Page 24 of The Gambler Wagers Her Baron

Payton’s chest seized as she gripped Joy tighter to keep her from tumbling from the bed.

Gradually, Joy eased back into her arms.

“Can I tell you a story, sweet girl?” Payton wasn’t sure what had made her speak, but when the girl burrowed closer, she continued. “When I was a child, no older than you, I lost my mother, too. I was lost, aching inside, without the urge to leave my bed for days on end. I didn’t eat, just slept all day long. Never would I allow the drapes to be parted and the bright sun to enter.”

She wasn’t sure the child listened, but the tension eased from Joy’s small body.

“Everything I loved was taken from me when my mother passed away. You see, I hadn’t a father, only my mother…and my siblings. I was so young and scared. Who would care for me? Who would tuck me into bed, read me a story, and extinguish the candle at my bedside when I fell asleep? I worried I would burn our home down because the candle would shrink until the flame found wood. I fretted about who would make certain I woke for my lessons in the morning. I cried over who would select the perfect ribbon to match my pinafore. Such trivial things to fret over, I know.” Payton couldn’t help her small laugh. How innocent and guileless she’d once been. “However, as a child, those were the ways I knew my mother loved me, and without her, who was there to fill that place? My siblings teased me mercifully, as Abram does you, and I mistook their jests for dislike. But it was they—Marce, Sam, Jude, and Garrett—who came together and proved our family…our love…was not ruined with our mother gone. We were strong, we were resilient…we have thrived, just as our mother taught us to.”

The words left her in a rush, feelings she’d never shared with another soul, not even her siblings, but Joy needed to hear them, needed to know they were true for Payton and would be for her, as well. Her mother’s words from that long-ago night had been seared into Payton’s every desire and need. There wasn’t a day she didn’t remember her mother’s final musings, heard through the thin wooden walls at Craven House, and know that she would do exactly as her mother bid.

“Until the day you find your strength—which I know is within you—I will be here to blow out your candle at night, to read you a story before you find your slumber, and to select your ribbons come morning. That I can promise you.”

Even as the words left her, Payton feared it was a promise she wasn’t fated to keep without giving up a part of herself and the path she was forming for her future.

The deep, even rise and fall of Joy’s chest told Payton that the child was once again asleep and had likely not heard her governess’s promise.

It was a commitment Payton had no right to make, and one she could not be sure she could keep. If the baron ever discovered her deception, she’d be relieved of her post and would have no way to fulfill her promise to Joy.

But for this night, Payton was here. And come morning, Joy would find her pretty, pale pink gown laid out for her…with matching pink ribbons for her hair.

Damon pressed his back into the wood paneling of the hallway, the shoulder-high railing biting into his flesh through his thin linen shirt as Miss Samuels’ voice fell silent in Joy’s room. A stranger was soothing his child’s pain. A governess was the one holding Joy close, rocking her until she fell once more into sleep.

All because Damon was not strong enough to do it.

No, he was strong. He just kept his hurt from his children in hopes that they would not fall into the despair that relentlessly clawed at him. He remained distant to protect them. He wasn’t blind, Damon knew how their mother’s death had affected them, how deeply they were both scarred by it. He had hoped to save them from another such event, were he to suddenly be no more. They would mourn their mother, but if they knew him naught, they would be free from pain when he was taken.

The absurdity of his thinking had never been more apparent than it was in that moment.

He’d misguidedly stumbled through the last several years genuinely believing his children would heal faster, more thoroughly, without his overwhelming despair shadowing their recovery. He held on so tightly to the belief that he had nothing to offer them on their course to healing that he hadn’t realized that the tie binding their family had frayed and unraveled, sending him plummeting, while his children clung to what little strand of promise was left.

That minuscule thread was Miss Samuels.

It should be him holding his little girl, soothing her back to sleep with tales of her mother and promises for the future. Instead, it was a governess that would likely be gone in a month’s time, leaving his daughter to mourn the loss of yet another woman she’d come to care for.

What would become of them all when the governess left them? Did his children care for Miss Samuels?

Could her story be true? Surely, she was only saying what needed to be said to calm Joy and return her to bed.

Damon was the only man who could understand what his children had been through and the loss that plagued his household. His grief seemed wholly and innately his own, not to be experienced or understood by any other person. How could anyone know the depths of losing a woman such as Sarah? Damon had a decade of memories with his late wife. Every moment since his eighteenth year was colored by her presence. She’d been by his side when he gained his majority. She’d held his hand after each of his parents’ deaths, and when Damon took his father’s title. Their quiet wedding, their yearly journeys to Bath and Dorset, their winters at Falconcrest, and the births of their children.

Those were memories only Damon shared with Sarah. No one else.

His children ached for their mother just as much as Damon did. Why should this utterly shock him? They’d had fewer years with her, but that did not diminish her value to them or the memory of her.

The creak of Joy’s bed drifted into the hallway.

Damon should seek his own chambers before Miss Samuels caught him in the hall, listening to her private conversation. Or, worse yet, take his presence as his belief that she was incapable of fulfilling her responsibilities. Despite everything, Damon needed Miss Samuels—not for himself but for his children.

He was incapable of being there for Joy and Abram, but despite all of Miss Samuels’ flaws, she was the only one who could soothe his children’s pain.

“Good night, Joy.” Miss Samuels’ hushed whisper held a quiet compassion he’d never heard in her tone before, especially when she was speaking with his unruly children. “Sweet dreams. I will be waiting in the morning.”

Damon froze when footsteps started his way. The governess would step into the hallway in but a moment, and there was no place for him to hide, no excuse for his eavesdropping.

“Miss Samuels?” his daughter’s sleepy voice called out.

Though he couldn’t see into the room, he knew the governess turned back toward Joy.