***
Later that morning, after a breakfast tray had been ceremoniously delivered to Miss Collard’s room by a proud Rosie, after the children had been reassured and settled into their routines, after the household had returned to some semblance of normalcy, Nathaniel found himself standing outside the library door.
He was not sure why he had come here. Miss Collard was still resting—he had checked on her earlier and found her looking considerably better, if still tired—and the children were occupied with Mrs McConnor. He should be in his study, catching up on the work he had neglected during the night.
Instead, he pushed open the library door and stepped inside.
The room was quiet, filled with the soft grey light of an overcast morning. The fire had been built up by some industrious servant, and its warmth reached out to embrace him as he crossed to his brother’s desk.
Edward’s desk. The desk where his brother had sat and written letters and managed the estate and lived his life before tragedy had stolen him away.
Nathaniel ran his fingers along the worn leather of the chair, remembering.
Edward had always been the better of them. The responsible one, the reliable one, the one who knew how to be a husband and father without even trying. Nathaniel had watched him from the outside, had admired and envied him in equal measure, had never imagined that he would one day be called upon to fill his brother’s shoes.
But he was filling them now. Slowly, imperfectly, with countless mistakes and missteps along the way—but he was trying. He was showing up. He was being present.
And that, he thought, was perhaps enough. Perhaps that was all anyone could really do.
“I don’t know if you can hear me,” he said quietly, speaking to the empty room, to the memory of his brother that seemed to linger here among the books and the familiar furniture. “But I am trying, Edward. I am trying to be what they need. What you would have wanted me to be.”
No answer came, of course. He had not expected one. The dead did not speak, except in memory and dream.
But Nathaniel thought, just for a moment, that he felt something—a warmth, a presence, an approval that had nothing to do with the fire in the grate.
“I think I am falling in love with her,” he continued, the confession spilling out before he could stop it. “Miss Collard. Serena.” He laughed softly, running a hand through his dishevelled hair. “I know what you would say. That I’m being a fool, that it’s impossible, that society will never accept it. But you married beneath you too, didn’t you? You broke the rules for love, and you never regretted it.”
He paused for a moment, then continued. “I think she might care for me too. I don’t know for certain. I might be imagining it, seeing what I want to see. But there’s something between us, Edward. Something real. Something that matters.”
He paused again, gathering his courage.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do about it. I don’t have a plan, not yet. But I know I can’t keep hiding from this. I can’t keep pretending that she’s just the governess and I’m just her employer and there’s nothing more to it than that.”
Another pause. Another steadying breath.
“I’m going to try, Edward. I’m going to try to be brave, like you were. I’m going to try to build something real, something lasting, something worth having.”
He straightened, squaring his shoulders as though preparing for battle.
“Wish me luck,” he said. “I suspect I’m going to need it.”
And then, feeling lighter than he had in months—years, perhaps—Nathaniel left the library and went to find the woman he was beginning to admit he loved.
***
He found her in the garden.
She should not have been out of bed—that was his first thought, tinged with exasperation. It had been barely twelve hours since the worst of her discomfort, and here she was, walking slowly among the rain-soaked flower beds, her face lifted to the weak morning sun.
His second thought was that he had never seen anyone more beautiful.
She was wearing a simple day dress—not one of her usual dark, practical gowns, but something lighter, a soft blue that matched the sky now that the storm had passed. Her hair was pinned up loosely, tendrils escaping to curl around her face, and there was a colour in her cheeks that had been absent the day before.
She saw him approaching and stopped, waiting for him to reach her.
“Miss Collard.” He fell back on formality automatically, though the name felt strange on his tongue after calling her Serena in the darkness of the previous night. “Should you be out of bed?”
“Probably not,” she admitted. “But I could not bear to stay indoors a moment longer. The storm has passed, and the garden is lovely after the rain.”
