The Governess Affair

“That meant something to you. Something real.”

“Of course it did.” He sat up and took her hand. “I won’t tell falsehoods about this. What we have is a species of love.”

She let out a breath in surprise.

“A transitory, short-lived one,” he explained. “A perfect sunrise—seen once, remembered always. Never duplicated.”

“Never duplicated?” Her fingers bit into his. “Why ever not?”

“Because tomorrow you’ll go to your farm. And I—”

“It doesn’t have to be that way.” Her hair was in wild, chestnut disarray around her shoulders and her eyes were wide and gray.

Hugo moved a lock of her hair aside. “You can’t stay with me, Serena.” His words sounded harsh. “Recall who I work for.”

She blanched, but hesitated only a moment before raising her chin. “You could—”

“I could what? Come with you? I suppose I could, at that. But I won’t. I have five hundred pounds waiting on the outcome of this affair with the duke. That’s the only chance a pugilist like me has to come into that much money. With that, I can truly become someone. If I go with you—”

“You are someone.” She frowned.

You’ll never amount to anything. Hugo let out a breath. “Not enough.”

“You are. Hugo, if you’d only—”

“It’s not enough,” he repeated grimly. He pushed away from her and swung his feet over the edge of the bed. “Do you hear? It’s not enough for me.”

“Not enough what?”

Such a reasonable question.

“Because you’re intelligent and successful,” Serena was saying, “and you’re a good man. That thing with the pins—it was lovely. You have a way of putting me at ease.”

“That’s nothing,” he said. “My mother was always doing things like that for me. She gave me a magic rock when I was young, and told me if I slept with it under my pillow, nothing would happen on the next day that I couldn’t bear.”

Beside him, Serena sucked in a breath. But he wasn’t ashamed of telling her the truth. He had suffered through days that had made him doubt his mother’s stone.

He brushed those memories away. “When I was older, she took an old pickle jar to the park. She told me to fill it with all the most important things. Then she buried it deep, deep, where my father couldn’t find it no matter what he did.”

It had been drizzling, but he’d scarcely felt the wet.

Do you have a jar, Mama?

She’d smiled and shook her head.

We should make one for you.

Her smile had fixed in place. Then she’d let out a sigh. I’ve buried too many children, she’d finally said. I’m not burying anything else that matters. Never again.

“Your mother sounds like a lovely woman,” Serena said beside him.

“My mother told me I would be somebody.” It had been reflexive soothing on her part—sheer contradiction after his father’s tirades.

“Maybe you should listen to her.”

You can be anyone, she’d told him, over and over.

A rich man? he’d asked.

The richest coal miner’s son in all of England, she promised.

“When I left home,” he finally said, “I was fourteen. I’d gone into the mines for the first time three days before, and there had been an accident. A little cave-in, nothing serious, but I was caught in the dark for five hours with nothing to do but imagine my air slowly being used up. After I got out, I said I wasn’t going back.” He inhaled. “My father disagreed. He broke my nose and three ribs with a broomstick. He told me I wasn’t good enough, that I’d never amount to anything.”

“Oh, Hugo.” Her hand rose to trace along his jaw. “You can’t still believe him—not after all these years.”

He shook his head. “I got away because my mother stepped in—drawing my father’s anger down on her. The last thing I remember, scrambling out the door, is the sound of her screams.”

Her arm crept around him. “Oh, Hugo,” she repeated.

“She passed away a few weeks later.” He could scarcely draw breath. “So it’s not enough yet, what I’ve managed.” He balled his hands. “It’s not enough to make up for leaving her. She could not have lost so much for a mere nobody.”

He’d gone back to the park when he’d heard the news, and dug for that jar.

I’m going to be the richest coal miner’s son in all England, he’d promised the grubby glass. And then he’d buried it again where she’d once left it—and hidden his other desires so deep that even Serena could not unearth them.

“And so that’s where we are.” He put his arm around her and inhaled the sweet, lingering scent of her perfume. “You can’t stay. I won’t leave. And now we both know precisely what it is we’re giving up. It wasn’t a good idea.”

She let out a breath.

“But you’ll be safe and you’ll be well.” He kissed her forehead lightly. “And that will be enough.”

THE STORY, SERENA BELIEVED, would go like this: Hugo would change his mind.

She first believed he would change it when he woke up next to her, blinking away his morning bleariness. And yet he didn’t.

Next she told herself he’d wash his insistence on their separation away with soap and water, or scrape it off alongside the bristles he’d acquired overnight.

He didn’t; he washed and shaved and changed his clothing without once altering his decision.

He would change his mind, Serena decided, in the hack he’d hire to deliver her to the stagecoach yard.

But he said only a few words on the journey—just enough to deliver a quiet greeting when they stopped along the way for Freddy. The three of them traveled in unspeaking silence—Freddy clutching the strap, her gloves wrinkling under the ferocity of her grip, even though their conveyance scarcely swayed.

When they arrived, he made no attempt to purchase passage for himself. Instead, Hugo stood back, pretending to busy himself with Serena’s trunk so that the sisters might speak.

“Well.” Freddy peered around the crowded yard of the inn with a deeply suspicious look, frowning at the ostlers. “I suppose you have to thrust yourself out there, do you not?” She punctuated the end of this sentence with a deep, speaking sigh.

“Yes. I must.”