Page 26 of The Governess and the Brooding Duke
She felt a rush of relief flood her. And sadness at the same time.
‘My wife’s cousin, the Earl of Blackwater, is paying a visit, along with his wife and some business associates. They are en route to Bath and decided it was time they paid personal respects. Upon the afternoon we will go out shooting, and then we will take dinner, after which I am certain conversation will run long.’
‘Yes. Of course.’ She did not know why she felt altered by this change. Why it felt like a loss. ‘Then I will be sure to make a written account of the day and leave it on your desk.’
‘A good plan.’
‘Thank you, Your Grace.’
She nearly fled. She had no idea what was taking her over. She was a woman of unparalleled control. And men... Men did not...
She put her hand to her chest as she walked back to her room, pausing outside the nursery, her heart aching. Feeling bruised.
That was what happened when you let a man touch you. The babe.
The babe.
And for what? What?
It was all pain and fear and absolutely nothing to be offered to a woman. His wife had died. She had died having that babe.
Being in his bed had killed her.
And she knew that women did it every day. And did not die. Did not get with child. And now she knew how to prevent it, because she had made herself an expert on these things, in a desperate bid to understand.
But it did not...
The pull to him was unconscionable. Untenable.
She could not bear it. She could not allow that spark to turn into a flame.
She was twenty-two years old, and she had never looked at a man and found him beautiful.
She did not wish to do so now.
She went to her room and began to disrobe. Yes, he was beautiful.
This was what she needed to do. She needed to do with herself what she would do with one of the children experiencing a feeling they did not wish to have. You could not always deny things. Sometimes you had to take them out and examine them, turn them from a mystery into something less interesting.
As long as it was sitting there untried in the back of her mind she would see him and feel unsettled by these feelings.
He was a starkly beautiful man. There were few who would deny that to be true.
Her reaction to him was simply down to the fact that she was unfamiliar with thinking so.
But it was an everyday occurrence for a woman to look at a man and find him pleasing to her eyes. It did not mean she needed to draw closer to him. It did not mean he looked at her and thought she was beautiful.
It did not have to connect with activities in the bedroom. It did not.
She would never touch him. That she looked at him and saw beauty was simply down to the fact that he was beautiful. Like looking at a sunset. An ocean.
It was not special. And it did not have to mean more than that.
She would look at him from now on and think he was no more than a sunrise. A thing to be enjoyed, certainly, but nothing that you could possess, and nor should you want to.
There. She had accepted it. Admitted it. And put it in its place. And she would be free of all the unwanted feelings she could not begin to untangle.
Her thoughts about his strength. The way that he had looked at her when she had said he was her master.
