Page 12 of When She Was a Governess
After Davies left, Henry lay in bed staring at the canopy above. The fire crackled softly in the grate, casting dancing shadows on the ceiling.
Marry Miss Ashford.
The idea should have been ridiculous. She was his employee. His governess. A woman he barely knew beyond her excellent care of Amelia.
Except she wasn’t just the governess anymore, was she? She was Lady Sophia Ashford. A duke’s sister. A woman of quality who’d been forced into service by circumstances beyond her control. A woman who loved his niece with devotion. A woman who’d wept in his study that very afternoon at the thought of leaving.
Henry rolled onto his side, punching his pillow into a more comfortable shape. Tomorrow he would think clearly. Tomorrow he would decide what to do.
Chapter Three
The day afterLord Montrose’s visit to the nursery, Sophia stared into the mirror in her room, feeling a thousand years old. Her eyes were red and puffy from crying herself to sleep for the second night in a row. Her stomach had been off, thus she’d only picked at her dinner the night before.
Nevertheless, she washed her face and fixed her hair into a simple knot at the nape of her neck. She put on one of her gray gowns, buttoning it up the front, listening for the sounds of Amelia’s waking. The child slept soundly and almost always woke up mimicking the sun, all beams and light. Sophia always woke an hour before to make sure she was prepared for the little one’s energetic disposition. Her days had been full of happy routines, all centered around her little charge. What would Amelia eat for breakfast? Was she warm enough? Was she happy? Without those questions filling her days, Sophia would be hollow, purposeless, a shell going through motions that no longer mattered.
Sophia’s room occupied the northwest corner of the top floor, a modest space that had housed governesses for generations. The narrow window overlooked the kitchen garden rather than the sea, but on clear mornings, she could glimpse a sliver of blue horizon if she pressed her cheek to the glass. The room held the essentials and little more: a single bed with a faded quilt in muted blues, a plain oak wardrobe that required a firm hand to close properly, and a washstand with a chippedporcelain basin. Her greatest luxury was the small writing desk positioned to catch what light the window offered, its surface scarred from years of previous occupants but sturdy enough for her needs. A braided rug, worn thin in the center, provided some warmth against the bare floorboards.
Worse than her own grief was imagining Amelia’s. The child had lost both her parents before she even had a chance to know them, just as she’d lost her mother. What would it do to her, waking one morning to find Miss Sophia simply gone? Would she think she’d done something wrong? Would she cry?
She knew, bone-deep, what it felt like to be ripped from the one parent you loved. How it hollowed you out. How you lay awake wishing it were all a nightmare from which one would wake.
She would miss everything. Amelia’s first lost tooth. The day she learned to write her name. Her fifth birthday, her tenth, her wedding day. Someone else would braid her hair and hear her secrets and sit up with her when she was sick. Someone else would be there for all the moments Sophia had been foolish enough to imagine would be hers.
Her brothers thought they were saving her, offering her a future beyond the nursery. They didn’t understand they were asking her to amputate part of herself. There was no future that mattered if Amelia wasn’t in it.
A tap on the door startled her. She hurried to see who it was, surprised to find Mrs. Bromley waiting in the hallway. “Sorry to disturb you at such an early hour, Miss Ford, but I have this for you.” She held out a folded piece of paper. “Lord Montrose asked me to bring this to you first thing this morning.”
Her heart skipped a beat. A note from Lord Montrose. Would he ask her to leave today? The idea made her hands tremble with fear. “Thank you, Mrs. Bromley.”
“He’s asked me to wait until you read it so that I might report back to him.”
“Yes, of course.” Her voice shook as much as her hands as she opened the note.
Miss Ashford,
Would you join me in the library at ten o’clock this morning. There is a matter of some importance I wish to discuss with you.
Montrose
“He wants to see me,” Sophia said. “Mid-morning.”
“I’ll ask Lucy to look after the child,” Mrs. Bromley said.
Mrs. Bromley was the type of woman who made everything run smoothly, without ever drawing attention to herself. Her figure was trim, and she moved through Montrose Manor’s corridors without sound. Sophia had heard the maids complain that they could never hear her coming. Her soft brown hair, threaded liberally with silver, was always neatly pinned beneath her housekeeper’s cap, and her gray-blue eyes, intelligent and observant, were also sensitive and kind. She dressed impeccably in black bombazine with a chatelaine of keys at her waist that clinked softly when she walked. A sound that had become to Sophia as much a part of Montrose Manor as the sea wind against the windows.
“Thank you,” Sophia said. “Should I pack my things? Will he be asking me to leave?”
An odd look passed over Mrs. Bromley’s face, as if she knew something she could not say. “I do not believe that will be necessary.”
“Do you know why he wants to speak with me?”
“You’ll learn of it soon enough, Miss Ashford.”
Ashford. Emphasized. She knew.
“Did the lord tell you?” Sophia asked.
“Just this morning.” A hint of hurt showed in the older woman’s eyes.
