Page 42 of The Governess and the Brooding Duke
‘I’m not preventing you from having more to do with the child if you wish.’
‘He should be christened.’
‘There will be a time,’ he said, his voice rough. ‘But it is not now.’
She had been a mother unable to hold her child. For so many reasons, and this child’s mother was much the same. She felt... She was tired of feeling weak. What had happened last night had not necessarily made her feel weak. If anything, it had proven to her how much she had changed. Fear might have shaped her these last years, but at least it had been with purpose. It had accomplished something. It had made her stronger.
And so... Perhaps she needed to be stronger than her grief from all those years ago because they could not be stronger than their grief from these months.
‘Your Grace,’ she said. ‘I...’
‘On the subject of the infant we have nothing to say to one another.’
He was icy then.
She looked at him, her brow knit together. She felt... Drawn to him. Compelled. Two nights ago, when she had fallen apart, he had held her together.
She wanted to do the same for him. To hold him steady so he could feel.
So he could take a full breath, for how could he? He was protected by that wall, but he was trapped by it too.
Her heart hurt so badly it was difficult not to cry out with the pain.
Before she realised what she was doing, she had crossed the space. She came to stand before his desk, the pull inside of her too great to bear.
He looked up at her, the blue of his eyes the only real thing.
She rounded the side of his desk and moved even closer to him. No protection now, for that desk had been a barrier and it was not any more.
Without pausing to think, she lowered herself before him. As she had done earlier for Michael. She looked up, lifted her trembling hand to place it on his cheek.
It was rough with stubble from the day, and hot. So very hot. She slowly moved her thumb back, then forward, as she had done when comforting the babe. But immediately she was seized by a sensation that was not maternal in any fashion.
The desire to rest her head on his lap, to have him cradle her head...
She looked down and noticed his hands, large and battered, resting on his thighs, and her heart pounded, painfully.
It served as a jolt back to reality. She scrambled back, getting to her feet.
‘Forgive me.’
‘Mary...’
‘Miss Smith,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘It is Miss Smith. And I am sorry. It’s only that... You’re in pain and... But it is not my pain. It is not my pain to bear.’
She turned and practically fled the study.
It was all of these things. She was distracted. She was overwrought.
These feelings for him had been building this past week, and she had been in control of it. She had been able to deal with it, until last night. When she had gone into the babe’s room and wept along with him. It was... It was unbearable sometimes, what the world did to you.
And she was confusing him again with one of her charges. He was not.
She needed to keep her distance from him.
She needed to keep herself from falling to pieces. And she did not know how to do that. Because it was not that man in the study last night who had undone her. It was the care that he had shown her after.
It was the way that she, even with fresh reminders of the perfidy of men, wished to lean into him, not pull away from him.
