When she returns, it’s to throw open the door with, “He’s gone. Again.” She scowls my way, as if I bear full responsibility for this. “Seems he wasn’t keen to meet his new governess.”
“I presume you mean my charge,” I say mildly. “Has he had poor experiences with my predecessors?”
“None of them stayed long enough for that,” murmurs Hugh.
“You’ll have to find him,” Mrs. Landon says. “Consider it your first duty, Miss Smith.”
“I’ll help her,” Hugh says. “I know where the young master likes to—”
“You’ll do no such thing because you will be otherwise occupied, carrying Miss Smith’s bags to her room and then putting away the coach. If Miss Smith cannot find her charge, then she is hardly equipped to tend to him.”
Hugh slips me a sympathetic look. “It ought to be simple enough, miss. The young master is fond of the Greek temple, which is . . .” He turns, shading his eyes against the gaslit lanterns.
“Up the hillside,” I say with a smile. As soon as the words leave my mouth, I duck my gaze to say shyly, “I came here on a holiday when I was a girl. The grounds were open for a Christmas bonfire. I recall the temple, and I shall search for the young master there.”
As I leave, I slow my steps, lest I betray my anticipation. I certainly do know how to find the temple. It’s where August proposed. To hear him tell the story, he’d had no intention of asking for my hand on that trip. He’d already done so a half-dozen times, and so he left the ring in London. Then he’d watched me fall in love with the estate, and he’d found a ring in his mother’s old jewelry box. He’d proposed in the Greek folly under the stars of a summer night. And I’d finally accepted.
Once I’m past the house, I jog up the hill as fast as my skirts will allow. The temple sits at the top. It’s a miniature replica of the Temple of Athena in Athens and dates from the late eighteenth century, when it’d been fashionable to display your knowledge of the world by rebuilding it on your estate grounds. A Greek temple, an Egyptian pyramid, even fake Roman ruins were scattered over the property.
In the moonlight, the white stone glows atop the grassy hill. As I approach, my gaze scans the horizon for Harrison’s son. What was his name again? Damn it, I should know that.
I also need to remember to keep my cursing to myself. My rare words of profanity amused August. They would hardly amuse Mrs. Landon, and I’ve grown too accustomed to the occasional mild oath in public, perfectly acceptable in the twenty-first century.
Was the boy’s name Edward? No, that was Harrison’s second son. James? No, that was his firstborn. What was—?
The breath in my lungs disappears, as if I’ve stumbled into a vacuum.
August is at the temple.
It is not August, the thirty-year-old man I first met. Nor is it the thirty-five-year-old one I lost. Nor even the thirty-nine-year-old one he will be now. Instead, I see a ghost of the August I never knew, the one who lived before I first drew breath.
In Courtenay Hall, there is a painting of August as a boy. The first time I saw it, I mistook it for some cousin who closely resembled my husband. Surely, that somber, big-eyed six-year-old was not the vibrant, laughing man I knew. In that portrait, I caught my first glimpse of the boy August hid so well. The boy whose beloved older sister died shortly before that portrait was painted. The boy whose father paid him no attention, seeing him only as the child whose birth killed his wife. The boy who grew into a young man whose fiancée—William’s sister—had left him without a word of explanation.
It was here, at Courtenay Hall, that August first introduced me to his difficult past. He’d joked about “haunting” the halls and fields and forests, a quiet child I surely would not recognize, in the years before he met William Thorne, when he’d truly been alone. One of his favorite places had been the temple folly, and he’d spent hours imagining elaborate scenarios with Greek monsters, himself as the conquering hero, saving the maiden.
When he then proposed to me there, I could not help but accept. I saw the lonely boy he must have been, and I wanted to be the maiden to his hero.
No, I wanted to be the hero to his lost boy, the woman who would not leave.
Only I had left, hadn’t I?
When I crest the hill, this is the August I see—the boy from that portrait, pensive and quiet, sitting on the edge of the temple and gazing up at the stars. My throat closes, even as I know I’m imagining the scene before me.
Then the boy half turns and gives a start, his gasp audible. He is twenty feet away, bathed in moonlight to my shadow. His eyes widen, and they are not August’s eyes at all. They are my own.
“Edmund,” I whisper, the word no more than breath.
He dives from the base and darts into the forest. I race after him, his name on my lips, refusing to come as more than a gasp. Bushes crackle and crash, and I follow, pushing into the thick forest, his figure no more than a will-o’-the-wisp glow.
Edmund! It’s me! Your mother!
That’s what wells up inside me. But it stays in there, common sense pinning it down.
I don’t care about common sense. This is my son. My son.
All my plans flit away like bats in the night. This is my child, and I must get to him, must gather him up in my arms and hug him and cry over him, and tell him it is me.
Yet I cannot get a word out. Not even his name.
How many nightmares have I had of this? Of catching a glimpse of my son on a city street and giving chase, of trying in vain to shout his name as he runs ever farther away?
In my heart, I know he isn’t fleeing me—not fleeing his mother—but simply running from a stranger. It doesn’t matter. In that moment, all the guilt rushes forth, the dam of denial shattered.
Yes, I didn’t leave on purpose. Yes, I’ve spent years trying to get back to him. But there is still guilt, so much guilt.
I should never have ridden off that night. What a silly thing to do, such an inconsequential worry. Even if August had found me without my wedding band, if I had admitted to removing it at Thorne Manor, it would have been only a bump in our relationship. He would have seen the logic in my explanation.
I never feared a beating or even a slap. I just . . . I’d hit the point where I found myself going to ridiculous lengths to keep the waters of our marriage calm, and in the last few years, I’ve realized that was not my responsibility. As a couple, we needed to confront his insecurities, not buffer him from them.
I made the wrong choice, and my family suffered for it. My son suffered for it most of all, and seeing him flee, I feel as if he’s running from me, and I tear through the forest, vines lashing my feet, brambles cutting my flesh. Logic screams that I’m only terrifying him more, but I cannot stop.
When I spot the bobbing light of a lantern, I race toward it, clawing vines and branches out of my way until Hugh appears. He lifts the lantern and falls back, as if seeing a ghost. Then he blinks and hurries toward me.
“Miss!” he says. “Did you fall? Are you injured?”
I brush my skirts and push back strands of wig hair. “The boy. I startled him, and he fled, and now I cannot . . .” I gulp a breath. “I cannot find him. Please help. It’s dark, and he cannot see the way, and there are ponds and cliffs and—”