She Vanished After the Duke Rejected Her—But When He Found Her Working as a Maid at Another Lord’s Estate, the Eight-Year-Old Boy Beside Her Revealed the Secret She Had Hidden for Nearly a Decade

PART 4

He avoided the kitchen garden after that, and the east wing, and the servants’ hall. He told himself that he was succeeding in putting the matter out of his mind. But the house seemed to conspire against him. Every time he turned a corner, he caught a glimpse of dark hair or a flash of brown eyes. Every time he heard a woman’s voice in the distance, he found himself listening for the particular cadence of her speech.

It was absurd. He was a duke, and she was a maid. There was no possible world in which the two of them could have any meaningful conversation. Whatever had once existed between them was dead, buried beneath years of silence and regret.

But she was not gone, and she was not buried. She was living in the same house as him, and the knowledge of it was driving him slowly mad.

On the fifth day of his visit, he finally saw her clearly.

It was late afternoon, and the rain had returned. He had been reading in the library, or trying to read, and he had risen to stand by the window and watch the rain fall across the gardens. She had come out of the house through a side door, carrying a basket of linens, and she had paused on the threshold, looking up at the sky with an expression he could not read.

She was thinner than he remembered. That was the first thing he noticed. Her face had lost its youthful softness, and there were shadows beneath her eyes that spoke of too little sleep and too much worry. Her hair was pinned back severely with no adornment, and her dress was plain gray wool with sleeves that had been turned and re-hemmed. She looked like exactly what she was—a woman who worked for her living, and had been working for a long time.

But her eyes were the same. Even at this distance, he could see that. They were still the warm brown he remembered, still bright with the intelligence that had first drawn him to her. And when she tilted her face up to the rain, closing her eyes for just a moment, something in the gesture was so familiar that it made his chest ache.

He stood at the window and watched her, and he did not move, and she did not see him. After a few moments, she lowered her head and stepped out into the rain, walking quickly across the gravel toward the laundry buildings.

He watched until she disappeared from view. And then he turned away from the window and sat down heavily in the nearest chair. His hands were trembling, he realized. He looked down at them in disbelief and then clasped them together in his lap, pressing them hard against his thighs to stop the shaking.

This was ridiculous. He was not a lovesick boy anymore. He was a grown man, a duke, a man of substance and consequence. He was not going to fall apart because he had seen a woman he had once loved and lost.

But the truth was that he had never stopped loving her. He had simply learned to live with the pain, the way a man learns to live with an old injury that never quite heals. And now the pain had been torn open again, and he did not know how to close it.

That night, he made a decision. He would speak to her. He would find a way to approach her privately, without causing scandal or speculation. He would ask her what had happened to her family, and why she was working as a servant, and whether the child was really the son of a dead soldier named Thomas Bailey.

And he would tell her that he was sorry.

He wrote to his steward in Yorkshire that same night, informing him that his return would be delayed by a fortnight. He gave no reason beyond the vague suggestion of business among the guests at Norland Park, and told himself it was not entirely a lie. Lord Harrington, delighted to keep so illustrious a guest under his roof a while longer, pressed him warmly to stay as long as he liked, and Everly, without quite admitting to himself why, accepted.

On the sixth morning of his visit, he rose early and made his way to the kitchen garden, reasoning that she would eventually pass through on some errand. He positioned himself near the low stone wall, partially concealed by a row of espaliered pear trees, and waited.

It took nearly an hour, but eventually she appeared, carrying a basket and moving with the same quiet efficiency he had observed from a distance. She did not see him at first, and he had a moment to study her face before she became aware of his presence.

Then she looked up and saw him. And she stopped dead in the middle of the path.

For a long moment, neither of them spoke. Her face had gone very pale, and her hands had tightened on the basket. He could see the rapid rise and fall of her breathing beneath the rough fabric of her dress.

“Elizabeth,” he said.

Her lips parted, but no sound came out. She stared at him as though he were a ghost. And then she took a step backward, and another. For one terrible moment, he thought she was going to turn and run.

“Please,” he said quickly. “I only want to talk to you. Just for a few minutes.”