What have I done?
The question pulsed in her mind, rhythmic and insistent as the rain. She was the daughter of a dancer and a man who loved her only behind closed doors. She was a woman who had been taught that her value was a debt to be paid in labor and silence. Yet, under the touch of the Duke of Welton, she had felt like a sovereign. He had treated her not as a convenience or a dalliance, but with a reverence that felt more dangerous than any insult Lady Presholm had ever hurled. Julia’s cruelty had been a cage she understood, but Ambrose’s tenderness was a map to a country she wasn’t allowed to inhabit.
She traced the edge of the duvet he had tucked around her. He had tucked her in like a treasure, yet tomorrow morning the sun would rise over London, and the rigid hierarchy of thetonwould demand its due. He would be the Duke, and she would be the governess. He would sit at the head of a mahogany table, and she would be in the nursery, wiping crumbs from the faces of his wards.
How were they to look at one another? How was she to accept a bowl of porridge from a servant’s hand when the master of the house had just worshipped at her feet?
The scandal of it was chilling, as private as the moment had been. If the Presholms of the world ever learned of this, she wouldn’t just be a disgraced woman. She would be a ghost once more, with no options. A Duke might survive a scandal with a few whispers at the club, but a woman in her position would be erased. She would be back in the rain, back in the soot, withnothing but the memory of a Duke’s touch to keep her warm at night.
And yet, despite the terror, there was a spark of something she hadn’t felt in years. There was a fierce, desperate hope that prickled beneath the surface. He had said he wanted to help her forget the world.
For a few frantic, beautiful minutes, he had succeeded. He had replaced the smell of burning lace with the scent of woodsmoke and skin. He had replaced the memory of the scullery with the feeling of being the only thing that mattered.
As the storm rattled the windowpanes, Imogen clutched the duvet even tighter to her chest.
The candlelight had long since sputtered into a pool of cold wax, leaving the room in a state of oppressive, velvet darkness.
Imogen bolted upright in bed, her breath coming in jagged, shallow gasps that tore at her throat as she listened to a distant clock strike two.
The nightmare was always the same since she had come to Welton House. A fire in a hearth that didn’t just burn silk dresses as it once had, but consumed the nursery wing, while she stood paralyzed, unable to reach the boys through a wall of cold, unyielding glass.
She pressed her palms to her eyes, trying to rub away the image of Philip and Arthur calling for her through the smoke. Her skin still hummed with the phantom sensation of Ambrose’s touch just hours before, the weight of his hands, the devastating softness of his lips against her forehead and inside of her very being.
The room felt too small, the air too thick with the scent of rain and the lingering ghost of his pine scent.
As her heart slowed, a terrible, cold clarity settled over her. It was a realization that didn’t arrive with a flourish, but with the quiet, crushing weight of a falling stone.
I love him.
The thought was a sickness, and the more she tried to push the thought away, the more it engulfed her. It wasn’t the fluttering, girlish fancy of the poetry books her father had read to her; it was a visceral, desperate thing that made her want to weep and scream all at once. She loved the way his jaw tightened when he was worried, the way he looked at his nephews as if they were his entire world, and the way he had knelt before her as if she were a queen of his own making.
The Duke of Welton and his governess.
The headlines wrote themselves. The boys would be mocked at Eton. They would be shunned by the families of the girls they might one day wish to marry. They would be the children whoseuncle brought a servant into the ducal bed, sullying the family name.
And then there was Julia. If Lady Presholm ever felt truly threatened, she wouldn’t hesitate to reveal the truth of Imogen’s past. She was, after all, the “parasite” in the scullery, the daughter of a woman who had sold her beauty for a Viscount’s fleeting attention.
“I cannot,” she whispered aloud to the darkness, her voice breaking. “I cannot be the thing that breaks them. I cannot do this!”
Her love, which had felt like a flight of freedom in his arms, now felt like a weapon aimed at the very children she had sworn to protect. To stay was to risk their future. To love him was to invite their ruin. She realized then that the demurest, the most proper thing she could do was not to be a perfect servant, but to find a way to kill the hope that had taken root in her soul.
It cannot be this way. I must think of some solution to this…
She lay back down in bed, willing herself to sleep. She needed rest to think of a solution.
She was no longer just a governess or a secret daughter. She was a woman who had found the world, only to realize that for the sake of those she loved, she would have to give it back.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
“Iwill not be the source of their demise, not after they have seen so much in their short lives. I must leave this place.”
With trembling hands, she lit a single candle and began to pack her meager belongings. Every movement was a struggle, as if she were pulling herself through deep water.
It must be this way.
She sat at her small writing desk and pulled a sheet of parchment toward her, her quill scratching.
Your Grace,she wrote,I must thank you for the profound kindness and protection you have shown me as an employee of your household. The boys are a credit to your name, and teaching them has been the greatest honor of my life. However, I regrettably find I can no longer remain in your service. I wishyou and the children nothing but the happiness you so richly deserve.
