Restraint had never felt so much like loss.
Chapter 17
Charlotte stood motionless in the garden long after the duke had gone.
The lantern light trembled faintly in the cold, casting her shadow thin and uncertain against the gravel path. Charlotte could not quite bring herself to move.
It felt as though taking a single step would make the moment irrevocable—would confirm that what had passed between them had not been imagined, not misread, not a private indulgence conjured by candlelight and exhaustion.
He had spoken to her as though she mattered.
Not as a governess. Not as a convenience. But as someone whose presence carried weight. Whose words had been worth hearing.
The ease of it unsettled her most. The quiet laughter. The harmful, fleeting sense that she had been permitted to forget herself—to forget who she was, what she had lost, and where she stood within his world.
Her heart still ached with the echo of it.
That was what frightened her.
Because this was not admiration. And it was no longer harmless gratitude.
She was beginning to fall.
The realization landed with terrifying clarity, stealing her breath. She had felt it in the way his voice had softened when he thanked her, in the way his gaze had held hers a heartbeat too long, in the warmth that had taken root where caution should have lived.
Charlotte pressed a hand to her chest, forcing a steadying breath. Whatever had begun to bloom there had no right to exist.
She had known this from the first moment his attention had lingered, from the first time his concern had sounded almost tender. She had promised herself restraint. Distance. Sense.
And yet—
It had felt pure.
Not indulgent. Not selfish. But something unguarded and honest, as though neither of them had been reaching for more—only recognizing what already was.
The thought tightened her throat.
She could not allow herself to want him. She could not afford longing—not now, not ever again. Want had already cost her everything once. It had ended in silence, in ruin, in learning too late that affection offered no protection from abandonment.
Resolutely, she turned toward the house.
Whatever she felt, she would master it. She must.
Her foot had barely touched the path when footsteps sounded behind her.
Slow. Uneven.
“Well,” a voice drawled, thick with drink and misplaced satisfaction, “look who’s here.”
Charlotte froze.
The sound of her name had not yet been spoken, and still her breath caught painfully in her chest. She knew that voice. She would have known it anywhere—etched as it was into a past she had tried, desperately, to bury.
Slowly, she turned.
William Armitage stood a few paces away, swaying slightly on his feet, his coat rumpled, his cravat loosened with careless familiarity.
His hair had grown longer than fashion dictated, curling untidily at his collar. His eyes—once so earnest, so full of ambition and promise—were now glassy, unfocused, his smile crooked in a way that turned her stomach.
