, his face purple beneath his scars. “Alone?”
“Lillian invited her to stay,” Alistair said simply. Although nothing was simple. Within seconds of her arrival, the fair stranger had already wrought her first miracle. He just wished Miss Smythe’s magic hadn’t made him feel so... trivial.
Roper appeared to be suffering apoplexy on the spot. “Miss Lillian...invited...?”
Alistair fit his fingers into the handle of the shears and stretched open the blades. The shears were old, but still strong and serviceable. He sharpened them after every moonlit trip to the garden—which is where he would be now, were it not for his anxious manservant. He closed the blades with a snap.
“I’m going to take some air. Stay by the bells, should Lillian ring.”
Without waiting for a response, Alistair sidestepped his manservant. Bracing himself against the onslaught of a chill Shrewsbury breeze, he stepped out into the twilight.
He yearned to tilt his face up at the stars, to greet his old friends Hercules and Draco, but did not indulge the desire. Not if he couldn’t share the night sky with his daughter. Oh, how he wished to. But the last time, she had run off and nearly died from the breaking dawn. He would not take that risk again. Even though it was past twilight, he himself wouldn’t even be out-of-doors, were it not for the goal of bringing some small piece of the outside world to his daughter. Fresh roses, every week.
He pocketed the garden shears and approached with caution. As always, an explosion of flowers bloomed about Marjorie as if her mere touch could cause the tiniest seed to blossom. Inhaling their scent, he turned his back to the light of the moon.
His shadow fell upon the closer of two gravestones. His gaze locked on the stark letters etched therein. He would never forget the first of March, 1826. The morning of his daughter’s birth. And the morning of his wife’s death, as well as the death of life as Alistair knew it. Forever.
He had to rely on his memory in order to gaze upon his wife’s angelic face, for she lay in a casket six feet below the scented petals. And because he could not provide Lillian with her mother, he offered what little he could: stories. The more imperfect their lives became, the more perfect Marjorie shone in his memory and in his tales. And why not? He had thus far been unable to give Lillian anything else that she wanted. The least he could give her was a goddess for a mother. An angel who had returned to the heavens.
As the years went by, the sharpness of his grief had dulled. What his daughter really needed was a mother in flesh and blood. Someone just as good-hearted, just as pure of body and soul, just as perfect as the one she’d lost. He would not offer her anything less. He only wished he could give her so much more. First, however, he would have to cure her disease.
Only then could Lillian find joy at last. And only then would he deserve his own peace. To be worthy of his daughter’s love. To forgive himself.
Chapter 7
Long after the door locked shut behind her retreating father, Lillian remained a silent doll, devoid of all animation. Violet hugged the little girl’s unresponsive body to her chest. Both of them facing the closed door, Violet rested her cheek against the dark tangle of Lillian’s hair.
Violet wished she could think of something comforting to say. She ached to assure the child that everything was all right, or at the very least, soon would be. But clearly that was not the case, and Violet refused to lie to children. They endured enough.
A drop of wetness streaked down one of Lillian’s pale cheeks. Her impulsive comportment made her seem far younger than her nine years, but whatever had caused her current situation, the child was clearly hurting.
