Page 39 of The Governess and the Brooding Duke
How she had hated the bairn that grew inside of her.
She had been disgusted by him when he had been born. And when he was quiet for a moment she had thought perhaps her worries had ended.
She was well acquainted with how dark your thoughts could become when you were grieving and wounded and twisted up in your soul.
And even though she wanted now to offer some protection to the child, she understood that Michael and Elizabeth needed to drain the poison from within them by giving voice to these terrible, awful feelings inside of them. Maybe when she taught them about childbirth, they would be able to understand. Hold it all at a distance and comprehend that these were the sorts of things that happened, and it was not done with intent. It had taken that kind of knowledge for her to be able to put her own memories at a distance. To be able to examine them dispassionately. But, until then, sometimes rage was what saw you through.
But she held him, because no one had held her. She held him, because his mother was gone, and she wondered if anyone had held him since.
She was not a woman given to these sorts of displays. She did not foster emotional closeness with her charges.
But it was the same realisation she had had about the babe last night. Someone had to be there like this.
Someone had to care.
Their father...
He was lost in whatever his own grief was wringing from him, and he could not be what they needed.
It made her ache.
This sort of fractured pain in this family.
‘You don’t know anything,’ he said, pushing her.
And she let him.
What could she say? That she did. That she had grown up with nothing and no one and knew what it was like to be lonely. That she knew how it was to be in pain and to have no one to reach out to.
That would mean exposing herself. And she did not wish to do that.
‘We do not have to bring the babe in here,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry.’
They both looked at her, shocked at her apology. ‘I’m sorry for him too. My feelings have not changed. But I am sorry that it hurts you so.’
If they could see that that at least was revolutionary. That she offered them recognition of their feelings.
It was all she could do. Because to say anything more would expose herself, and she couldn’t bear it. Not after the past few days had left her scraped raw.
She was exhausted again by the end of the day, and by the time she had to go and face the Duke in his study she was not sure how she would bear standing beneath that imperious blue gaze again. He saw into her, and she could not see into him. She had no idea what he felt. What he cared about.
He cared about protecting the people in his household, that was true. But he did not seem to know how to connect with them. Did he love them? Did he even love his children? Since that first day she had not seen him interact with them. He asked for a distant report, and that was all. She had told him that she would make no more suggestions, and yet she did not think that could go on.
They were drowning on land, without their father to reach out and save them.
He spoke of the Duchess as if she had been a warm and loving mother, and she wondered if the Duke had been as well, but the Duchess had taken the warmth in this house with her. Perhaps it had only ever been her.
Perhaps he had treated her just the same as he did his children. Perhaps they had been the family, they had been the love, and now it was gone from them.
All of it seemed tragic.
She walked in without thinking to knock.
She realised her mistake when his head jerked up.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said.
‘I was expecting you,’ he replied.
