Chapter One

 

 

“You must be the new governess.”

The voice belonged to a girl of perhaps eleven, standing in the entrance hall of Greystone Hall with her arms crossed and her chin lifted at an angle that suggested she had practised authority before a looking glass. She wore a dove-grey dress that was slightly too mature for her years, and her dark hair had been pinned up in a style better suited to a young woman making her debut than to a child who ought still to have been wearing ribbons.

Miss Serena Collard set down her travelling case and offered what she hoped was a warm, yet professionally appropriate, smile. “I am indeed. And you must be Miss Ella.”

“I am.” The girl’s eyes—grey, like the house, like everything about the place—travelled over Serena with an assessment far too knowing for someone not yet twelve. “You’re younger than the last one.”

“Am I?”

“And prettier. That’s unfortunate.”

Serena blinked. In her four years of governessing—a word she had invented herself during a particularly tedious journey on the mail coach—she had been greeted in many ways. Indifference, certainly. Suspicion, often. Open hostility from children who viewed her as the enemy of all joy and freedom, with distressing regularity. But she had never before been informed that her appearance was a misfortune.

“I beg your pardon?” she said, as it seemed the only reasonable response.

Ella uncrossed her arms, only to clasp her hands before her in a manner that was decidedly governess-like. “The pretty ones never stay. They get ideas. Mrs McConnor says so.”

“And who is Mrs McConnor?”

“The housekeeper. She’s been here since before Uncle Nate was born. She knows everything about everyone.” Ella paused, and for just a moment the practised composure slipped, revealing something younger and far more uncertain beneath. “She said you would probably leave within the fortnight. Like Miss Pearson. And Miss Aldridge before her.”

Something shifted in Serena’s chest—not quite sympathy, for she had learned long ago that sympathy was a dangerous indulgence in her profession, but something adjacent to it. Recognition, perhaps. She knew what it was to brace oneself for loss.

“Miss Ella,” she said lightly, “I have travelled seven hours on the most uncomfortable mail coach in all of England, endured the company of a woman who insisted upon recounting, in extraordinary detail, her digestive complaints, and arrived to find that no one was waiting to receive me at the door. I am tired, I am hungry, and my left boot has developed a squeak that I find personally offensive.” She allowed herself a small smile. “I have not come all this way merely to leave within a fortnight.”

Ella’s eyes narrowed, as though she were attempting to decide whether Serena was lying or simply foolish. “Miss Pearson said something similar. She lasted twelve days.”

“Then I shall endeavour to last thirteen, at minimum.”

For a moment, nothing happened. Then—and Serena would later mark it as the first small victory of her tenure at Greystone Hall—the corner of Ella’s mouth twitched. Not quite a smile, but the promise of one.

“The entrance hall is not the appropriate place for this conversation,” Ella said, recovering her composure with admirable speed. “I shall take you to Uncle Nate. He is expecting you, I think—though one can never be entirely certain what Uncle Nate expects. He does not communicate as clearly as one might wish.”

Serena retrieved her travelling case and followed as Ella led the way through the hall. Greystone Hall, she observed, was precisely what its name suggested: grey stone, grey light filtering through windows that might have benefitted from a thorough cleaning, and an air of quiet neglect hanging over everything like morning mist. It was not precisely shabby—the furnishings were of good quality, and the portraits lining the walls suggested generations of wealth and consequence—but there was a weariness to the place, a sense that the house itself had grown tired of waiting for something.

Or someone, Serena thought, and then immediately scolded herself for such fanciful nonsense. She was a governess, not a novelist. Her task was to educate children, not to invent romantic narratives about neglected country estates.

“Uncle Nate’s study is through here,” Ella said, stopping before a heavy oak door. She turned to face Serena with an expression that was almost, but not quite, apologetic. “I should warn you—he can be somewhat… distant. He does not mean to be. At least, I do not think he does. He simply has a great many concerns on his mind.”

“I appreciate the warning.”

Ella nodded, then—after a moment’s hesitation—knocked. Three sharp raps, perfectly spaced. Serena suspected she had practised this as well.

“Enter.”

The voice from within was low and clipped, the voice of a man with better things to do than receive visitors. Ella pushed open the door and stepped inside, and Serena followed, bracing herself for what she might find.

What she found was unexpected.

Nathaniel Stone, Marquess of Greystone, stood behind a massive desk strewn with papers, ledgers, and what appeared to be several unopened letters. He was tall—taller than Serena had anticipated, though she could not have said why she had anticipated anything at all—with dark hair that looked as though he had run his hands through it more than once that morning and forgotten to set it to rights. His features were strong, perhaps too strong for conventional handsomeness, yet there was an intensity to them that commanded attention. His coat had clearly been tailored by an expert hand, but he wore it carelessly, as though the very notion of order in dress had slipped his mind.

He looked, Serena thought, like a man who had once been charming and had simply… stopped. As though the effort of charm had become too weary to sustain.

His eyes—grey, of course, for apparently everyone in the household seemed to have been issued the same colour at birth—met hers with an expression of weary assessment.

“Miss Collard, I presume,” he said. It was not a question.

“Yes, my lord.”

“You’ve met Ella.”

“I have had that pleasure.”

Something flickered in his expression at the word pleasure—amusement, perhaps, or scepticism—but it was gone before Serena could be certain of it.

“Ella,” he said, turning his gaze upon his niece, “thank you for escorting Miss Collard. You may return to the nursery.”

“But I wanted to—”

“The nursery, Ella.”

The girl’s jaw tightened, and for a moment Serena thought she might protest. Whatever rebellion stirred in Ella’s breast, however, was swiftly suppressed. She offered a curtsy that was technically correct but emotionally frigid.

“Yes, Uncle Nate.”

She departed without another word, pulling the door closed behind her with slightly more force than was strictly necessary.

The silence that followed was not comfortable.

Lord Greystone gestured to a chair before his desk. “Please, sit. We have matters to discuss.”

Serena did so, arranging her skirts with the precision of long practice. She had learned that first meetings with employers were rather like auditions at the theatre: one must project competence, warmth, and an appropriate degree of deference, all while quietly assessing whether the household in question would prove worth the trouble.

“I have reviewed your references,” Lord Greystone said, settling into his own chair. He picked up a sheet of paper from the desk—her letter of recommendation from Lady Ashworth, Serena recognised—and studied it as though seeing it for the first time. “Lady Ashworth speaks highly of you. She says you are… let me find the exact phrase…” His eyes scanned the page. “‘Possessed of a rare combination of intelligence, patience, and practical good sense.’”

“Lady Ashworth is very kind.”

“Lady Ashworth is not kind at all,” Lord Greystone said flatly. “She is one of the most exacting women in England, and she does not offer praise unless it has been thoroughly earned. If she says you are competent, then I am inclined to believe her.” He set the letter aside and fixed Serena with a look that seemed to discern rather more than she would have liked. “The question is whether competence will be enough.”

Serena’s spine stiffened almost imperceptibly. “I beg your pardon, my lord?”

“I have employed four governesses in the past two years, Miss Collard. Four.” He held up the corresponding number of fingers, as though she might require the demonstration. “The first lasted three months before declaring the children ‘impossible.’ The second managed six weeks before suffering what she described as a complete nervous collapse. The third—” He paused, and something dark crossed his features. “The third was asked to leave after certain… inappropriate behaviours came to light.”

Serena, who had heard sufficient gossip about governesses and their employers to fill several volumes of scandal, took care not to react.

“And the fourth?” she prompted.

“Miss Pearson.” Lord Greystone’s jaw tightened. “Miss Pearson only lasted twelve days. She left about two weeks ago, no reason provided. She simply… left. In the night. Without a word to anyone, including the children.”

Ah. That explained Ella’s defensiveness. Indeed, it explained a great deal.

“I see,” Serena said carefully.

“Do you?” He leaned forward slightly, his grey eyes intent. “Miss Collard, I shall be frank with you, for I have learned through bitter experience that euphemism serves no one. My nieces and nephew have endured a great deal in the past two years. They are not easy children. They are grieving, they are angry, and they have learned to trust no one who enters this house, because everyone who enters it eventually leaves.” He paused, and something that might have been pain flickered across his features before being ruthlessly suppressed. “I cannot promise that this will be a pleasant position. I can only promise that it is a necessary one, and that you will be compensated fairly for your troubles.”

Serena considered his words. They struck her as, perhaps, the most honest any employer had ever been with her.

“My lord,” she said slowly, “may I also be frank?”

His eyebrows rose slightly—not in offence, she thought, but in surprise. “By all means.”

“I have been a governess for four years. In that time, I have worked for families who treated me as invisible, families who treated me as a servant, and one memorable family who treated me as a potential wife for a male relation—which was flattering until I discovered that he was sixty-three years old and had already buried three wives under circumstances that were never adequately explained.”

The corner of Lord Greystone’s mouth twitched. “Good grief.”

“Indeed. My point, my lord, is that I have learned to manage difficult situations. I have learned that children who are labelled ‘impossible’ are almost always children who have not been properly understood. And I have learned—” She paused, selecting her words with care. “I have learned that a governess who expects to be liked is a governess destined for disappointment. I do not require the children to like me, my lord. I require only that they learn from me, and that they are cared for while they do so.”

Silence settled between them. Lord Greystone studied her with an expression she could not quite decipher—assessment, certainly, but something else as well. Something that resembled hope, though it was carefully guarded.

“You speak as though you have given this considerable thought,” he said at last.

“I have had considerable time for reflection, my lord. Mail coaches offer few other diversions.”

That earned her something that was almost, but not quite, a smile. “Very well, Miss Collard. You are hired.”

“I believe I was already hired, my lord. That is why I am here.”

“Yes—but now you are hired with my full confidence, which is a different matter entirely.” He rose, and Serena rose with him, for that was what one did when a marquess stood. “Mrs McConnor will show you to your rooms and acquaint you with the household routine. Dinner is at seven. The children dine in the nursery, but you are welcome to take your meals there as well, or in your rooms if you prefer solitude.”

“And yourself, my lord?”

He stilled, if only for a moment. “I take my meals in my study, Miss Collard. I find my appetite suffers less when I am not distracted by… conversation.”

There was something in the way he spoke the word conversation that made Serena suspect he meant something else entirely. Company, perhaps. Or connection. Or any of the things human beings were meant to require, yet which some found too painful to endure.

“Of course, my lord,” she said, and did not press the matter.

Lord Greystone crossed to the door and opened it, revealing a corridor just as grey and quiet as the rest of the house. “Mrs McConnor,” he called, and within moments an elderly woman appeared—sturdy and practical, with iron-grey hair drawn back severely and a face that suggested she had seen a great deal in her lifetime and had not been impressed by most of it.

“My lord?”

“This is Miss Collard, the new governess. Please show her to her rooms and introduce her to the children. All of them,” he added, with a slight emphasis that Serena did not yet understand.

“Yes, my lord.” Mrs McConnor turned to Serena with an expression that was not unfriendly, but certainly reserved. “If you will follow me, miss.”

Serena retrieved her travelling case and moved towards the door, but paused at the threshold. “My lord?”

Lord Greystone had already returned to his desk, his attention apparently absorbed by the papers before him. He looked up with the air of a man who had forgotten she was still present.

“Yes?”

“You mentioned several children. Miss Ella, and…?”

“Samuel and Rosie.” Something shifted in his expression as he spoke their names—something tender, something painful, swiftly concealed. “Samuel is eight. Rosie is five. You will find Samuel… quiet. He does not speak much these days. And Rosie—” He stopped, cleared his throat, and began again. “Rosie is very young. She does not always understand.”

Serena waited, but he did not continue.

“I shall look forward to meeting them,” she said, because it seemed the appropriate thing to say.

Lord Greystone inclined his head once and returned his attention to the papers before him.

Serena followed Mrs McConnor out of the study, the door closing behind her with a soft but decisive click.

 

***

 

The nursery wing, Mrs McConnor explained as they climbed the stairs, was located in the east section of the house. It had its own schoolroom, its own sitting room, and four bedrooms—one for each child and one for the governess.

“His lordship had the governess’s room redone last year,” Mrs McConnor said, her tone carefully neutral. “New curtains, new linens, a writing desk by the window. He wished it to be comfortable.”

“That was very thoughtful of him.”

Mrs McConnor’s lips pressed into a thin line that suggested she held opinions on his lordship’s thoughtfulness, but was not inclined to share them with a stranger. “The children’s rooms are adjacent to yours. You will hear them when they wake in the night.”

Serena noted the phrasing—when they wake, not if—but made no comment.

They reached the top of the stairs and turned into a corridor lined with more portraits, smaller and more intimate than those in the entrance hall. Children’s portraits, Serena realised. A dark-haired boy with a mischievous smile. A young woman in white, her expression serene. A family group, frozen in time: father, mother, and three small children arranged about them like precious ornaments.

“The late marquess and marchioness,” Mrs McConnor said, following Serena’s gaze. “Lord Greystone’s brother and his wife.”

“They were very young,” Serena observed quietly.

“Not yet thirty, either of them.” Mrs McConnor’s voice remained controlled, though the grief beneath it was unmistakable. “The carriage accident was two years ago this autumn. His lordship brought the children here immediately afterwards. He was named their guardian in the will, you see. The marchioness had family in Bath, but they…” She trailed off, her expression souring. “Well. His lordship felt the children belonged here, and here they have remained.”

Serena looked at the portrait again—at the smiling parents, at the children who had been too young to understand how much they were about to lose. The boy in the portrait must be Samuel, she realised. He looked no more than six in the painting, his face alight with the uncomplicated joy of childhood. The girl was Ella, recognisable even then by her sharp grey eyes and determined chin. And the smallest child, barely more than a baby in her mother’s arms, must be Rosie.

“It must have been very difficult,” Serena said. “For everyone.”

“It was.” Mrs McConnor turned away, her spine rigid. “But we manage. We always manage. This way, Miss Collard.”

They continued along the corridor, past doors Serena suspected she would soon learn to navigate, until they reached the nursery wing. The transition was marked by a subtle shift in atmosphere: the walls were painted a paler shade of grey here—though still grey, Serena noted with mild resignation—and someone had attempted to add warmth with vases of dried flowers and cheerful landscapes in gilt frames.

The schoolroom door stood open, and through it Serena saw a long table surrounded by child-sized chairs, a globe on its stand in one corner, and shelves lined with books that appeared to have been genuinely used. It was, she thought, a proper schoolroom—the sort her father would have approved of, with all the necessary tools of education at hand.

“The children take their lessons here from nine until noon,” Mrs McConnor explained. “Luncheon follows in the small dining room, then quiet time—reading or needlework for Miss Ella, rest for the younger ones. Afternoon activities vary with the weather. Dinner at six, bed by eight for all three.”

Serena nodded, committing the routine to memory. Structure, she had learned, was essential for children who had lost their footing; it offered something solid to grasp when everything else felt uncertain.

“And Lord Greystone?” she asked. “Does he spend time with the children?”

Mrs McConnor’s expression smoothed into careful blankness. “His lordship is much occupied with estate matters. He inquires after them regularly and ensures they have everything they require.”

Which, Serena noted, was not quite the same as spending time with them at all.

“I see,” she said, and did not pursue the matter.

They moved past the schoolroom to a comfortable sitting room—this one painted a soft yellow, with cushioned chairs arranged before the fireplace and a window seat overlooking the gardens below. And there, arranged like figures in a tableau, were the remaining two children Serena had come to teach.

Samuel sat in one of the chairs, a book open in his lap, though Serena suspected he was not truly reading it. He was a handsome boy, dark-haired like his elder sister, with features that hinted he might one day grow into the sort of man who turned heads in ballrooms. But there was a stillness to him that was unnatural in an eight-year-old—a watchfulness that spoke of too much seen, too much lost, too early learned about the world’s unreliability.

He did not look up as they entered. His gaze remained fixed upon the page, his body tense and unmoving.

And then there was Rosie.

She was curled into the corner of the window seat, small and delicate as a china doll, clutching something to her chest. A doll, Serena realised—a rag doll with yellow yarn hair that had clearly seen better days. The hair was missing in patches, as though tugged away by anxious fingers, and one of its button eyes hung loose upon a thread.

Rosie herself was the image of her mother from the portrait—fair hair, blue eyes, a rosebud mouth that ought to have been shaped for smiles. But there were none upon her face now. Only wariness, and something that looked very much like fear.

“Children,” Mrs McConnor said, her voice softening in a way Serena had not yet heard, “this is Miss Collard. She is to be your new governess.”

Neither child replied.

Serena waited a moment, then crossed the room and settled into the chair nearest Samuel—close enough to seem approachable, yet far enough away not to crowd him.

“Good afternoon,” she said pleasantly. “I am very glad to meet you both. Miss Ella has already told me a great deal about the household, though I suspect there is much more yet to learn.”

Samuel’s eyes flickered up from his book—only for an instant—before dropping again. But it was long enough for Serena to glimpse what lay behind them: grief, certainly, but also something harder. Distrust. The quiet conviction that this new person would, like all the others, eventually disappear.

She did not take it personally. She could not afford to.

“I understand you enjoy reading,” she said, nodding towards the book in his hands. “What are you reading?”

For a long moment, she thought he would not answer. The silence stretched between them, heavy with all the things he could not, or would not say.

Then, so quietly she almost missed it, “Robinson Crusoe.”

“An excellent choice. I read it myself when I was about your age. I remember being particularly fascinated by the footprint in the sand. Do you know the part I mean?”

Another flicker of those dark eyes. A tiny nod.

“It terrified me,” Serena confessed. “I had nightmares for a week about being alone on an island and discovering that I was not, in fact, alone. My father had to hide the book until I recovered.”

Something shifted in Samuel’s expression—not a smile, nothing so dramatic, but a slight loosening about the eyes. As though he had expected condescension and received something else instead.

Serena turned then to Rosie, who had not moved from her corner of the window seat. The little girl watched her with the wide-eyed wariness of a rabbit that has sighted a fox, but is not yet certain whether it should flee.

“And you must be Miss Rosie,” Serena said, keeping her voice gentle. “What a lovely doll you have. Does she have a name?”

Rosie’s arms tightened about the battered doll, drawing it closer to her chest. For a moment, Serena thought she would not answer at all.

Then, in a voice scarcely louder than a whisper, “Marianne.”

“Marianne,” Serena repeated. “What a beautiful name. Is she a good companion?”

A nod—small, but certain.

“I am glad. Everyone needs a good companion.” Serena made no attempt to move nearer or to touch the doll; she had learned that, with children like Rosie, patience was far more valuable than enthusiasm. “I hope that perhaps we might become companions too, in time. There is no hurry. We have a great deal of time to become acquainted.”

Rosie did not speak, but she did not turn away either. Serena counted it as a second small victory.

Mrs McConnor, who had been observing the exchange from the doorway, cleared her throat. “I will leave you to settle in, Miss Collard. Your room is through there—” she gestured to a door at the far side of the sitting room “—and dinner will be brought up at six. If you require anything, ring the bell and someone will come.”

“Thank you, Mrs McConnor. You have been most helpful.”

The housekeeper inclined her head, her expression still reserved, but perhaps a shade less forbidding than before. “Welcome to Greystone Hall, Miss Collard. I hope you will be… comfortable here.”

It was not, Serena noted, quite the same as hoping she would stay. But it was something.

 

***

 

The afternoon passed in a curious state of suspended animation. Serena unpacked her belongings in her new room—which was, as promised, comfortable and well-appointed, if somewhat impersonal—and attempted to begin establishing a rapport with her new charges.

Ella, predictably, proved the most challenging. She returned to the nursery shortly after Serena’s arrival and spent the ensuing hours observing her every movement with the sharp-eyed attention of a barrister examining a witness. Everything Serena said was met with polite scepticism; every gesture of warmth received with careful neutrality.

“You needn’t pretend to be interested in our well-being,” Ella informed her during a brief discussion of the next day’s lessons. “We know you are being paid to be here. It is not as though you have chosen us.”

Serena considered several possible replies, ranging from the diplomatic to the devastatingly honest, and settled upon something in between.

“You are quite right,” she said. “I am being paid to be here. That is how employment works, Miss Ella. But I would point out that I chose this position from among several available to me. I might have accepted a post in London, with a family possessing twice as many servants and three times as much consequence. Instead, I am here—in Derbyshire, in a house said to be impossible to manage, with children described as difficult beyond all reason.” She paused, allowing a faint smile to curve her lips. “Either I am extraordinarily foolish, or I have my reasons for being here. You may decide for yourself which seems the more likely.”

Ella’s brow furrowed, as though she were attempting to solve a particularly complex mathematical problem. “What reasons?”

“That, Miss Ella, is a conversation for another day. For now, I believe it is nearly time for dinner, and I should very much like to wash my face before the meal arrives. Travel leaves one feeling distinctly grimy.”

She withdrew to her room before Ella could press the point further, though she suspected the girl would return to the subject at the earliest opportunity. Ella was not the type to allow a mystery to remain unsolved.

Dinner, when it arrived, was simple but well prepared—roast chicken, vegetables from the estate’s kitchen garden, fresh bread still warm from the oven. Serena ate in the sitting room with the children, a choice that seemed to surprise them; apparently, previous governesses had preferred the solitude of their own rooms.

Samuel ate in silence; his gaze fixed upon his plate. Rosie picked at her food without enthusiasm, occasionally tearing off small pieces of bread and feeding them to Marianne when she thought herself unobserved. Only Ella ate with any real appetite, though she maintained her watchful silence throughout the meal.

It was not, Serena reflected, the most comfortable dinner she had ever experienced. But it was not the worst either, and for a first day, that would have to suffice.

Afterwards, she supervised the children’s preparations for bed—helping Rosie into her nightgown when the little girl’s fingers proved unequal to the buttons, ensuring that Samuel had washed behind his ears, which he had not, and reminding Ella that reading by candlelight would ruin her eyesight—a warning which was met with the scepticism it likely deserved.

By the time all three were settled in their beds, Serena was exhausted in a way that had nothing to do with physical exertion. It was the particular weariness born of maintaining careful control over every word, every expression, every gesture—the fatigue of being perpetually on display.

She returned to her own room and sat heavily upon the edge of the bed, allowing herself, for just a moment, to let the mask slip.

The children were wounded. That much was evident. Ella had armoured herself in premature adulthood; Samuel had retreated into silence; and Rosie had curled about her grief like a small creature guarding an injury. They were not difficult children, whatever Lord Greystone might believe. They were simply children who had learned, through the cruellest of lessons, that love was not permanent, and that those upon whom one depended could vanish without warning.

Serena understood that lesson. She understood it far better than she would ever admit aloud.

She had been ten years old when her mother died—old enough to grasp what death meant, young enough to believe, in some secret corner of her heart, that if she were very good and very quiet and very perfect, she might somehow bring her mother back. She had been sixteen when her father followed, leaving her alone in the world with nothing but a modest education and the necessity of earning her own living.

Governesses, she had learned in the years since, occupied a strange liminal space—too educated to be servants, too dependent to be family. They were invited into households and then, inevitably, dismissed from them. They watched children grow and change and become people, only to see those children move on to lives that no longer required a governess’s presence.

She had loved the children she taught. She had loved them despite knowing she ought not to—that attachment led only to pain, that every farewell would tear away another small piece of her heart. And she had sworn, after her last position—after the Ashworth children had hugged her and cried and promised to write, only to cease after three months, as children invariably did—she had sworn she would not make that mistake again.

She would be competent. She would be kind. But she would not love.

It was the only way to survive.

 

 

Chapter Two

 

 

The night at Greystone Hall was quiet in a manner Serena had not expected. In her previous positions, there had always been noise, the bustle of servants, the sounds of a village or a city, the steady hum of a household in motion. Here, the silence was nearly complete, broken only by the occasional creak of old timber settling and the distant hoot of an owl somewhere in the gardens below.

Serena lay awake, staring at the ceiling, and tried to persuade herself to sleep.

She was only just beginning to drift when she heard it, a small sound, barely audible through the wall separating her room from Rosie’s. A whimper, perhaps. Or a muffled sob.

She was out of bed before she had consciously resolved to move, her feet finding the cold floor, her hands reaching for her wrapper. She paused at Rosie’s door, listening.

The sounds were clearer now. Rosie was crying, not the loud, broken sobs of a child’s tantrum, but something quieter and far more distressing. It was the sound of grief held inside for too long and no longer contained.

Serena opened the door.

The room lay in shadow, lit only by the pale glow of moonlight through the window. Rosie was curled in her bed, Marianne clutched to her chest, her small body trembling with the force of her tears.

“Rosie,” Serena said softly as she crossed to the bed. “Rosie, my dear, what is it?”

The little girl looked up, her face wet and stricken. “I want my mama,” she whispered. “I want my mama to come back.”

Something in Serena’s chest, that carefully guarded place she had sworn to protect, cracked just a little.

“Oh, sweetheart.” She sat on the edge of the bed, and when Rosie reached for her, Serena gathered the child into her arms without hesitation. “I know. I know you do.”

“She promised,” Rosie sobbed, her words muffled against Serena’s shoulder. “She promised she would always come back. But she didn’t. She went away and she didn’t come back and I waited and waited and she never came.”

Serena closed her eyes, holding the small, shaking body close. There were no words that could make this right. No comfort that could undo the cruelty of a promise broken by death. All she could offer was presence, the simple and insufficient gift of being there.

“I know,” she said again. “I know it hurts. It is the worst kind of hurt.”

“Did your mama go away too?”

The question was so innocent and so direct that Serena felt her breath catch.

“Yes,” she said quietly. “When I was a little girl. She went away too.”

Rosie pulled back a little, looking up at her with red-rimmed eyes. “Did you cry?”

“Very much.”

“Did it stop hurting?”

Serena considered the question with care. She could lie, could offer the comforting fiction that time healed all wounds and that the pain would disappear. But she had learned long ago that children recognised falsehood, and that even well-meant lies only deepened the hurt.

“It changes,” she said at last. “It does not stop, not entirely. But it changes. The hurt becomes softer, gentler. You learn to carry it, instead of letting it carry you.”

Rosie’s brow furrowed as she tried to understand. “Like carrying Marianne?”

Serena smiled despite herself. “Yes. Very much like that.”

The little girl was quiet for a moment, thinking. Then, in a voice that was very small, she asked, “Will you stay?”

There it was. The question Serena had been dreading, the one she could not answer honestly without dismantling her own carefully constructed defences.

“I will stay as long as you need me,” she said, and told herself it was not quite the same as promising forever.

Rosie appeared satisfied. She nestled closer, her grip on Marianne loosening, and allowed Serena to stroke her hair in slow, gentle motions.

“Miss Collard?”

“Yes, my dear?”

“You smell nice. Like flowers.”

Serena felt her heart give a little more. “It is lavender. I put it in my soap.”

“I like it,” Rosie murmured, her voice already drowsy. “Mama smelled like roses. But lavender is nice too.”

Within minutes, the little girl was asleep, her breath evening out into the slow, steady rhythm of childhood slumber. Serena continued to hold her for a while longer, not wanting to risk waking her, not wanting to let go.

She was still sitting there, Rosie curled against her chest, when she became aware that she was being watched.

She looked up.

Lord Greystone stood in the doorway.

He was dressed informally, in shirtsleeves without a cravat, his hair disordered, and he was looking at her with an expression she could not easily name. Surprise, perhaps. Or something more complex.

“I—pardon me,” he said quietly. “I came to…” He stopped, his gaze settling on the sleeping child in Serena’s arms. Something passed over his face, raw and painful, and then was gone.

“She had a nightmare,” Serena said softly. “She is sleeping now.”

He inclined his head, but did not move. He remained in the doorway, as though he wished to come closer and could not bring himself to cross the threshold.

“She has them often,” he said after a moment, clearing his throat.

“I am sorry to hear that, my lord,” she said quietly. “The truth is, children who have suffered loss often do.”

Something flickered in his grey eyes. Guilt, she thought. Guilt for being unable to prevent them, or perhaps simply for being alive when his brother was not.

“I should have…” He stopped again, his jaw tightening. “I ought to help with these things. I am their guardian. I am supposed to…”

“My lord,” Serena said, her voice quiet but firm. “You cannot mend everything. Some wounds can only be tended, over time, and with patience.”

He looked at her then, truly looked at her, as though seeing her clearly for the first time. For a brief moment, the mask he wore slipped, revealing the exhausted and grieving man beneath.

“You speak with great certainty,” he said.

“I have some experience with wounds, my lord.”

Silence settled between them, weighted with all that remained unsaid. At last Lord Greystone nodded once and stepped back from the doorway.

“Good night, Miss Collard. I trust you can manage from here.”

“I can, my lord. Good night.”

He turned and walked away, his footsteps fading into the stillness of the sleeping house.

Serena remained where she was, holding Rosie and watching the empty doorway.

She had come to Greystone Hall expecting difficulty. She had expected grief-stricken children, a distant employer, and the familiar challenges of her profession. What she had not expected, what she could not have anticipated, was the way Lord Greystone had looked at her just now. The way he had stood in the doorway, wishing to help and not knowing how, longing for connection and yet afraid to attempt it.

He was as wounded as his nieces and nephew, Serena realised. As lost, as lonely, and as in need of being seen.

And that, she thought as she finally laid Rosie back against her pillows and tucked the blankets carefully around her small body, was a very dangerous thing to notice.

Chapter Three

 

 

“I am not a child, you know.”

Serena looked up from the lesson plan she was reviewing to find Ella standing in the doorway of the schoolroom, her arms crossed in what had become a familiar posture of defensive defiance.

“I am quite aware of your age, Miss Ella. You are eleven.”

“Eleven and three-quarters.” Ella advanced into the room with the deliberate stride of someone who had carefully observed how adults walked and was determined to imitate them. “Which is practically twelve. And twelve is practically grown.”

Serena set aside her pen and gave Ella her full attention. It was, she had learned over the past three days, the most effective way to manage her: to take her seriously, even when her conclusions were patently absurd.

“By that reasoning,” Serena said mildly, “twelve is also practically thirteen, which is practically fourteen, which is practically fifteen, and so on, until you have reasoned yourself into being a woman of thirty before teatime.”

Ella’s brow furrowed. “That’s not—It does not—”

“I know precisely what you meant.” Serena gestured to the chair opposite her. “Sit down, Miss Ella, and tell me what is truly troubling you.”

For a moment, Serena thought she would refuse, retreating behind that carefully constructed wall of premature composure. But something in Serena’s expression must have reached her, for after a pause, the girl crossed the room and sat.

“I do not need lessons,” Ella said, though her voice lacked some of its earlier certainty. “I already know everything you intend to teach me. I have read all the books in the schoolroom. I can conjugate French verbs, name the kings of England, and calculate sums in my head. There is nothing left to learn.”

Serena absorbed this calmly. “I see. And what, precisely, do you intend to do with yourself, if you have already learned everything there is to learn?”

“I shall help with the household accounts. Uncle Nate says I have a head for figures. And I shall manage the younger ones, ensure that Samuel completes his lessons properly and that Rosie does not get into mischief. I am quite good at managing, you know. Mrs McConnor says so.”

Ah. There it was.

Serena studied the girl before her: the too-mature dress, the overly careful posture, the bright eyes that worked so hard to conceal any trace of vulnerability.

“Miss Ella,” she said gently, “who has been teaching you your lessons these past two years?”

The question clearly caught her off guard. “What do you mean?”

“I mean that your governesses did not remain long. Miss Pearson was here for less than a fortnight. Before her, there was a considerable interval without any governess at all. And before that…” Serena allowed the sentence to trail away, watching Ella’s face.

The girl’s jaw tightened. “I taught myself. It is not difficult, if one is clever enough.”

“No, I imagine it is not. You are very clever indeed.” Serena paused, choosing her words with care. “But cleverness and education are not the same thing. One may memorise facts from books, but a book cannot discuss ideas with you. It cannot challenge your assumptions, nor help you examine a question from another perspective. Books present what they know, and they may even be mistaken at times.”

“Books are rarely mistaken.”

“Books are frequently incomplete, Miss Ella. They often present one truth as though it were the only truth, when there are many others waiting to be discovered.” Serena leaned forward slightly. “You say you have read all the books in the schoolroom. Have you read Mary Wollstonecraft?”

Ella’s expression flickered, uncertainty mingling with curiosity. “No. Who is that?”

“A woman who held some very interesting views on education and the place of women in society. Views that may surprise you, if you are willing to be surprised.” Serena allowed herself a small smile. “I have a copy in my trunk. I brought it in case I should find a pupil clever enough to appreciate it.”

The effect was immediate. Ella’s rigid posture softened almost imperceptibly, and something like genuine interest stirred in her grey eyes.

“What sort of views?”

“I could tell you, but that would defeat the purpose. True learning requires discovery. One must wrestle with ideas, test them, examine them from every side. I can guide you through that process, but I cannot do it for you.” Serena settled back in her chair. “The question is whether you are willing to be guided. Whether you can set aside the belief that you already know everything, and allow yourself to learn something new.”

Ella was silent for a long moment, her brow drawn tight in thought.

“And what of Samuel and Rosie?” she asked at last. “If you are teaching me about philosophical women and challenging ideas, who will ensure that they do their lessons properly?”

“I shall.”

“But you can’t teach all three of us at once. Not properly.”

Serena smiled. It was, she conceded, a fair observation. “You are correct. I cannot give each of you my full attention simultaneously. Which is why I have a proposal to make.”

Ella’s eyes narrowed at once. “What sort of proposal?”

“You have been acting as a second mother to your siblings, Miss Ella. I have seen it in the way you watch over them, anticipate their needs, and place yourself between them and anything that might cause them harm.” Serena lifted a hand as Ella opened her mouth to protest. “I do not reproach you for it. It is admirable, in its way. You have assumed a role no child should be required to fill, and you have done so with remarkable competence.”

Ella’s guarded expression wavered, uncertainty seeping through.

“But,” Serena continued, “it is not your role. You are not their mother. You are their sister. And sisters are permitted to be children themselves, at least some of the time.”

“I’m not—” Ella stopped, swallowed, then tried again. “I’m not trying to be their mother. I’m just… someone has to take care of them. Someone has to ensure they’re all right.”

“Yes. And that person is me.” Serena’s voice was gentle, but resolute. “That is why I am here, Miss Ella. To care for them, and for you. To see that you are all learning what you ought, and growing into the people you are meant to become. Your task is not to be the adult of this household. Your task is to be eleven years old.”

“Eleven and three-quarters,” Ella said automatically, though the sharpness had left her voice.

“Eleven and three-quarters,” Serena agreed. “Which means you are entitled to lessons that challenge you, to interests wholly unconnected to managing a household, and even to moments of doing nothing useful at all. It means you may laugh, and be foolish, and make mistakes without fearing that the world will collapse as a result.”

Ella stared at her, and for a brief instant Serena glimpsed the child beneath the armour: frightened, weary, and profoundly lonely.

“What if I have forgotten how?” Ella whispered. “What if I do not remember how to be… just a child?”

Serena reached across the table and laid her hand over Ella’s. “Then we shall discover it together. One day at a time. That is my proposal, Miss Ella. That you permit me to do my work, so that you may cease doing it in my stead. Can you agree to that?”

Ella’s lower lip trembled, only slightly. She drew a breath, squared her shoulders, and nodded.

“I can try,” she said.

It was, Serena thought, the most honest thing Ella had said since they met.

 

***

 

The morning lessons proceeded more smoothly than Serena had dared to hope. Ella, buoyed by the promise of more advanced material, engaged with the standard curriculum without her usual objections. Samuel remained silent, but completed his work with quiet competence, his handwriting neat and his arithmetic precise. And Rosie, still too young for formal lessons, seemed content to sit at the table beside them, drawing pictures with coloured chalk and occasionally holding up her efforts for approval.

“That is a very fine horse,” Serena said, examining Rosie’s latest masterpiece, a cheerful arrangement of lines and loops that might, with sufficient imagination, be taken for an equine form.

“It is not a horse,” Rosie said, frowning at the paper. “It is Marianne.”

Serena looked again. “Ah, of course. I see it now. The yellow hair is particularly accurate.”

Rosie beamed, mollified, and returned to her artistic endeavours.

By noon, Serena found herself cautiously optimistic. The children were not, as she had been warned, impossible. They were simply complicated, wounded, and in need of patience and consistency rather than strict discipline or endless rules.

She dismissed them for luncheon with instructions to wash their hands and meet her in the small dining room, then gathered her materials and returned them neatly to the cabinet in the schoolroom. She was just closing the door when she heard footsteps in the corridor, too heavy to belong to a child, too measured to be a servant going about daily duties.

Lord Greystone appeared in the doorway.

He looked as though he had slept poorly. Shadows lay beneath his grey eyes, and his jaw was set with a tension that suggested he had been clenching it for some time. His coat was perfectly tailored and his cravat immaculately tied, yet he wore his elegance like armour rather than ornament, as protection against something he had no wish to confront.

“Miss Collard,” he said, his voice carefully even. “I trust the morning went well?”

“Very well, my lord. The children were attentive and cooperative.”

Something flickered across his expression, surprise perhaps, or disbelief. “All three of them?”

“All three. Though I should add that Miss Rosie’s cooperation consisted chiefly of not eating the chalk, which I consider a notable success for a child of five.”

That earned her something very nearly resembling a smile. “You set modest standards.”

“I find that modest standards, reliably met, lead to more progress than lofty ones that are never attained. The children need to feel capable, my lord. Small victories remind them that effort yields results.”

Lord Greystone was silent for a moment, his gaze moving about the schoolroom, taking in the shelves of books, the globe in the corner, the small chairs gathered around the table where his nieces and nephew had sat that morning.

“My brother used to sit in this room,” he said quietly. “When we were boys. He was always the better student. More patient. More willing to apply himself.” He paused, his jaw tightening. “I preferred the outdoors. Running about, mischief, anything to avoid a lesson. Our tutors despaired of me.”

Serena, uncertain how to receive this unexpected confidence, remained silent.

“Edward, my brother,” he continued, as though compelled by the memory. “He would cover for me. When I missed a lesson or failed to complete an exercise, he made excuses. Told the tutor I had been unwell, or that my work had been misplaced, or some other convenient invention.” A brief, bitter smile crossed his face. “I never thanked him properly for it. I took it for granted, assumed he would always be there, as one does when one is young and foolish.”

“My lord,” Serena began.

“I beg your pardon.” He shook his head slightly, as though banishing unwelcome thoughts. “I do not know why I am telling you this. It is hardly relevant to… to anything.”

“On the contrary,” Serena said gently. “It tells me a great deal about the children’s father. About the sort of man he was, and the sort of home they knew.” She hesitated, then added carefully, “It also tells me something about you.”

His eyes met hers, wary and guarded. “And what is that?”

“That you loved your brother dearly. And that you miss him.”

His expression closed at once, as though a shutter had been drawn. “My feelings are not the subject of this discussion, Miss Collard.”

“No, my lord. But they shape the household in which these children live. If you are grieving—and you are, quite plainly—then that grief touches everything here. The children feel it, even if they cannot name it.” She took a steadying breath. “I am not asking you to confide in me. I am only observing that healing rarely occurs in isolation. If you wish the children to recover, you must allow yourself the same.”

The silence that followed was heavy. Lord Greystone regarded her with an expression that hovered between offence and something else, something she could not quite decipher, but which caused her pulse to quicken.

“You overstep, Miss Collard,” he said at last, his voice taut.

“Yes,” Serena replied calmly. “I do. It is, I’m afraid, an unfortunate habit of mine.”

For a tense moment, she was certain he would dismiss her at once. She had gone too far, spoken too freely, forgotten her place.

But then, quite unexpectedly, he laughed.

It was a brief sound, startled from him against his will, and it altered his countenance entirely. For an instant, she glimpsed the man he must once have been, quick-witted, open, unburdened by loss.

“You are not what I expected,” he said, some of the tension easing from his shoulders.

“I seldom am, my lord. I have been told it is among my less endearing qualities.”

“On the contrary.” He shook his head, still faintly incredulous. “It may be precisely what this household requires.” He glanced towards the door, then back again. “The children take their luncheon at noon?”

“Yes, my lord. In the small dining room.”

He nodded slowly, as though settling a question within himself. “I shall join them today, if that is agreeable.”

Serena blinked. “You wish to dine with the children?”

“Is that so remarkable?”

“Forgive me, my lord,” she said at once. “Mrs McConnor indicated that you generally take your meals alone, and that the children are accustomed to…”

“They are accustomed to my absence,” he said quietly. “I am aware of it, and it is a deficiency I mean to correct.” He adjusted his coat, a small, telling gesture that betrayed an uncertainty she had not expected. “You spoke of healing not occurring in isolation. It seems only fair that I test the truth of it.”

Serena inclined her head, not trusting herself to speak. That was… unexpected. And unexpected things, in her experience, were seldom without consequence.

“I shall see you in the dining room,” Lord Greystone said, and without waiting for a reply, turned and left the schoolroom.

Serena stood where she was, staring after him, a curious flutter stirring in her chest. She pressed her hand briefly to her bodice and drew a steadying breath, telling herself firmly that it was nothing more than surprise.

It was certainly not anything else at all.