Page 111 of The Governess and the Brooding Duke
He was a duke. And she was a girl from nowhere. Who could never be his governess.
She was in love with him. And he was a man who would never be able to love her back.
Chapter Nineteen
He woke up with her wrapped around him. And he knew well that he didn’t deserve that.
He had offered her half. Less than. He had offered her a life of backdoors and secret passageways. Of whispers when she walked past. He had offered her these things as if his body was worthy compensation.
She loved him.
She loved him.
And he felt the wall inside of him quake.
He had loved Jane.
He had.
He had not in the end, and he knew that. Their love had been buried. Behind that wall of grievances they had built.
It had been crushed by it. Destroyed.
And what the years of distance and grievances had not destroyed, that act of betrayal had.
Still he had wept when she’d died.
The woman who had borne him children should not have gone so soon. The woman he had bound his life to.
For he wondered how much of her vibrance had died because of him.
Because of what he could not give.
Because of his brand of love.
And he thought... What? He could spare Mary by not taking her as his wife? That it might somehow trick the devil within him, and make a situation where he could have this, and they could retain their glory without ever having to deal with the realities of life.
She loved him.
And that made all of those hopes and dreams he had been harbouring inside of himself arrive.
They were different, it was true. But was he different enough?
He did not know how to show love in this way.
He was only just learning to show the children, to be the father they needed, he could not...
He feared if he tried this too he would only fail and the stakes were far too high.
He had destroyed his wife.
It was the only way he knew how to be. For his father had been something else entirely. His father had let his emotions go unchecked, and yet they had destroyed all those that they’d touched, and how could he ever guarantee that his own feelings would not do the same?
Because what he felt when he saw Mary was violent. It was intense. Everything that he did to her in bed was a shadow of what existed inside of his soul when it came to her.
How could he be sure? How?
God in heaven.
