She hesitated, the quill hovering as she signed her name. She couldn’t simply vanish into the ether if she hoped to find work elsewhere. Much as she would like to disappear with the cold wind that beat against the window, mocking her racing heart, she had to be strong.
With a shaky hand, she added the address of a modest inn in the neighborhood and a humble request for a future reference.
She didn’t look back at the bed or the empty shelves. She knew if she looked back, the deep water that threatened to swallow her would finally pull her under.
I will not lose my resolve.
Holding the letter to her chest for a single, fleeting moment, she blew out the candle and let the darkness take the room. She set it on the bedside table, drew her cloak around her shoulders, and closed the door behind her.
Back in the solitude of his own chambers, Ambrose did not immediately seek his bed. He stood by the window, watching the London fog blur the streetlamps. He closed his eyes, and his mind replayed the way the perfect curves of her body, nearlyfeeling the silk of her skin. He hissed as he could still taste her sweetness as he licked his lips.
After a few moments, as he began to grow tired, a strange, unfamiliar lightness settled over him as he moved to his bed. For the first time in months, the shadows of his responsibilities to his wards and his lineage didn’t feel like a suffocating weight. He closed his eyes as he pulled up the covers, the scent of lavender and woman still clinging to his senses, and the frantic ticking of his mind finally fell silent. He did not toss or turn. Instead, he slipped into a sleep so deep and peaceful it felt like floating, anchored by the quiet knowledge that for one night, he had truly seen her, and she had seen him.
Something is not right,he thought to himself as his stomach tensed. He glanced at a nearby clock.Half past five.
Ambrose rose with a sudden jolt. The house felt unnaturally still. He could sense it in his marrow, hear it in what was not there. When he went to the schoolroom and found it empty, a cold dread began to coil in his gut.
“Mrs. Higgins,” he said, catching the housekeeper in the hallway, his voice tight. “Where is Miss Lewis? Is she already out with the boys?”
Mrs. Higgins looked at him with watery eyes, yet her face remained tight. “She’s gone, Your Grace. She left before the sun was up.”
“Gone?” The word was a jagged rasp as his lungs ceased to work. He pushed past her into Imogen’s chambers. The room was stripped of her presence, looking as cold and hollow as his own halls before she arrived. On the vanity sat the letter addressed toYour Grace.
He read it twice, his fingers trembling as he gripped the parchment. He found her resignation, request for a reference and the inn’s address, but the formality of the words felt like a knife in his back.
“She’s right,” he muttered aloud to himself, collapsing onto the edge of the mattress where he had comforted her only hours before. “If I keep her, I destroy her. If I marry her, thetontears her to pieces. What future is that?”
Yet the realization left him feeling empty and restless, a man in a big house with no map for this grief.
A soft sob from the doorway made him look up. Arthur and Philip stood there, looking small and stripped of their usual mischief.
“Is she coming back?” Philip asked, his voice small and trembling. “Please tell me she just had to go away to visit some distant relative, or something like that?”
“No, Philip,” Ambrose said, his throat tightening as he watched Arthur’s chin wobble. “She has… found it necessary to move on.”
“Oh, Uncle,” Arthur cried. “It isn’t fair! She is the only governess we have ever liked!”
“Is it something that we did wrong?” Phillip asked, his voice tight.
“Never,” Ambrose said, as he put a hand on both of their shoulders. “Miss Lewis is her own person, and if she has chosen to leave with such haste… I am sure it is for a good reason and could not be helped. We will find a suitable replacement?—”
“You cannot just replace Miss Lewis!” Arthur said as tears pooled in his eyes.
“She knows so much about history and France, Uncle,” Philip added. “She’s also so funny and brings us outside. Our other governesses kept us in the schoolroom for hours, and I?—”
“That is enough, boys. I will find a suitable replacement, and there is nothing more to be done about this situation.”
The twins retreated quietly, not saying another word as their footsteps echoed down the hall until silence. Their silence was an indictment of his failure, the feeling settling heavy on Ambrose’s chest. He turned back to the housekeeper, who now waited by the door.
“Find a replacement, Mrs. Higgins,” he ordered, though his voice lacked its usual iron edge. “Interview everyone in London if you must. I do not care what it takes.”
“As you wish, Your Grace,” she said with a curtsy, leaving Ambrose alone with his churning thoughts.
He retreated to his study and sat down in his leather chair behind the desk, swirling a glass of brandy he didn’t touch. He knew the truth. No one would ever connect with the boys, or with him, as she had. He was a duke who could finish a contract, but he had lost the only person who made him feel as though he belonged in the world.
Ambrose sat in the darkness, not bothering to draw the curtains back, wallowing in the scent of her lavender soap that still haunted the air of Welton. He watched the dust motes dance in a stray beam of sunlight, mocking him with their aimless freedom. He reached out to the desk, his thumb tracing the jagged edge of the seal on her letter. The parchment felt like ice against his skin.
A suitable replacement. That is a laugh.
