A Return of Devotion

by Kristi Ann Hunter

  Jess was bad with numbers, though, so perhaps Daphne could help make the supply list or something similar.

  Using her new knowledge was different than teaching it, though. How was she supposed to show the concept to the children without plunking the book down in front of them and making them work through it the same way she just had? That hardly seemed like something they would like to do after working hard all day.

  Perhaps Sarah’s day could be shortened a bit with all the new maids. Some creative scheduling should free up a bit of Eugenia’s time. Daphne could even lend a hand in the scullery and wash a few pots while the girl did her lessons. Reuben was a bit trickier, of course. Daphne didn’t know the first thing about exercising horses, and she doubted Mr. Pasley would take kindly to her request that she be allowed to learn.

  She pushed the mathematics books away and pulled out the science book. Before she could open the tome, a knock came at the door.

  “Mrs. Brightmoor,” Horatia said from the doorway, “Lord Chemsford is requesting a tea tray in the plain room. With two cups.”

  Two cups. He expected to take tea with her again.

  “Thank you, Horatia. I’ll see to it.” She congratulated herself on being able to say the sentence without even a bit of quake in her voice.

  In less time than she would have liked, she was carrying a tea tray into what had once been the girls’ bedchamber. The attached dressing room had held beds as well. The smaller bedroom next door had then become the dressing room.

  Now the room was referred to as the plain room because it was, well, plain. It would soon have the added distinction of being the scene of her latest degradation.

  Lord Chemsford was already in the room, standing in a small alcove off to the side.

  The rattle of cups revealed her shaking hands as she crossed the room to set the tray down. Without a word she began to pour the tea. If she was going to be forced to visit with the man, she was going to make it as fast and non-humiliating as possible.

  “Thank you,” he said as he accepted the cup. “What do you think should be done with this room?”

  Daphne paused, her own cup an inch from her face. “Done?”

  “Yes. They’ve almost finished the garret rooms. I’ve asked Mr. Leighton and Benedict to move in here next. This house has been yours longer than it’s been mine. I’m sure you’ve envisioned possibilities.”

  Of course she had. She’d simply never imagined being able to see them come to life. And had he called the house hers? Did he realize how much it meant to her?

  She set her cup aside very carefully and began to talk.

  William had heard Daphne speak many words in the few weeks that he’d known her. There’d been a lot of emotions threaded through them, such as worry or nerves, which had left William filled with pity or irritation—sometimes directed at her, other times at himself. But opening the door for her to share her ideas for the house had brought out something he’d never expected.

  She was alive. Bright. Passionate.

  He couldn’t care less about what the house looked like, as long as it was presentable and not so out of date that the marquisette looked like it was faltering. But since the rooms had to be updated, he’d thought asking her opinion would be a way to break the awkwardness from yesterday’s disastrous tea.

  It apparently was one of the smartest ideas William had ever had.

  She knew everything about this room. She knew where the sun hit in the mornings and where the drafts came through in the winter. She talked of furniture and the ways in which he might want to set the room up if he intended to have it reserved for the best guests. She even made suggestions of decorating colors and fabrics, along with art from various areas of the house that could be brought in to complement different ideas. Every word she spoke, every idea she described brought a glow to her face that reminded him of watching her at the piano.

  There was considerably more going on in Daphne Blakemoor’s head than she let on.

  It was fascinating. Like watching a unique, exotic flower bloom with an array of colorful petals you hadn’t realized were contained in the plain, green bud.

  “And that’s what I would do.” She wound down her descriptive ramble and suddenly dropped her gaze to the teacup in her lap. She cleared her throat. “If it, well, if it were mine.” Her shoulders slumped, and the vitality of moments ago seemed to fade before his eyes.

  William wanted to shout in despair as her glorious confidence shriveled back into her insecurities. A few moments ago he’d been entranced by her. It was probably dangerous to encourage, but he couldn’t imagine asking someone who was capable of that sort of exuberance to live in silence.

  “I like it,” he said, even though he’d barely grasped her idea. But he’d see the fullness of her vision once the renovation was completed. “I want you to make it happen.”

  “Me?” Daphne squeaked. “But, I . . . I can’t.”

  His eyebrows lifted. “Why not? You were cleaning this entire house top to bottom practically by yourself. Now you have three new maids. Surely your time is a bit more available.”

  “Well, yes, it is, but . . .” She fidgeted in her seat. “May I speak plainly?”

  “Please do.”

  “I’m the housekeeper. This isn’t what housekeepers do.”

  That was certainly true, but why was Daphne suddenly caring about being a proper housekeeper? He tilted his head. “It isn’t?”

  She hesitated, just like he’d expected. “N-No,” she said without a bit of decisiveness behind the word. “I’d rather think that more the job of the mistress of the house.”

  “I think,” William said slowly, because despite his best efforts he wasn’t having any trouble at all visualizing Daphne as the lady of the manor, “that you love this house.”

  “I do,” she whispered. “You have no idea what this place means to me.”

  “Then you’ll do right by it.” He knew this was true. She would care more for every little facet of this place than anyone else he could hire to do it. “I’ve some modernizations I want to work in, but I’m putting you in charge of the aesthetics of the project.”

  “In charge?”

  “Yes. I’ll want to discuss ideas with you on a regular basis, naturally.” There was absolutely no need for him to hear her plans, but he couldn’t deny himself the possibility of experiencing her as she’d been moments ago.

  The way she’d smiled while talking through her ideas. How her hands waved through the air as she described how beautiful the morning sun was when it splashed across the far wall. Her eyes hadn’t dropped away from his but had held his gaze, wide-eyed and earnest.

  He wanted more of all of that. It intrigued him, gripped him. Some of the same unnameable, unspeakable emotions that had run through him while he watched her play piano coiled inside him when she talked about the house. It was like a flame that entranced a person even though touching it was unwise.

  It would burn him. And her. Because as much as he could see her as mistress of this house, he couldn’t really see her as his marchioness. He couldn’t see her in London or even at Dawnview, dealing with the masses of people and the politics and the gossip. She was too pure, despite her past—or maybe even because of it. Perhaps going through something like that showed a person the value of the other extreme.

  “It will give you a reason to spend more time with your son as well,” he added, just in case she needed a bit of an incentive.

  “Benedict,” she choked out. “Call him Benedict. Not my . . . my son.”

  He nodded and pushed on before she could retreat behind her walls. “Tell me what you would do in the portrait room.”

  That was the most ridiculous room in the house. He didn’t know the people, didn’t care about them, and wasn’t about to haul the family portraits from Dawnview to here.

  “Well,” she began cautiously, as if afraid to allow herself to get caught up in her ideas the way she had earlier. “It depends on whether or not you i
ntend to do any entertaining. With the music room situated as it is between the front hall and the portrait room, it would be two excellent open spaces for a country assembly.”

  “I have no intention of entertaining, and if I do it will hardly be on that grand of a scale.” Balls and assemblies would never be part of his life, even when he married. He refused to marry anyone as socially connected or ambitious as his stepmother.

  “In that case”—her fingers twined together as if afraid he was going to stomp all over her suggestions—“do you have any hobbies? I mean, it’s an excellent room for activities. If you . . .” Her eyes darted around as if trying to come up with an idea that might possibly be something he’d find appealing. “It could be excellent for fencing, if you do that, or, well, you wouldn’t sew or craft, but if there is something you enjoy doing outside, the room makes a wonderful rainy-day alternative. Would make, that is.”

  He leaned back, already considering the equipment he could place in the room. Fencing bags and training machines. Possibly even some of the new equipment he’d seen in a book by Friedrich Ludwig Jahn. William’s German wasn’t the best, but the book he’d seen was mostly diagrams, and the exercises on the pages looked interesting.

  It would be a rather bizarre room for a country manor, but as far off from the rest of the house as it was, it wouldn’t cause a problem.

  “I think that’s an excellent idea,” he said.

  “You do?” She blinked at him as if she’d never heard those words before.

  And, honestly, if some of the ways she’d tried to keep him and Benedict apart were typical of her usual ideas, she might not have heard them. But in this case, she was on an excellent track.

  “I do.” He took his cup of tea and settled deeper into his chair. “Tell me your thoughts on the rest of the house.”

  Chapter twenty-nine

  God was making sure that one atypical behavior in the house led to another.

  First, William had been mesmerized by a confident, passionate, and enthusiastic Daphne who was putting together workable and insightful ideas. Now he made his way up into the attics, chasing an even more addlepated idea than anything his housekeeper had ever come up with.

  In the doorway to one of the garret rooms he cleared his throat.

  The boy measuring the wall jerked his head up, saw William, and snapped into a standing position, a long, thick string dangling forgotten from his fingers. “My lord.”

  He blinked and swallowed before casting his eyes around the room. It was the same nervous habit his mother had and seeing it brought an inexplicable layer of calm to William’s nervousness. This was why he was here. When he’d put himself in her place last night, he’d realized that what ultimately mattered to her was what was going to happen to Benedict. He was, after all, the truly innocent person in the situation William was attempting to rectify.

  William stepped farther into the room. “Good afternoon, Benedict.”

  “I haven’t had time to work on your desk yet, sir. We’ve been here every day. It’ll be a while yet.”

  William waved his hand to the side. “I’m not worried about the desk. You’re a talented young man, but even you can’t do two things at once.”

  His eyes grew big and round. “Thank you, sir.”

  William looked out the small window across from the door, hoping for a bit of inspiration. His view of how to accomplish the vague goal that had brought him up here was as clear as the large carved stone balustrade that marched around the roof and blocked everything, save the tops of a few trees.

  “What do you plan to do when you finish your apprenticeship with Mr. Leighton?”

  There was nowhere to sit, so William leaned one shoulder against the window frame in an attempt to appear casual. As if he hadn’t purposely climbed several sets of stairs in order to have this conversation.

  “I’d like to have a shop of my own. I don’t know how many people around here want to buy the type of furniture I want to make, but there are a lot of people who come through Marlborough. Some of them like unique pieces.” Benedict wrapped his measuring strip around his hand a few times before unwinding it and repeating the process.

  “I think with a few pieces in the right places you could have more work than you can handle,” William said.

  A smile eased up the corners of Benedict’s mouth and his shoulders seemed to relax. “Do you truly think so?”

  “You made that gaming table downstairs, right? And the tea box in the dining room?”

  The boy nodded.

  William nodded in return. “Then, yes, I think people will want what you can make.”

  And suddenly William knew exactly what to do. He’d wanted to somehow encourage and validate the boy’s passions but Benedict didn’t need that. He was already honing his passion, working with something he loved. What he needed was the exact opposite.

  “Do you know how to run a business?” William asked.

  “No, sir.” Benedict’s shoulders tightened up again. “I’ve never dealt much with money at all.”

  Whereas William’s first book had been an estate ledger. “I’d like to teach you.”

  Blue eyes met blue eyes, and William had to work to keep from flinching at how odd it felt to stare down eyes the same color as his own. He braced himself for Benedict to say he wanted nothing to do with anyone connected to the father who hadn’t wanted him or the employer making his mother’s life occasionally difficult. Even though he didn’t know Daphne was his mother, William rather believed she felt like one to him.

  Instead, Benedict asked, “Why?”

  An excellent question and one William wasn’t sure he could answer. It was a feeling, some combination of guilt and responsibility and a desire to see a bit of balance in a world that was incredibly unjust. “Would it be enough if I just thought it was the right thing to do?”

  Benedict tilted his head in thought. It was something William did, something he’d seen his father do. Probably something his cousin Maxwell did as well. William gave his head a small shake to bring his focus back to the matter at hand.

  “Yes,” Benedict said. “I think that would be enough.” He glanced at the string in his hand and the wall he’d been measuring. “I have a lot of work to do, though. It will have to be during my break. I usually take one around noon.”

  And with that sort of work ethic, the boy was going to go far. William nodded. “Noon it is.”

  William left Benedict to his work then and went straight to the library, pulling out the various ledgers he had to see which ones would provide the best example to show Benedict how to manage a business.

  He could feel the same internal thrill he’d seen in Daphne earlier welling up within him, as if God had put him right here, right now to accomplish this task. This was something he could do and do well, and there wasn’t anything much more exciting than that.

  Four days later, after taking tea in various rooms of the house so that she could share her ideas, Daphne finally believed it when William said that he was going to let her oversee the redecoration of the house.

  Three days after that, Daphne was using her spare time to make sketches and dream up elegant but creatively useful designs for every space. She didn’t know much about modern fashions or current styles, but she knew this house. It was meant to be a grand lady of understated elegance, not a London dandy tripping over whether or not his shoe buckles were the right size this year.

  She took her sketchpad up to the attic, as was becoming common during the midafternoon, to toss ideas around with Benedict while he worked. Sometimes he would pause what he was doing and draw a rough sketch for a piece of furniture or share what he’d seen in other catalogues. Other times they simply talked while she put her ideas on paper, sharing jokes and little stories the way they used to.

  And when he shared that he’d been learning about business from the marquis during his mid-day break, Daphne’s maternal heart had melted in gratitude and she’d lost the last hold she had on her
imagination.

  She then stopped by the library, sketchpad clutched to her chest, knocking on the door to draw William’s attention from the letter he was steadily writing at the desk. It had gotten so much easier to think of him as William over the past week.

  No longer did she see her son when she looked at him. The ways in which they were different were obvious to her now. William’s eyes were the same shade and shape but just a bit closer together, his nose the smallest bit narrower. He didn’t possess Benedict’s dimples when he smiled, and as his hair got longer and in need of a cut, a slight curl made an appearance where Benedict’s hair, though the exact same shade, was perfectly straight no matter how long it grew.

  No, her son was not what she thought of when she looked at William.

  Her thoughts had become ever so much more dangerous.

  He glanced up at her, and she cleared her throat, hugging her sketchpad even tighter. “Thank you for what you’re doing with Benedict.”

  William nodded. “His pieces are excellent, but that will mean nothing if he can’t run a business well.”

  Daphne shifted her weight, knowing she should leave but not wanting to do so. Only a few hours ago they’d taken tea in the upstairs parlor that had once been Daphne’s bedchamber. They’d talked about the room for a while, but then their conversation had shifted to books and which of the new flowers being planted in the garden was their favorite.

  “What do you have there?” William asked.

  “Oh, sketches. For the dining room.”

  “May I see?”

  Daphne looked down at the thick book in her hand. Drawing had been the only other ladylike skill she’d possessed in a level above mediocrity, but it had been a very long time since a non-family member had looked at sketches she’d made. Her arms trembled a bit as she set the book on the desk.

  He glanced at the drawing before lifting his attention back to her. “Tell me about them.”

  So she did. Even though she’d already shared her ideas with him verbally, now that there was an image to go with it and Benedict’s additional input on the furniture, she could express more detail.