Adeline’s eyes shimmered with tears.
“I promised I would not.”
“Then you are as immature as she and not fit to look after her,” Winston said.
“No, Papa!” Louisa cried and then clutched her stomach as another stab of pain wracked her.
Seeing her in pain sent Winston into a towering rage.
“You say she does not need a doctor?” he snarled.
Adeline shook her head, blinking back tears. She raised her chin, lips trembling.
“You are making my position untenable. I will not be berated when I have done nothing wrong. It is clear why you have had such trouble holding a governess. I must resign.”
She fled the room, each step faster than the one before. Winston watched her go, breathing hard as though he had just run a mile. He took a step after her before he realized what he was doing.
I don’t want her to go. Yes, I do. She is irresponsible. She cannot be Louisa’s governess.
Louisa had gotten out of bed and placed herself in front of him. Her hair was in disarray, and her eyes wide and furious. Her cheeks were flushed but with anger, not sickness.
“It is my business, Papa. Mine alone. It is not an illness. Adeline promised she would not tell you, and she kept her word even though you were cruel to her. You will not understand, because you never do!”
She slammed the door in his face, leaving him in the passage alone.
He stood in silence, outrage curdling into bleak despair. He had driven Adeline away, wounded Louisa, and all because his fear for his daughter had turned to ire. The house felt colder without her already. And if Oswald rode up this very moment, swept Adeline away, carried her off to another life? Winston feared she would be glad of it.
Chapter Seventeen
Adeline paced the length of her chamber, her skirts swishing restlessly against her ankles. Annoyance bubbled within her. It was aimed at Winston, but also, and more keenly, at herself. She had allowed him to draw her into an argument. She had reacted as though she were his equal, had raised her voice, and even shed tears before him.
I need to remember my position here. Cordelia has very relaxed expectations of her staff, but Winston does not.
But then she had never wanted to be employed as a governess; it was simply that circumstances had steered her in this direction. That included an early bond with Louisa that was fast becoming impossible to break. She had vowed never to be so weak. And yet, when Louisa’s well-being was in question, passion overcame composure.
I am behaving as though she is my daughter. After such a short amount of time, that is ridiculous. I must get some perspective.
She had undone herself in Winston’s eyes, and Louisa was the reason. Louisa, whose trust she could not betray, whose health she had sworn to guard with the whole of her heart. That same devotion, however, had given Adeline a weapon.
I was given an excuse. A reason to resign. I could not find it alone, but he just handed it to me. I will be just one more governess who could not get along with the Duke of Greystone.
She now had a pretext to sever herself from Greystone with the appearance of wounded pride rather than desperate necessity. Winston’s anger had been so sharp, so cutting, that she doubted he would miss her. Cordelia, she suspected, would take her son’s side in all things. That left Louisa alone, and the thought of leaving her tore something deep inside Adeline’s chest.
It is Louisa that I will miss. Not her father. He is infuriating. Rude. Obnoxious and arrogant.
And a masterful, skilled lover. Handsome. Olympian. His eyes upon her made her feel naked. His presence sent shivers through her body as no other person had ever done. She forced her thoughts away from him. Fear was a harsher master than either grief or desire. For two years, she had lived a safe and concealed existence. Two years had passed without pursuit.
Now, with her lies exposed to Winston’s wrath, with questions beginning to surface about her history, it all threatened to collapse. If Winston learned the truth, if her father learned her whereabouts, her life would no longer be her own.
She wandered without purpose until her feet carried her to the library. The heavy air soothed her nerves, the smell of old bindings a balm. And there, still lying open upon the great oak table, wasDebrett’s. She had left it there when Mr. Pike had paid his unsettling call. The name Clifford-Edge stared up at her, unblinking. Her breath hitched.
The entry listed the lineage of the viscountcy. A son. But no daughter. No mention of her. No anchor for the story she had told Cordelia. It would take but a glance for him to uncover the lie. She looked to the inkpot, which stood in the well at the corner of the table, stoppered with a cork. Her hands trembled as she took up the small, glass bottle and unstopped it.
Then she tilted it until a black tide spread across the page. The neat lines of print blurred, vanished, drowned beneath the stain. With swift care, she pressed blotting paper over it, sparing the rest of the volume. But Clifford-Edge was gone, swallowed in ink.
And I have now committed an act of deliberate sabotage to protect my lie. If it is discovered, there is no way to avoid looking guilty. Of something.
Adeline pressed a hand to her temple. She was weary of this. Weary of lies and inventions, of shadows and concealment. Yet she knew no way to free herself from the tangle. The truth would ruin her. Silence endangered her. Either path was ruinous. She sought solace in memory, and her mind turned to the night she had read poetry aloud to Winston while he lay half-asleep and in his cups. Keats’s words had steadied her then.
