“Payton, I—”
“Damon, I—”
She smiled as the both stumbled over their words.
“What were you doing here tonight?” he asked.
She’d been foolish to think she could—or should—keep the children’s excursion a secret from Damon. What if they attempted something similar again and it did not turn out well? She could never forgive herself.
“The children came to see me,” she confessed.
“Came to see you?” His green eyes clouded with confusion. “I don’t understand. How could they, I mean, even I was unaware of where you lived until a few moments ago.”
She shrugged. “Mr. Brown had me followed one evening—for my safety. Rigby accompanied the children to my home. They were worried because I hadn’t returned.”
Damon averted his eyes, and she took a step toward him.
“They thought me sick, and that we’d had a row.”
“I hadn’t decided how to tell them you weren’t returning,” he admitted.
“They suspected you were lying to them and decided to check on me themselves.” Payton willed him to look at her. “I would have made an excuse for my absence, as well. Besides, I was selfish leaving my position. The children need me far more than I ever suspected.”
“It is not only Joy and Abram who need you. I do, too.”
“But, I saw you…” She stumbled over the words. “You, the children, Lady Wittenbottom, and another woman…I saw you at Wexfector’s. I assumed you were meeting with another governess.”
He took her hands, stopping her from turning away. “I was, begrudgingly, having a meal with my sister and her companion. You said it would do the children well to spend more time outside the townhouse.”
“I did?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said, rubbing his finger along the back of her hand. “And I was uncertain what to do with myself—and the children—after everything that had happened between us.”
“That is understandable,” she confessed, her eyes drifting shut as the warmth of his fingers reached through her gloves. “It was the same for me.”
“I had no designs on coming to care for my children’s governess,” he said.
Her breath hitched at his confession. “And I had no plans to remain a governess for any longer than necessary.”
“Allowing myself to care for anyone has been difficult.”
His stark honesty kept her speaking, “I never meant to find a lasting place in your home. I took the position to show my family I could care for myself, but I…”
Admitting her deep affection for Damon—and his children—proved more difficult than anything she’d yet to do in her short life. His forthright words gave her confidence to continue and to hope he wouldn’t push her away again.
“Damon.” She swallowed, glancing down at their joined hands. Only a few short days ago, she would have scoffed at the notion of them standing so close. “I had a plan, and kissing you was not part of it.”
“Kissing anyone was not part of mine,” he retorted.
“What are we to do now?” she asked. He was a baron, and she was his children’s governess, the illegitimate daughter of a blacksmith and an infamous London madame. “I cannot return to my place as Joy’s and Abram’s governess.”
Saying the words aloud should have been freeing, they should have put an end to whatever was happening between them. She was no more fated to be with Damon than she was to be a governess, just as her mother had known her future did not mean wedding a man who could betray her in the end. Still, it did not stop her from longing to remain close to Damon—in whatever role she could grasp.
He placed his finger under her chin and lifted her face until their eyes met. “That is something we can both agree on. You cannot return to Ashford Hall as a governess.”
Tears sprang up, threatening to slip down her face at the confirmation she should have been anticipating.
Chapter 29
Damon had spent many years keeping everyone, even his children and sister, at bay.
He breathed because his body demanded it. He slept because his body required it. He ate because his body necessitated it. It would have been easier to cease all of it, or at least it would have been simpler before Payton walked into his life—their lives.
There was no doubt he could open himself to her, tell her all his deepest, darkest musings, give her the heart he hadn’t known he still possessed, and she could still walk away.
Leave him devastated and destroyed as Sarah’s death had: alone, terrified, and uncertain how to continue on—or if he wanted to continue.
Perhaps it wasn’t his being alone that worried him most. He’d survived the last four years without anyone, but what of Joy and Abram? They deserved better than an absentee father. Truly, they deserved a mother who was still living. It should have been Damon who perished.
They’d gone after Payton when he was too scared to admit that he couldn’t imagine living without her. How could children so young be so wise?
It was Joy and Abram who’d learned to press on, to grab hold of what they wanted and refuse to let go. That was precisely what they’d done while he reverted to his old ways: solitude and distraction. Anything to not experience the pain and anguish of loss once again.
“You cannot return as my children’s governess,” he paused, drawing on Joy and Abram’s courage. “You are so much more than a governess, both to the children and me.”
Her blue eyes clouded with confusion, and he responded by pulling her ever closer, allowing his fingers to move from her chin to her cheek. He hesitated for a single breath at the feel of her smooth skin, more perfect than the string of pearls adorning her neck.
“I don’t understand.”
Damon struggled for the right words, knowing if he misspoke, she could turn and walk out of Ashford Hall forever. She could disappear into the night, leaving him reeling in her wake. Every time he grasped on to a word, a feeling, they were overtaken by another, until his thoughts were scattered and disorganized.
“Payton, I need you.” He shook his head, begging his mind to come together. “No, this goes beyond need. For many years, I’ve lived in such solitude that I forgot how it felt to need someone—not purely physical need, but emotional. Someone I can talk to, take my meals with, depend on when I am not feeling myself. Sarah was that person before, and I never, ever dreamed there would be another woman who so completely captured me. But this”—he placed his hand against his chest before moving it to rest on her bodice over her beating heart—“whatever this is between us, is so much more than anything I’ve ever experienced. No matter how hard I hid, how often I attempted to push you away, or the distance we created between us, we have found a way to return—to this moment.”
“I shouldn’t be here,” she sighed.
“Yet, here we are.” Did she understand as he did? “You were never meant to be a governess. I was never meant to meet you, long to know you, or to kiss you.”
On the word kiss, Payton took the final step until they stood so close their breaths mingled.
“You still want to kiss me?”
“With ever-increasing fervor,” he confessed. Damon lowered his head until his lips were a mere inch from hers. He knew if he closed his eyes, he could imagine with vivid detail how her lips would feel against his. Yet, that was no longer enough for him. Dreaming of her—them—together was no longer enough. Had never been enough he realized. “But…”
“But you cannot?” She glanced away, her chin lowering in defeat.
“Not until I’ve said everything I need to say,” he replied. “And then, only then, it is you who will need to decide if you want to kiss me.”
She took a step back, and his hand slipped from her shoulder.
His confidence fell with her retreat.
It could not stop him from speaking. He needed, they needed, his honesty before they moved forward, and she fled, no matter the outcome. Acceptance or rejection. This moment was wo
rth a thousand years of sorrow and despair.
Payton was worth Damon risking everything. He had to know if she cared for him, too. “When I settled your debt with Catherton, it wasn’t because of any scheme to have you beholden to me. The duke was determined to find you, and his methods of punishment are rumored to be vile. I could not allow him to learn your name. Not because you worked in my household. It had nothing, and yet everything to do with your place here.
“I saw the way you treated my children, interacted with them, and knew you were what’s best for them,” he confessed. “I couldn’t stand to lose you because of some wager you’d lost. It didn’t matter why you were here that night. It only mattered that you remained here, at Ashford Hall, with my children. You have given them more than I was able to in years. To be honest, I was jealous and captivated by your relationship with Joy and Abram all at the same time.”
“They want the same connection with you,” she said. “They want—need—your love and attention.”
“Until you came into our lives, I didn’t know if I had any love to give them.” As he spoke, the pieces—all the fragments of his being—started to come together. “With you here, giving them the love I couldn’t, it was enough. It was more than I’d ever hoped for until I realized I longed to be a part of it, too.”
Payton turned, walking slowing to the lounge by the hearth. As she pivoted back toward him and sat, her cream skirts flared around her legs. It was difficult to ever envision her in the simple, everyday attire of a governess again. She was every inch the lady: poised, graceful, and stunning.
“I envied your connection with my children.” Damon sat in the chair across from her, knowing he should give her space—the opportunity to listen without having him so near. “After—after—” He couldn’t repeat the words. Sarah and her memory shouldn’t be a part of his attraction to Payton, yet they were unequivocally intertwined. There was no future for him—or for them—without his past. “After I lost Sarah, I was resigned to exist as the lost soul I’ve been all these years. Eating, sleeping, breathing…but not living. I feared she’d taken the best part of me with her.”
Payton’s stare moved from her clenched hands back to his face. Damon expected to see hesitation, discomfort, or possibly irritation in her eyes, but what shone back at him was something akin to compassion. Could this woman understand all he was struggling to grasp?
“The best part of you, the two best parts of you are sleeping upstairs,” she whispered. “The best parts of you came in search of me long after they should have been safely in bed.”
“Mayhap they know me better than I can ever hope to know myself.” Damon massaged the back of his neck. “What I am attempting to explain, though I’m making little progress, is that it wasn’t your relationship with my children I coveted. It was the way they embraced you. And you, them. It was as if the three of you were a family. A family I wasn’t part of…and I’ve greatly missed being part of such a unit.”
“Family is very important, Damon.” She leaned forward toward him. “When all is gone, family is left. I am uncertain what I would’ve done without my siblings after my mother passed away. I can only imagine the pain of losing your wife.”
“Family?” he muttered, an unmistakable question in his tone. “After Sarah, I had my children and my sister. Joy and Abram were young, I should have been there to comfort them, but I could think of nothing comforting to offer. My sister thought that moving on, marrying again, and returning to societal life would make me whole again. Was she right?”
He held Payton’s pitying stare. He hadn’t anyone but himself to blame for being reduced to needing someone so much he accepted their pity.
“Partly, I think yes, and in so many ways, no.”
“Have I failed everyone?” Damon asked. He couldn’t move past the fact that he’d failed his children, displeased his sister, and betrayed Sarah’s memory. The determination to push everyone who depended on him away had been overpowering for so many years, he wasn’t sure how to let it go, to even begin to allow his children back into his life. They were his children, yet they’d attached themselves so readily to Payton, a stranger, not many weeks before.
Could he blame them? He longed for Payton to remain in his life, as well.
Would he go to the lengths Joy and Abram had to keep her?
Chapter 30
Payton watched as uncertainty, despair, remorse, and hope battled within Damon, and she wasn’t certain which would win out. However, she did know it was a victory better achieved if won by his own volition. It would do no one any good if she made the decision for him, if she dissuaded his misguided thinking, or attempted to soothe his conscience.
It would be easy to tell him how she felt, what she would do; though what if he came to resent his decision later?
His choice, and the risks involved had to be his own—and unwavering.
It couldn’t be decided during a moment of weakness or out of guilt or remorse for her present circumstances or his past hardships.
Payton wanted to believe she was worth more than her position as a governess—to both Damon and his children. That their brief times of privacy had been more than a man still in mourning for the loss of his wife and only in need of an ear to listen and a woman to care for his offspring. She needed to be sure that he saw her, not her value as his children’s caregiver, but noticed and valued her as a woman. She couldn’t replace the wife he’d lost, nor the mother Joy and Abram barely remembered. Payton hadn’t the first idea how to even begin to be either of those people.
“Do you feel you’ve failed?” she asked. “Your children are healthy, your servants and their families respect you, and your home is one to be admired. Perhaps it is not everyone else you fear disappointing but yourself.”
She knew this because it was the same for her. The future she’d planned would arrive or fade away but would not have any effect on her family. Marce would be content to have her close for all her years though Payton knew she longed for a life of her own. It was Payton’s personal success she feared failing at.
Disappointing herself, not others.
He remained silent, though she saw the battle growing once more within Damon. “You came and accepted, loved, and cherished my children in a way I’ve never allowed myself. You stepped into the role I was unprepared to fulfill.”
Was. Was unprepared to fulfill.
“What about now?” Her breathless whisper filled the space between them.
“They may very well reject me,” he confessed. “But I can no longer allow my fear to stop me from trying.”
“They would never turn away from you, Damon.” She slipped from the lounge to kneel before him, her cream gown of satin and lace crushed and wrinkling under her knees. “Just as I, despite my anger over your high-handed manner, could never reject you.”
Taking hold of his hands—strong, capable hands—Payton raised them to her cheeks, their warmth infusing her with a sense of urgency. She needed him to understand how much he meant to his children, her, and his entire household.
“Favorably, you have the benefit of time.” His thumb caressed the skin of her face. “The children are young, and I suspect they would forgive you anything. They have only you, no one else.”
“That is not true,” he sighed. “They have you.”
It was Payton who broke their eye contact. “Yes, but I am no longer their governess.”
“What you’ve done tonight shows you care,” he replied. “In my need to be distracted, I was oblivious to their longings, their hurt. But they went to you, and you came even after everything that had happened between us. You saw them home, safely.”
“I did as any person would.”
“No, you did what someone who loves them would do,” he countered.
“I do love them.” At some point, they’d both reverted to whispering as she leaned closer, her hands settling on his knees while he continued to trail his fingers along her flaming skin from her cheek, to her jaw,
to her neck. She trembled under his touch, longed for him to never withdraw his hand. In this moment, she would gladly remain forevermore. “…and you.”
The declaration slipped from her lips unbidden.
As the words hung between them, the seconds of silence stretched between them as everything around them faded. Payton could not think of the crowded ballroom down the hall, or her brother waiting in the foyer, or what ploy Catherton would employ next to seek his revenge.
It was only her and Damon. There was much she’d gambled on in her life, but never again would she wager so carelessly with her baron.
She loved him. Despite everything, she was in love with Damon.
Could he love her in return?
Something broke within her, freeing her from everything that held back her words—her emotions. It wouldn’t stop her if he didn’t love her in return, as long as he knew that she loved him.
She’d spent her entire life believing that one was only free and unburdened if they remained in control and were beholden to no one. It was how her mother had lived. No one could hurt her because she was in control of every aspect of her life—her children, her home, and her business.
Her mother had been wrong.
Everything Payton had believed was wrong.
She’d never feared risking herself financially, but now she had to risk the independence she’d fought so hard for by offering her heart to someone who might not think her love worthy enough to let go of his past and embrace a future together.
Yes, she was in love with Damon.
No amount of distance or time would ever change that.
Now that she’d laid all her cards on the table, no matter the consequences, she could move on with no regrets or thoughts of what might have been.
His hand slipped away from her cheek, grazing her collarbone before grasping her gloved fingers. At the same time, his stare fell away from hers.
This was the risk of her admission. Payton was familiar with taking risks. She took them every time she entered a gaming hell or sat down at a card table. Sometimes, she won. Other times, she lost.
The Gambler Wagers Her Baron: Craven House Series, Book Four Page 28
