To Owen, she was… She was her.
How long could this go on? At some point, his sisters would be old enough to no longer need her.
And she had her own dream of a school for girls. If she were careful over these next few years, she could begin investigating properties to lease, other teachers to hire.
There was no place for Owen in her future, nor she in his.
Yet what if, her thoughts had pressed all night. What if…?
If she could catch more air on her face, she could stay awake now. But she’d be more comfortable if she lay on her side as she read. She would merely shift her position a little and then return to her reading.
“Given that this bonnet is in possession of all its ribbons,” a woman’s voice said with humor, “I can only assume it belongs to you and not one of my daughters.”
Cecilia’s eyes flew open. Sitting opposite her was the duchess, wearing a gentle smile as she held Cecilia’s bonnet.
She lurched upright, mortified to the roots of her being to be caught napping by her employer. “My sincerest apologies, Your Grace. The girls went off to gather botanical specimens and I was reading tomorrow’s lesson. I honestly have no excuse for my indolence—”
“Apologies are unnecessary, Miss Holme.” The duchess held up a hand, and her expression was mercifully mild. “This is precisely the sort of day that one takes a little al fresco pisolino. When I was a girl at my parents’ villa outside of Amalfi, I loved nothing more than dozing beneath the leaves of a lemon tree, with my own governess fast asleep beside me.”
Cecilia dipped her head. “You’re very kind. Not many employers look benignly on their staff napping.”
“So long as you do not make a habit of nodding off when you are supposed to be educating my children,” the duchess said, her tone still gentle, but there was no mistaking the iron beneath her words.
“I won’t,” Cecilia vowed, burning with embarrassment. “I never sleep during the day. Today was anomalous.”
“You have been looking rather exhausted these past few days.” The duchess’s dark eyes, so very like her son’s, regarded her thoughtfully. “Are you not sleeping well?”
“I…” She couldn’t explain to her employer that, for the last two nights, Cecilia had been busy shagging her son, and worse, entertaining dreams of things that were impossible. “The weather has been so warm, it sometimes makes it difficult to sleep deeply.”
The duchess gave a small laugh. At Cecilia’s questioning look, she explained, “The difference between what is considered a warm day in England and what we call a warm day in Napoli is vastly different. You poor, pale creatures do not understand what it is like to have the sun truly beat down on you as though you were in the boxing ring, and the sun the favored champion. Oh, but you’ve been abroad.”
“I was in Napoli,” Cecilia said with a nod. “I experienced the baking heat there for myself. The coolest day there was like the height of an English summer.”
Smiling, the duchess offered Cecilia the bonnet. “I found this tumbling across the lawn.”
“My thanks.” She took her hat and returned it to her head, tying the ribbons firmly beneath her chin. Noting the black trim on the duchess’s bonnet, and the dark circles beneath her eyes, Cecilia asked gently, “Forgive me if I am impertinent, Your Grace, but if you are feeling weary, you’re welcome to have a piccolo pisolino here. The girls aren’t due back for…” She consulted the timepiece in her reticule. “A quarter of an hour. I can keep watch while you nap.”
A corner of the duchess’s mouth turned up in a wry half-smile. “It is not so easy to sleep without my husband beside me.” She shot Cecilia a look. “Perhaps in England it is not so usual to discuss with one’s governess one’s sleeping arrangements.”
“It may be somewhat unconventional,” Cecilia allowed. “However, there’s many a custom in England that isn’t entirely useful.”
“How true, Miss Holme.” The duchess exhaled as she smoothed out her black skirts. “We are all learning to exist without the duke. Mi scusi, without my husband. We have a new duke—my son.”
Attempting casualness, Cecilia said, “Your Grace must be pleased with how he’s assumed the role.” Merely speaking obliquely about Owen made her heart pound. It wasn’t typical conversation to discuss one’s lover with his mother—at least, not amongst the British aristocracy.
The duchess’s smile was bittersweet. “Povero bambino, though he is no longer a bambino. He is, as my father would say, un uomo forte.”
Quite forte, Cecilia thought.
“My boy is not a boy,” the duchess went on, and Cecilia was relieved that the older woman did not have the ability to read minds. “He compares himself to his father and tries so very hard. I think he will be a fine duke.”
“He isn’t one yet?”
“He is on his way—he requires experience, yet already in the last few weeks I sense a difference in him. A confidence, and though I am glad of it, I cannot say what has given it to him.” The duchess’s lips quirked. “I would say that it is precisely the sort of swaggering a man possesses when he has a new lover, but Owen has not left the estate since he returned, so that cannot be a possibility. Unless it is someone on the property.”
Cecilia bent her head over her book and ran her hands across its pages, as if she could read what was printed there with her fingers. Every nerve in her body tightened in preparation to flee, yet she made herself sit calmly as though her paramour’s mother wasn’t discussing the probability that her daughters’ governess was sleeping with her son. Granted, the duchess was not English, and did not have the English’s rigid, narrow views about propriety, but even someone used to more lax ideas of respectability would condemn Owen and Cecilia’s affair.
“Though,” the duchess continued, glancing back toward the imposing manor house, “he leaves for London tomorrow, so perhaps there he will find a fine widow or courtesan. Young men have so much fire, you know.”
A strange buzzing filled Cecilia’s head, and with it combining with a sudden, peculiar hollowness, she could barely hear herself say, “Leaving for London?”
“Later today,” the duchess answered. “There are more appointments and meetings, which is the lot of a duke. He has not the luxury of sequestering himself in the country, but I am certain the change of scenery will be good for him. He will have the chance to be amongst people his own age, and though his father is recently gone, he might attend some of the Season’s smaller gatherings.”
“That will be most beneficial,” Cecilia said, manufacturing enthusiasm.
She ought to have known that there would come a time when Owen would leave Tarrington House, and he would seek out the company of his contemporaries. After all, she was nine years older than him, and she was not of his class. A wide chasm divided them, and it was better to keep reminding herself that nothing would bridge that divide than persist in some foolish fantasy that things could continue in perpetuity.
Everything changed. She was mature enough to know that.
Still. She hadn’t anticipated that two nights were all she and Owen would have. After revealing her history to him, he’d been so open, so accepting, when many others would not have been. It showed her the support he’d offered had been genuine, that she could trust every part of herself with him. It had been a long time since she had been able to be vulnerable. Yet she’d done so, secure in the conviction that he wouldn’t hurt her.