Page 108 of The Governess and the Brooding Duke
‘You would move into a room next to mine.’
‘Jane’s room,’ she said.
‘Mary,’ he said, ‘I’m not trying to insult you with this offer. I want more. I was not satisfied welcoming my brother and his wife into the home and not being free to have you by my side.’
But they could not marry. He did not have to say that. A scandalous union it would be. A governess from nowhere. It would be better for him to have no wife, but she could not be his Duchess. His Duchess, of course not. What a foolish thing. A girl from Scotland who’d had a child at thirteen years of age could not be a duchess. She could be a governess, and she could be a mistress.
But she knew that. She did.
What was the purpose in being wounded by it? Why would she accept nothing when she was never going to be allowed to have everything? She could have this.
And yet it did fill her with a sense of grief, because she did love the children. She did.
They were wonderful. She adored them. God in heaven, she did not wish to surrender their care to somebody else.
And she would not be their mother. Not really. And what would happen when her reputation was called into question by their friends...?
She knew that West was in a position where his taking of a mistress would not be extraordinary. It was only she who would experience the consequences.
She would be allowed into certain places that wives were not. If he went to a gentleman’s club, she would likely be able to sit with him in certain contexts. A lover could be welcomed in places that ladies were not.
Just like a lover could be treated to rougher sex. Could be asked to get on her knees and put her mouth on his cock. She did not resent it, for she appreciated the honesty that existed between them. And yet. And yet it was just so difficult. To realise that she was ending up quite where she had hoped not to. But it was different now. It was. Because when she had thought of this fate before, the man hadn’t been West. And now that it was West it was not simply a question of disgracing herself for a man.
It was about whether or not she wanted to solidify her connection to him. This was all he could offer.
And there was something tragic to it. But like all of her life. She had just thought this, only recently. She would rather have the joy that she had with him, and risk what came with it. She would rather have this than have respectability. Respectability she had never really had anyway. She had always been a pretender to this life. It had never been hers. But he could be.
And she could be his. And that was the deepest, most well-loved thing about his strength.
How much she wanted him to own her. Hold her.
There was tragedy in it. The children could never really be hers. But they weren’t anyway. The moment they didn’t need her she would be asked to leave, cut off as if she were nothing.
‘If something were to happen between us,’ he said, his voice rough. ‘If something were to happen, you would be cared for, all the rest of your life.’
‘Do you think that you will finish with me?’ she asked, her voice small.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I don’t. I think that I will want you for all of my days. But I care too much for you to not make this plain.’
Yet again, his strength was in full effect.
Yet again, he was showing all the ways in which he was not like those other men.
He wasn’t.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I will be your mistress.’
She felt as if a layer had been stripped away from her. Her heart, possibly her soul, she felt joy, mixed with impossible pain.
This was the life a girl like her could have.
Truly, it was a life far beyond what she should have been able to aspire to.
This man was offering her an allowance for all of her life.
He was a duke. He would make sure she was cared for. And no, she would never be accepted in proper society, but she never would have been. Not ever. She was only a governess. She was a servant. And now she would be a disgraced woman, but the truth was she always had been. If anyone other than West had known the truth about her past, she would’ve been branded then.
They would not care if it were rape, she would be considered ruined. A woman who had given birth to a child.
