Imogen felt as though a cold blade had been driven into her chest. She knew as much, but to hear the words come from Mrs. Higgins, a woman she had grown to respect and care for, was more than she could take.
“I had to do it, Mrs. Higgins,” she whispered, a stray tear rolling down her cheek without her consent. “It is for their future. If Istayed, the scandal would follow them for the rest of their lives. Tell them… tell them I am sorry.”
“I’ll tell them no such thing, Miss Lewis… and I am sorry for being so frank, but someone must be,” Mrs. Higgins replied, her voice stern and sharp. “Apologies don’t fill an empty house. It was hollow before, and you filled it… and now… I am going beyond my station saying this, but…” she trailed off.
“What is it?”
“You have left a hole in that man’s heart, because what is a Duke other than a man? And a wider one in those children’s lives. Know loss only to overcome it, and then to be blindsided once more?”
“Oh, Mrs. Higgins,” Imogen said, tears prickling behind her eyes once more. “I never meant to hurt anyone!”
“It is a tragedy, Miss Lewis. Pure and simple. I can see you hurt as well, but it does not change things.”
“It is for the best,” Imogen insisted, though her voice wavered as the tears began to swell behind her emerald eyes. “One day, they will see that. When they are older, they will understand?—”
“One day is a long time for a child to wait, let alone for adulthood,” the housekeeper said, turning to leave. “Good day to you, and good luck. I truly wish you the best.”
The door clicked shut, leaving Imogen alone in the stifling silence of the small room. She stared at the Duke’s seal, a mocking reminder of the world she had abandoned. Her throat grew dry at Mrs. Higgins’ words, which only continued to echo against the peeling wallpaper.
It is a tragedy… tell me something I do not know, Mrs. Higgins! Oh, how my heart aches!
The silence in the Blue Bell Inn didn’t just hang in the air. It pressed down on her like a burial shroud. Imogen lay back, letting the lumpy mattress swallow her, staring aimlessly at a water stain on the ceiling that bloomed like a dark, yellowing bruise. She had no escape plan, no map for a life that didn’t involve the schoolroom at Welton. All she had was the envelope, which she dared not open to read.
She clutched the Duke’s reference to her chest, her fingers digging into the thick, expensive parchment until it crinkled. The sharp corners of the paper bit into her palms, but she welcomed the sting. It was the only thing that distracted her.
It is for their own good,she told herself. She had lost so much in her life, and yet losing them was something different altogether.
She repeated that same phrase interminablyas the words became a frantic prayer.
Yet,their own goodwas a concept she had been fed since she was a child, usually as a justification for her own erasure. She closed her eyes, and suddenly she wasn’t in a drafty inn, but backin the cold, marble halls of Marden Manor. She could almost smell the cloying scent of her stepmother’s perfume and hear the low, rhythmic thud of her father’s cane in the hallway as it smacked the floor.
Lord Marden, the Viscount who had sired her in a moment of “reckless indiscretion” with a lowly dancer, had been a man of rigid shadows and endless contradictions. He had provided a roof over her head, yes, but he had denied her a voice, any real existence in the world beyond those halls. Yet, there were times of kindness, as her mind flitted back to moments of poetry reading in the library and small tokens of affection, like her mother’s locket.
“You are a ward of this household, Imogen,” he had told her when she was seven, the memory interrupting her train of thought. “To the world, you are a charity. To me, you represent a debt I must pay. You will be educated and cared for, that is all. Never forget the distinction or what you are.”
For fifteen years, she had moved through the halls like a quiet shadow, the wordFathera song she was never permitted to sing. From the high gallery, she would watch him, a silent observer of a life she was meant to share, as he poured his more public warmth into Julia and the bright faces of the ton.
She lived in the soft sighs of the library, kept like a cherished but hidden tome. She knew that there was affection in the way he held her at times when they were alone, reading sweet poetry with her. Yet, it was an affection that lived only in secret. And when he passed, the fragile safety of being his “ward” dissolvedtoo quickly into absolute midnight black. She pulled her shawl tighter, trying to ward off the memory.
Oh, the circumstances that have brought me to this very moment!
The image of Julia, the widowed Viscountess, flashed in her mind then. The woman’s face hardened into pure triumph the moment the Viscount was in the ground.
“The money your father left is for your ‘upbringing,’ Imogen,” Julia had sneered, tossing a maid’s apron at her feet. “And since you are now of age to work, you shall earn your keep. No more freeloading for you, girl. You will be useful, or you will be in the gutter. Choose wisely. As you know, the world is not kind to women like you, or your mother…”
Imogen had chosen survival. She had learned to pin hair until her fingers bled, to move through rooms without casting so much as a shadow, and to accept that she was a creature of service, not of sentiment. She would never know love or freedom. She had been conditioned to believe that her presence was a stain that had to be managed, much like the blot on the ceiling she stared at. For as long as she could remember, she was a scandal that could only be mitigated by her own invisibility.
Useful, quiet, grateful, and never loved.
That was the mantra she had lived by until she reached the Duke’s household. Until Ambrose had looked at her not as a debt or a servant, but as a woman. Until Arthur and Philip hadcrawled into her lap, seeking the very warmth she had been denied her entire life.
“I am protecting them from becoming me,” she whispered to the empty room. “They will never know the pain that scandal can cause, not of my volition.”
If she stayed, thetonwould eventually sniff out the truth of her birth. They would whisper that the Duke’s governess was nothing more than the bastard brat of a dead Viscount and a stage girl. The scandal would cling to the boys like soot, only adding to all they had suffered. It would tarnish their names, their prospects, their very bloodline.
She thought of Philip throwing his books and Arthur huddled on the floor in the school room. She knew in her heart that she was teaching them the hardest lesson she had ever learned, even though she was outside of those hallowed halls. They would learn that the people who are supposed to stay are often the first to leave.
Imogen rolled onto her side, the Duke’s seal finally cracking under the pressure of her grip. She had spent a lifetime being useful to others while remaining nothing to herself. Now, for the first time, she had tried to be everything to a family, and the cost was proving more than her soul could afford.
