“You don’t want me to carry out duties that are beneath you. The…demeaning duties of a valet.”
“Precisely. That is precisely it,” Richard said with relief. David was not usually obtuse. “I’m talking about a position of the greatest confidence. I will double your salary. God knows you would earn it. As an independent professional man—”
“I would still be a servant, would I not?”
“Well, you would be of my household. That is unavoidable if we are to see each other, but I can at least take you out of the servants’ hall. David, I want what we had last night. I want you with me. If you want that too, is this not the answer?”
David looked down at his hands. Richard followed his gaze. They were tough hands, slim but strong, calloused at the base of the fingers, as he’d found when kissing them. Working hands, not like his own.
“But it’s a gentleman’s position,” David said at last, quietly. “Everything you’re offering me is a gentleman’s position. And I am not a gentleman.”
“If you would take my offer, you would at least not be a servant.”
“But I am a servant. I am a valet.”
This was maddening. “You don’t have to be. I am offering you a better post.”
“One quite fit for a gentleman,” David agreed. “Nothing degrading in it. I should rise, my lord. I have household tasks to perform.”
“David?”
“Don’t,” David said, voice harsh. “Don’t say any more. You have said quite enough.”
He dressed with speed and in silence, avoiding Richard’s gaze. Richard watched him, confused and afraid and entirely lost as to where he had gone wrong, until David slipped out of the room without farewell.
Richard stayed in bed for another twenty minutes or so, for discretion, going over the conversation in his mind. He had made a bad misstep, that much was clear, but he was damned if he could see where.
After a while, he dressed, feeling David’s absence, then stared out of the window instead of hurrying downstairs while David was engaged in domestic chores. It was a sunny spring day, and the rectory garden was bright with blossoms and unfurling life. Richard watched it through the thick, distorting glass.
He didn’t turn when the door opened, not until a female voice said, “Your lordship.” Then he moved quickly. David had straightened the bed; Richard was supposed to be in here; and, of course, she knew. Still, the consciousness of her knowledge was uncomfortable.
“Mrs. Fleming. Good morning.”
“May I speak to you?” David’s mother asked.
“Of course. Should we go downstairs?”
“No,” said Mrs. Fleming. “I don’t want to speak to you in a drawing room, your lordship. Let’s do it in here where you spent the night with my son.”
Richard had met Dominic’s parents often, and that had felt awkward enough with their love affair a secret. This was far, far outside his experience. He kept his breathing even, watching her face and praying David had been right about her support.
Mrs. Fleming folded her arms. Her plentiful hair was neatly braided and coiled. It framed a face as pale as David’s, more freckled, with green eyes to his brown. The resemblance was strongest in the unnerving lack of expression.
“Lord Richard.” She was watching his face. “I don’t suppose my son has told you a great deal about me.”
“Only that you are not well. I am sorry to know it.”
“Ha. Not that.” She pressed her lips together briefly. “I was a governess. My father was a tailor, but I had a good education, and I found a place in a widower’s household. He was a kind man. A charming man. I was eighteen. I suppose I need not go into too much detail.”
“You must speak as you see fit.”
“He promised me marriage, and I believed him. I think he even believed it at the time he promised,” she added. “But when it came down to it, he was my employer. He did not like it when I argued or when I said no. A man must tolerate disagreement in a wife unless he is a domestic tyrant, but he need not in a governess. Not at all.”
“I see.”
“I doubt you do,” Mrs. Fleming said. “I lived like that for months in the hope that we might be happy, hanging on his approval and fearing any word might spell my dismissal. I worked for him, and I loved him, and that made me helpless because, in the end, he did not feel obliged to treat a governess as he would a woman of his station. Now perhaps you begin to see.”
“Yes.”
“David has talked to me. And what I hear makes me relieved that he left your service and quite determined, my lord, that my son will not repeat my mistake.”