A Widowed Duke’s Dreamy Governess – Extended Epilogue

Five years later

The argument had started, as far as Algernon could determine, over a green ribbon.

It was now about something considerably more complex. It had progressed through the dress itself, the secondary question of whose dress it technically was, the tertiary question of whether borrowing without asking constituted an agreement to share it, and had arrived at its current position, which involved Eleanor’s rights as the elder of the two and Claire’s position that seniority was not a relevant category in matters of personal property.

Algernon stood in the corridor with his hands behind his back and listened.

“You said I could borrow it,” Eleanor said.

“I said you could borrow it for Olivia’s birthday dinner,” Claire said. “This is a different dinner.”

“It is still a dinner.”

“A dinner for which I want to wear my own dress.”

“Then wear your other dress.”

“My other dress has a stain on the sleeve from when you spilled—”

“That was not my fault.”

“You were holding the dish.”

“You walked into me.”

Algernon looked at the ceiling.

Eloise appeared at his elbow. She was five and had Olivia’s fair coloring and Julian’s expression of cheerful capability, and she looked up at him with the report of a diligent scout.

“Eleanor says it’s her dress,” Eloise said. “Claire says it’s only her dress when Eleanor wants to borrow it, but it’s Claire’s dress when Claire wants to wear it. I tried to suggest they take turns.” She paused. “They didn’t like that.”

“Thank you for the effort,” Algernon said.

He took a breath and knocked on the door.

“We are discussing something,” Eleanor said.

“I know. I’d like to discuss it with you.”

The door opened. Eleanor looked at him with the expression she had developed in the past year or two, the haughtiness of childhood refined into something more precise and considerably more effective. She was eleven now.

“Papa,” she said, “this is a matter between Claire and me.”

“I understand that,” Algernon said. “Dinner is in twenty minutes, and I would prefer to eat before nine o’clock.”

Claire appeared at Eleanor’s shoulder. She was ten, and she had the composed patient look of someone who had a strong position and knew it.

He opened his mouth. He closed it. He had a much better idea.

“I’ll get your mother,” he said.

Aurora arrived, assessed the situation in approximately forty-five seconds, produced a solution that neither Eleanor nor Claire could reasonably object to, and both of them were slightly annoyed not to have thought of themselves. She was very good at this. She had been very good at this for five years, and he was not sure he had told her so recently.

He was thinking about this while watching her speak to the girls and barely noticing the small warm weight that had transferred itself from Aunt Marie’s arms into his.

Edward was eighteen months old and had recently discovered that watching the ceiling was an activity of genuine interest. He was lying in Algernon’s arms, looking up at the lights with the concentrated attention of someone encountering an idea for the first time and finding it excellent.

Aunt Marie, from her chair in the corner of the corridor, was watching the dress negotiation with the expression of someone who had not quite followed how it developed.

“Are they fighting over a man?” she said.

“A dress,” Algernon told her.

“A dress,” Aunt Marie repeated, in the tone of someone deciding whether this was an improvement. “At their age, I would have been fighting over a man. Much more interesting.” She looked at the girls for a moment. “Though I suppose there’s time for that.”

“There is not,” Algernon said.

“Mmm,” Aunt Marie said, which was not agreement.

She had grown smaller in five years, in the way the very old did, and her hands were less steady than they had been, and she forgot the day sometimes. But she was here, in the good light of a house with proper heating, regular meals, and a household of people who checked on her, and that was what mattered.

She had resisted coming to live at the Hall for approximately three weeks, and then had arrived with her yarn, her opinions, and her habit of cutting through any situation to the truth of it, and the house had accommodated her without difficulty and had been, he thought, better for her presence.

He looked at the small boy in his arms.

Edward had the dark eyes that seemed to run in the family and Aurora’s way of looking at things, which was direct and with complete attention. He was looking at Algernon now in the way he sometimes did, as though making a careful assessment and reserving judgment.

“Quite right,” Algernon told him.

Edward appeared to find this response acceptable. He returned to the ceiling.

Algernon thought, not for the first time, about the particular chain of circumstances that had produced this moment. A posting on a village board.

A woman walking four miles in her mother’s dress. A muddy lane, a careless remark, and the beginning of an argument that had turned out to be the beginning of everything else. He thought about Eleanor at six, deployed in his study in the manner of a child who had run out of patience with the pace of events, saying: Papa, did you ask her?

He had not, at that point, yet asked her. But he had, eventually, and here they were.

Julian appeared at his shoulder.

He had the particular look he wore when he had been watching something for a while and was deciding how to comment on it. He looked at Algernon and at Edward and at the three girls, all being handled by Aurora and Olivia with varying degrees of success.

“I counted the gray hairs,” Julian said. “You have seven more than you did in January.”

“Thank you,” Algernon said. “That is very helpful.”

“The dress situation will resolve itself. It always does.” Julian looked at the girls. “Eloise suggested a coin toss, I heard.”

“She did.”

“She gets that from Olivia. Olivia trusts systems.” Julian clasped his hands behind his back. They stood together for a moment in the comfortable silence of two men who had been having parallel conversations in various corridors for fifteen years. “Did you go?” Julian said.

Algernon had known the question was coming. Julian always circled back to it eventually, with the particular patience of a man who had learned that direct approaches did not always work with Algernon, but that waiting did.

“In March,” Algernon said. “I went in March.”

Julian was quiet.

“She is in a facility outside Leeds,” Algernon said. “The magistrate arranged it after the trial. They have doctors there who specialize in—” He stopped. He found the right word. “In cases like hers.” He looked at Edward, who had moved on from the ceiling to examining his own fist with equal interest. “I had expected to feel many things when I saw her. I had expected anger, primarily. What I felt was mostly pity.”

“Just pity?”

“Pity, and something else. She had spent thirty years constructing a version of events in which she was the protagonist and everything she had done was justified, and I was the person who had failed to understand her properly.” He paused. 

“She did not look well. The doctors say she may never be entirely …” He stopped again. “She believed it,” he said. “That is what I keep returning to. She believed it completely. Whatever she had done, she had done it inside a story she had told herself for so long that she could no longer see outside of it. She was not performing innocence. She was inside it.”

“Does that make it easier?” Julian asked.

Algernon thought about this honestly. “No,” he said. “But it makes a kind of sense. And I find it difficult to be angry at someone I primarily pity.” He looked at Julian. 

“Catherine would have wanted me to go,” he said. “Catherine would have said that the kinder thing was to see her clearly and not reduce her to a monster because she was not a monster. 

She was a person who had gone very wrong and was now living with the consequence.” He paused. “I think Catherine would have said that.”

Julian was quiet for a moment. Then he said, “I think she would have.”

They stood together a while longer. Edward’s fist lost its appeal, and he turned his attention to Algernon’s coat button with the focused purpose of someone who has identified a new goal.

“Papa,” Eleanor called from inside the room. Aurora had apparently arrived at a solution involving the second blue dress and a different ribbon, and Eleanor wanted his opinion on the ribbon, which she held out for inspection.

He went to look at the ribbon. He gave his opinion. The opinion was rejected because it was wrong, and Eleanor selected a different ribbon, which was apparently the correct answer.

***

Dinner proceeded.

It proceeded at the particular pace that dinner proceeded when the household included two girls with strong and divergent views on most subjects, one five-year-old who considered herself a moderating influence and was not, and one eighteen-month-old who had recently mastered throwing food with considerable accuracy and was enjoying this new skill. 

Olivia and Aurora managed the conversation at their end with the practiced ease of two women who had spent five years learning to hold a coherent discussion in difficult conditions. Julian and Algernon had developed the complementary skill of appearing to listen while monitoring the situation at the children’s end for anything requiring intervention.

It was, Algernon thought, the most ordinary dinner at which he had ever sat. He found he liked it better than any other kind.

The trouble started with Cheese.

Cheese was nine now, which was old for a dog, and which Cheese appeared to consider a personal achievement entitling him to certain additional freedoms. He had long since made a treaty with the kitchen staff on the question of scraps, and he had recently begun testing the boundaries of his treaty to determine whether it extended to the dining room itself.

It did not extend to the dining room.

Baxter was very clear on this point and had been clear on it, at increasing volume, for approximately three minutes by the time Cheese concluded his initial reconnaissance and committed to entry.

He came through the door at the pace of a dog who is aware he should not be here and has decided the solution is speed. He went under the table first, then along the wall, then under Eloise’s chair because Eloise immediately tried to pet him, then back across the room toward the serving table.

Algernon stood up.

He should not have stood up. He recognized this approximately half a second after standing up, when his foot connected with something he had not seen, which turned out to be the corner of the serving trolley that Thomas had moved four inches from its usual position, and which had the dish on it that contained the remainder of the gravy.

The gravy won.

He went down in the manner of a man who has made an error of judgment, which is to say, suddenly and without dignity, and the gravy arrived on his coat in the manner of gravy that has been given a clear opportunity, which is to say, thoroughly.

The table was silent for approximately one second.

Then Eleanor started laughing, which set off Claire, which set off Eloise, which made Edward, from his position in the high chair, begin the sustained and joyful sound he made when he understood that something amusing was happening, even if he was not entirely sure what.

Cheese, sensing the change in atmosphere, sat down next to Algernon on the floor and looked at him with the expression of a dog who considers himself a witness rather than a cause.

“Your Grace,” Baxter said, from the doorway, with the composure of a man who has been a butler for a very long time.

“Thank you, Baxter,” Algernon said, from the floor. “I’m aware.”

Aurora reached him first. She came around the table with the focused efficiency she brought to situations that needed addressing, helped him up, and looked at the coat with the expression of someone taking stock.

“Come,” she said. “There’s another coat in the small sitting room. Thomas left one there this morning in case of—” She stopped. “In case of situations.”

“Thomas anticipated this?”

“Thomas anticipates most things.”

She took him by the arm, and they went through the connecting door into the small sitting room, which was quiet, dimly lit, and smelled of old books and the wood fire that Baxter had laid that morning.

Behind them, the dining room was still audible, Eleanor’s voice beginning to explain to Julian why the fall had been technically avoidable, and Julian’s response, which suggested he was enjoying the explanation.

Thomas had indeed left a coat. It was on the back of the chair by the window, folded with the neatness of someone who had considered the placement. Algernon looked at it and then at Aurora, who was looking at the coat with the slight smile of someone who has long since made her peace with the particular character of the household she lives in.

“Five years,” he said.

She looked at him.

“Five years of this house,” he said. “Five years of arguments about dresses and dogs in the dining room and Aunt Marie asking whether the girls are fighting over men.” He looked at her. “Five years of you in the middle of it all, making it make sense. Making it work.”

“Algernon—”

“I am not going to be eloquent about this,” he said. “I want you to know that I notice it. Every day. Not just the large things. The way you talked to Claire this morning, when she was worried about the dress, before the argument even started. The way you sat with Aunt Marie this afternoon and let her tell the story about grandfather’s horse, even though you have heard it eight times.” He paused. “The way you are just yourself. In every room. With every person. You don’t manage it or perform it. You’re just–” He stopped, because the sentence was arriving somewhere he had not entirely anticipated, and he was going to follow it to the end regardless. “You are the best thing that has happened in this house,” he said. “And you are the best thing that has happened to me.”

Aurora looked at him for a moment. The firelight was on her face, and her eyes were very clear, and she was not, he noticed, trying to argue with any of it or deflect it, which meant she was going to accept it, which meant he had said it right.

“I know,” she said. “I can tell.” She reached up and straightened the collar of the coat he had not yet put on, her hands steady and warm at his neck. “You told me this morning by laughing at breakfast. Before nine o’clock.”

He looked at her. “You remember that.”

“I keep a careful record,” she said, very gently.

He put his hands on her waist, and she came the last small distance and kissed him, there in the quiet sitting room with the dining room still audible on the other side of the door, and the evening settled around them, and he held on and thought about five years of mornings in this house, and about all the mornings still to come.

When they stopped, she was still close, her forehead against his jaw.

“We should go back,” she said.

“In a moment,” he said.

She laughed, quietly, against his shoulder. He held the sound of it, and the warmth of her, and the ordinary extraordinary fact of this, and he did not let go.

In the dining room, Cheese barked once, which meant he had found something, which meant someone was going to need to investigate shortly, which was going to be his job because Baxter would look at him with the expression of a man who has done his part and the rest is now someone else’s.

He stayed where he was for thirty more seconds. Then he took his wife’s hand, and they went back in.

THE END