by Abigail Agar
“HEY! HEY YOU! GOVERNESS!”
Already, Jeffrey had forgotten her name. Perhaps he’d never known it.
“BRING THAT LEDGER BACK JUST THIS INSTANT!” Jeffrey cried.
Jeffrey ambled towards her, his large stomach dropping out from his white shirt. A few craftsmen rolled out from the front door, peeking their heads out and digging their fingers into pockets, drawing out tobacco.
But Marina stood up, gripping Lucas’ shoulder as he dropped the whip over the horses’ backsides. She hollered out to the watching craftsmen, knowing she had the upper hand as the carriage began to creep away.
“DON’T YOU DARE LISTEN TO THIS MAN,” she cried to them, her heart burning in her chest. “THIS MAN, JEFFREY BRAMBLES. He’s been lying to you, keeping money from the Duke. Trying to put this business into ruin. How can you possibly sit there and listen to him?”
The craftsmen peered at her, puffing their cigarettes. Jeffrey shot his finger toward her. “Get yourself back here this instant, my lady.”
Marina sat as the carriage horses cantered further from the walkway, but her eyes remained on Jeffrey’s. They burned with overzealous anger, knowing that she’d shot down his plan.
How it must have felt to him, being thwarted by a twenty-year-old governess. A woman he’d threatened only the evening before.
If he’d gotten his way, Marina would have been on her way to some convent or other, perhaps her mother’s farm, the city—to be crumpled up and thrown away all over again. But she’d beaten him at his own game.
“Where to, my lady?” Lucas asked her, his face stretched into a wild grin. Hair poked out from his chin, unshaven, making him look a bit wild. “What do you say we run off together like this, hey? You with that confidence and me with this carriage. How could we ever fail, hey?”
But Marina just shook her head, drawing her eyes towards her knees. She simmered with delight, knowing this carriage boy saw her the way she so craved to be seen: as this simmering bolt of energy, this woman so capable of taking on the world. And—and perhaps he even saw her as beautiful, with his eyes gleaming at her like that.
“I think it’s time to go back to the estate,” Marina said, flashing her eyes toward the horizon.
“If you really think so, Marina.” Lucas sighed. “Just know that I’m here for you, whenever you might need it. I’d marry ye—know that.”
Marina giggled. His voice bounced up and down, perhaps a joke, yet perhaps not. It didn’t really matter. The only thing that truly did, she knew, was that she yearned for the Duke to look at her the way Lucas was, at this moment. She wanted him to blink one day and have full sight, to gaze across the room and recognise that—perhaps Marina had been the one for him all along.
These thoughts were unhindered, driving rampant through her mind. But she couldn’t halt them. Instead, she filled her head with delirious daydreams as the carriage continued to bolt back toward the estate. She was returning to the only life that had ever felt like her own.
Chapter 24
The Duke left his study door ajar throughout the grim morning, listening to the stern steps of Sally Hodgins as she shifted towards him, nearly an hour after dismissing Marina. At the doorway, a strange, grey shadow shifted across the Duke’s field of “vision” (or whatever it was he could term that space), but soon disappeared into darkness. Sally’s knuckles rapped at the door.
“Come in,” he grunted. His heart felt heavy with fatigue. After an hour, it was, perhaps, too early to know if Marina had discovered anything amiss in the ledger. But he still felt apt to lash out, to take matters into his own hands.
God, he’d been such a coward. Since his wife’s death. Since going blind. He’d shoved all troubles with his family to the back of his mind and allowed his closest associates to—what? Rob him, from under his nose?
What kind of hell was this?
“Sir, the girl’s gone,” Sally stated. “I thought you would want to know. Thank goodness, no? I’m so grateful you’ve finally come to your senses.”
The Duke cupped his free hand before him, and then beckoned towards Sally. Her words stuttered off.
“What—what is it, Sir?” she asked, stepping into the room.
“Close the door,” the Duke said. “Have a seat.”
“Can’t I please light a candle, dear Duke?” Sally asked, her voice tittering.
“Don’t speak like you’re a child, Sally,” the Duke snapped. He reached for his cabinet drawer, ripping a match from a box and lighting it. To his immense pleasure, his eyes filled with a strange, dim orange light.
“Here, let me …” Sally said, rushing forward and gripping the match for herself. She dropped the match along the wick of the candle, engulfing it. It flickered in the Duke’s eyesight for a moment, before dissipating once more.
It was returning. And this knowledge alone gave him immense strength. The Duke righted his shoulders, forcing himself to glower at the old maid. “Sally, do you remember when you first arrived here, just how terribly grateful you were to me for giving you the position?”
He heard the sound of Sally Hodgins falling to a chair behind her, letting out a quivering sigh. “I do, Sir,” she said. “I was just a little girl from the country. You know that.”
“Unmarried. Unable to find a husband. And suddenly here, taking over the affairs of the house. And I have to say, Sally Hodgins, you were quite good at it. My wife was irritated with you several times, oh goodness, yes. But I told her, Sally knows. Sally cares. She has a heart for the children and for the estate.”
“It’s true, sir …” Sally whispered.
“Is it, Sally?” the Duke demanded. “Because it seems to me that you’ve changed your allegiance, a bit, in recent months …”
“Duke, you’ve been ill,” Sally said, sounding like she was reprimanding him. “How could you possibly know what was going on in my head if you can’t possibly control your own?”
The Duke felt spiked with rage. He shot up to his greatest height, tapping his cane against the hardwood floor. “Ms Hodgins, how dare you speak to me this way.”
Sally rustled up from the chair, moving towards the door. She huffed, seeming to shuffle her dress, right herself before moving into the hallway. “It’s clear that you had a connection with this girl, dear Duke. But she was playing you for a fool. Now, please, don’t allow your feelings to get in the way of my operating this household to its fullest strength.”
Moments later, her footsteps echoed down the hall. The Duke grumbled, tapping his cane as he drew himself towards the window. More rain had begun to patter in the early morning, and he snuck his fingers through the crack in the window, oddly hungry to feel the chilly dampness. “It’s clear that you had a connection with this girl,” the Duke repeated to himself, arching his brow. A connection. What on earth did that mean?
What did Marina mean to him?
And now … what did it mean that he’d cast her away, potentially never to return? Perhaps she wouldn’t find anything amiss … Perhaps she would have to slip back into the carriage and tell Lucas where to dump her off …
He paused as another smattering of footsteps echoed down the hallway. This was a different set, without the dominance of Ms Hodgins. And within seconds, Claudia’s voice swept in through the crack, calling out to him.
“Father?”
A slight shadow ebbed through the Duke’s vision as his oldest daughter cantered through the room, falling to the very chair on which Sally Hodgins had just sat. Claudia seemed awash with fear, her voice quivering.
“Father, what on earth is going on?” she asked.
It was difficult to answer such a question as it seemed the answer was formidably large. The Duke paused, trying his best to give his daughter a sturdy expression: one that suggested he knew better than anyone.
“Ordinarily, Marina wakes me first, and then I help with the rest of the children,” Claudia whispered. “That’s been our schedule. And she never misses, Father, not a once. But I awoke o
n my own, the sunlight streaming in over my face. And I raced to Marina’s room to find it completely empty, all her things taken away. Father, what has happened to Marina! Is her mother ill? Have her brothers called for her?”
The Duke marvelled at the depth of feeling exhibited in his daughter’s quivering voice. He hadn’t imagined when he’d hired Marina Blackwater, that love would be revived in his home. He brought his hand to Claudia’s head, sweeping his fingers over her mussed-up bed-head.
“My darling, it’s not terribly certain if she’ll be able to return,” the Duke spoke.
“But why?” Claudia demanded. “She was perfect, Father. She loved us. She—she was going to help me learn to be a woman … I don’t have anyone else to do that, Father!”
“If she doesn’t return, my dear, you know there will be plenty of—plenty of women to assist you in those affairs at …”
“Boarding school?” Claudia whispered. “You can’t be serious.”
Another set of footsteps echoed from the hall. Within seconds, another voice—Max’s—cried out in the study, demanding to know what was amiss. “Father, where is Marina?” he asked. “I’ve just gone to her bedroom …”
“She’s gone. And she might never be coming back,” Claudia stated.
“It’s unclear,” the Duke offered.
“What’s unclear, Father? You’re the Duke of Wellington,” Claudia said, almost mocking him in the way only eleven-year-olds can possibly do. “You can make her stay if you want to.”
“Where did she go?” Max asked.
Claudia huffed, moving across the room, towards the desk. The Duke could hear her clicking through the pieces of the busted violin. Max joined her, letting out a slow, earnest whine.
“Oh my goodness, Father. Your violin …”
“Yes,” the Duke sighed. The reminder of it made his heart grow heavy. His shoulders shoved forward, making him feel terribly weak, a much older man.
“What on earth happened …” Claudia murmured. “You didn’t … She didn’t …”
But before the Duke could answer, they heard a crank, then a tap, then a huff out the door—the now-familiar sound of Christopher when he dared to take his crutches out from his closet and whisk through the hallways. The Duke remembered that when Christopher was in the midst of recovery the last time he broke his leg, he’d slid through the halls like a kind of monkey through the trees—unencumbered.
“Hey, you lot!” Christopher cried from the doorway. “Lottie’s just behind me, all bleary-eyed and sleepy. Nobody bothered to wake her. Know what’s what?”
“Marina’s gone,” Max murmured. “Father won’t explain.”
The Duke heard the sound of Claudia lifting up jarred pieces of the violin for Christopher, who only whistled in response. Heaviness, like a blanket, crept across them. Lottie appeared seconds later, a little bulb of light and shadow, in the Duke’s perception. He blinked several times, trying to will the young girl’s face into his sight. But it was lost, cast back to darkness.
Christopher seemed to hobble towards the desk to examine the violin. Lottie swept across the room and latched onto her father’s legs, digging her nose against his thigh. Max had begun to weep—the sound was one the Duke had heard far too often after Marybeth’s death to mistaken it for anything else.
The feeling in the room was so unpleasant, so jarring, that the Duke prayed for the past—an act that wasn’t entirely outside the realm of his daily action. However, in this case, he prayed for the more recent past: for the afternoon near the trees, watching as the sunlight crept in through the tree leaves, casting light greens and reds across their sallow cheeks.
How they’d laughed, then.
“Promise me she’ll be back, Father,’’ Claudia demanded.
“Please, Father. She can’t leave us like this,” Max murmured. “She knows that we might—we might have to go …”
“Not to boarding school, Father!” Christopher all but spat.
“Silence!” the Duke cried, hating how spastic and wild he sounded.
Lottie fell back from him. He cranked towards the window, which, he knew, had views over the front road that snaked up through the gardens. He placed his forehead upon the glass, inhaled, and listened as his children tittered and wept behind him. Again, it seemed, his house was shifting, a large boat at sea in the midst of a coming storm.
But on cue, he heard the familiar clopping of horses cantering towards the house. He flashed his face back towards his children, beckoning: “Claudia. Come. Come tell me who’s coming up the drive.”
Claudia—a wave of anger, fully felt in the heat from her body—crowded beside him, careful not to allow her shoulder to graze his chest. “Father, it’s—it’s Marina!” she cried. “She’s riding just next to Lucas, on the top. The way Mother said us ladies were never meant to!” She cackled at this, spinning back towards the door. “Father, you said she might not come back! And she did!”
“We have to meet her at the door!” Max cried.
Three children raced for the doorway, with Christopher bucking up behind them. But when they reached it, they heard the violent footsteps of Sally Hodgins. She screeched, “Duke! My Duke, I don’t know what on earth has gotten into her … This Marina Blackwater has found her way back to the estate! But I will rectify it shortly! Please, Duke, stay where you are …”
But the Duke understood, now. Sally Hodgins and Jeffrey had been maniacal in their positions, making use of his blindness for their personal gain. It was strange that he’d had to weigh this information so frequently since first hearing of it with Charles. As if, in his blindness, he’d lost his sense of confidence. As if, faced with the darkness of the world, he had had to put complete and total trust on people—and had failed the ones who cared for him most.
Sally appeared in the doorway, huffing. The Duke could almost imagine it: sweat pouring from her forehead, her cheeks far too pink, as she fully realised that she’d been caught. She continued to play it cool, blathering, “Duke, I can send her away this instant. I truly can. Don’t even bother yourself. I know the doctor told you that you needed to reduce stress. And this—having this, this demon around, so apt to break the things that you love in this world the most—”
“Silence!” the Duke cried. He strutted towards her, as his children continued to race to the front door of the house. “Sally Hodgins, if you utter another word, I will have you thrown from this house this moment.”
“Duke, what on earth are you talking about?” Sally said, her voice growing increasingly high-pitched. “Please, Duke.”
“Sally Hodgins, I’m fully aware of the nature of your relationship with my ex-assistant, Jeffrey Brambles. And I’m fully aware that the pair of you has been scheming to steal a large amount of money from me for the previous months since receiving word of the contract with the Kingdom.”
“That’s all silly talk, taken from Marina Blackwater, Sir,” Sally Hodgins began.
“It’s simply not,” the Duke blared. “Now, if you’ll excuse me …”
He cut beyond her, ambling towards the steps. As he walked, his eyes filled increasingly with light and shadow as if he could make out the outline of the hallway. The candles flickered on either side, almost guiding his way. What was this? It was as if, as his anger and certainty increased, his vision did so, as well.
“Duke, please!” This was the final wail from Sally Hodgins.
But the Duke was so focused on his boosted vision, the shadows, the intricacy of the candlelight as it flickered up into the air. Why didn’t anyone discuss that beautiful thing, fire—what an animal it was!—more frequently?
