The Last Waltz of Lady Evangeline

The carriage wheels crunched against the gravel drive, their melodic beat slowing as the grand facade of the formidable Ashcombe Hall finally came into view. Evangeline Marchmont… but no, Miss Evelyn Marsh, the music tutor now, she reminded herself, as she pressed a gloved hand softly against her stomach, as if to still the raging butterflies that had stirred the moment Hampshire’s misty countryside gave way to the looming silhouette of her former life in the form of his imposing house.

The estate hadn't changed at all. The Ivy still clung stubbornly to the stonework like time trying to reclaim it. The great oaks that had always lined the drive seemed taller than she remembered, their roots ran deep, as did hers. But the house, and those windows with their watchful, all-knowing panes of glass, stood precisely as she remembered them. And within those ancient walls, the ghosts waited for her, silent and foreboding, ready to spill their secrets to all.

A footman opened the carriage door, and helped Evangeline step down, her boots sinking slightly into the soft earth. She kept her head lowered, her eyes trained on her worn leather valise in her hand. The hat she wore, a modest grey cloche, unadorned, that cast a discrete shadow over her face. She looked every bit the plain music tutor she now claimed to be.

Not the grand woman who once waltzed through these lofty halls in satin and pearls, her name on every tongue. Not the Lady Evangeline who’d fallen so painfully from grace.

The butler who had greeted her was new, a middle-aged man with kind eyes, and a discreet manner about him, suggesting he knew how to keep a confidence or two.

“Miss Marsh, I presume?” he asked, already reaching for her luggage.

She nodded politely, offering a demure smile in return to his. “Yes. Thank you.”

“If you would like to follow me, I will see you to your rooms. Lord Ashcombe is currently out riding, but the children are with the governess and will be expecting you for their afternoon lesson in the music room.”

Just the name — Lord Ashcombe — landed like a heavy blow to her chest. She gave no outward sign, but turmoil infested her thoughts as memories came flooding in.

“Very good,” she said softly.

They moved through corridors that whispered her name. The scent of the beeswax polish hung in the air. The faint murmurs of laughter from the drawing room that once rang out with her own voice. Even the light that filtered through those tall windows felt hauntingly familiar, as though it remembered her too.

Her room was high on the third floor, a modest but warm room, with a view that stretched over the stable roof, across the park and into the woods beyond. She set her valise on the bed and opened it slowly, running her fingers over the worn music sheets nestled inside.

A knock sounded.

“Yes?”

The door creaked open softly and two curious faces peeked through, one dark-haired girl of about ten, and a boy, perhaps seven, with a shock of blond curls and mischief in his eyes, and both wide eyed, eager to meet her.

“You are the music lady,” the girl stated, as if verifying a rumour.

“I suppose I am,” Evangeline replied with a smile, smoothing down her skirt and kneeling to their level. “And who might you two be then?”

“I’m Charlotte,” the girl said, chin lifted with all the dignity of someone used to being addressed with formality. “And this is my little brother, Henry. He is always loud and usually sticky.”

“I am not!” Henry protested, his cheeks reddening.

“Sticky or not, I’m very glad to meet you both,” Evangeline said gently. “Shall we go find a piano?”

The children brightened instantly, and Charlotte took her hand without hesitation.

The music room had changed in the last ten years. Where once stood a grand Bechstein now sat an upright, much less imposing than the Bechstein, but it presented itself as a well-kept piano all the same. Sunlight streamed through pristine white lace curtains, catching dust motes that danced like tiny spirits. As she sat on the bench, her fingers brushed across the keys. The first chord in C major rang out like a greeting from an old friend.

Charlotte perched beside her, already watching closely. Henry plopped onto the floor with a loud sigh, disinterested, his mind elsewhere.

“Papa says music is important,” Charlotte announced, then folded her hands in her lap. “But he doesn’t play. He used to, but not anymore.”

Evangeline hesitated for only a breath before responding. “And why not?”

The girl shrugged. “He says music belongs to another time. A softer time. A happier time.”

Evangeline nodded slowly, fixing her eyes back on the keys.

“Perhaps he is right,” she murmured. “But even soft things can also be strong. Music can remember what people forget. Or what they are too afraid to feel.”

Evangeline’s mind drifted back in time for a moment.

Then Charlotte brought her back to the present by asking, “Can you play something sad?”

Evangeline looked at her, she was taken aback by the request. “Why of all things, sad music?”

“Because sad music is beautiful sometimes,” Charlotte said. “And Papa is always listening outside the door when the governess plays. But she doesn’t know any sad music. He told me once he liked sad music. He said it had more feeling. I didn’t know what that meant.”

Evangeline’s heart tightened in her chest.

“Well then,” she whispered, turning back to the keys. “I think I know just the piece to play,” she said. “Let’s give him something to listen to.”

Her hands moved with a tenderness born of years of practice. She began the piece slowly, a minor key waltz she had composed in Paris during a winter of solitude. The notes unfurled like petals in ice cold air, melancholy, graceful, deep, and searching.

Behind her, she heard Henry go quiet. Even Charlotte didn’t speak.

And faintly, very faintly, she sensed it; she sensed someone beyond the door. A shadow that did not move, just listened. Silently drifting away before she turned.

That evening, as she made her way down the staff corridor, she paused a moment by the entrance to the library. She heard voices filtering through the crack, low, measured, but unmistakable.

“She plays well,” said a woman, using all sharp, clipped tones. Likely Lady Rosalind Ashcombe, Nate’s late wife’s sister.

“She does,” came the reply.

His voice.

Still deep, still calm, but much rougher than she had remembered. Tired, perhaps, more guarded.

“You hired her rather quickly, Nathaniel,” Rosalind said coolly. “And from such an obscure agency. Not like you to make snap decisions.”

There was a beat of silence before he replied. “She came with excellent references.”

“Too excellent, perhaps.” Rosalind snapped back.

Evangeline didn’t stay to hear more, she had heard enough. Her legs moved before her thoughts caught up, carrying her away from the door, past the flickering candle sconces, back toward the staircase.

A tightness caught in her throat as she reached the landing, where an open window let in the night breeze. She leaned against the sill, her eyes shut, and took in a deep breath.

She could still hear the waltz in her mind.

And him.

Behind the door. Listening to her play like a ghost in the shadows.

In the following days, she kept her head down, her music soft, and her presence unremarkable. But the children were persistent. Charlotte wanted to learn every song Evangeline played, and Henry liked to make up lyrics as she went along. Their laughter often rang down the halls like a forgotten memory that joy could still exist here.

But each day, she could feel him watching her, listening to her, a ghost not quite in the room.

And then, one dusky afternoon, as she lingered in the music room after a lesson, the door opened quietly. But she heard it.

Evangeline turned and met his gaze.

Ten years.

Ten years since she had last seen Nathaniel Ashcombe.

He had aged like parchment in the sun, he was creased and burnished, more solemn, more statuesque. But his eyes were the same. All stormy grey, like polished steel, fixed on her as if daring her to speak first.

“Miss Marsh,” he said, voice low and hesitant.

She curtsied. “My lord.”

A silence passed between them, as taut as a violin string.

“You played a waltz yesterday,” he said quietly.

“I play many waltzes.” She admitted, knowing exactly the one he referred too.

He stepped inside, closing the door gently behind him. “That one was familiar to me.”

Evangeline felt her heartbeat in her throat. She turned back to the piano to hide the tear forming in her eye, smoothing a hand over the closed lid.

“Memories often are,” she said, as she steadied her voice. “Even if we no longer recognise the face they wore.”

Nathaniel’s voice softened, barely more than a whisper. “You sound like someone I used to know.”

She looked up, her eyes meeting his.

“Then perhaps,” she said, “you don’t know her anymore.”

Nathaniel hadn’t moved. He stood just inside the music room, one hand still resting lightly on the door handle, as though part of him was already prepared to turn and leave.

But his eyes, those storm-grey eyes, remained locked on hers.

“I didn’t expect a ghost,” he said quietly. “Not in my music room.”

Evangeline smiled. “And I didn’t expect the music to summon one, either.”

A gust of wind creaked the window slightly ajar, and somewhere in the distance, a rook gave a long, rattling cry over the fields.

He took a step closer.

“So,” he murmured, “it is you.”

There was no question in his voice. Only the weight of a man finally acknowledging what he had already known.

She gave a slow nod, as if it hurt to move. “Yes… It is.”

Nathaniel ran a hand over his jaw, still watching her like a man deciphering a dream. “You just vanished,” he said. “Not a word. Not a letter. You were just… gone.”

Evangeline inhaled slowly. “There wasn’t room for letters, Nathaniel. There was only silence.”

He gave a humourless laugh. “That’s rich. You were the one person who never held her tongue.”

“That was before I learned what silence costs, and what speaking out takes from a woman without a name to shield her.”

His eyes narrowed. “You had a name. A title. You were—”

“Disgraced,” she interrupted gently. “I was disgraced, Nathaniel. And you know as well as I do that once a lady falls; society doesn’t rush to lift her back up again. It buries her where she won’t be seen ever again. Our lives have rules, taboos. Men govern these rules, but the gossips control them, make sure nobody survives. I no longer existed in society, so I no longer existed. That was until I reinvented myself as Miss Evelyn Marsh, the music tutor.”

He said nothing.

The silence stretched between them, delicate and trembling. She looked down at the keys, her sanctuary, and spoke into the space where the music had just been.

“Did you ever believe it? What they were saying.”

Nathaniel stiffened. “Believe what?”

“What they said about me and Julian?”

He looked away then, and for a moment, all she heard was the soft ticking of the metronome on the mantle.

When he finally answered, his voice was hoarse. “I wanted to think it was all nonsense. But you were gone, and he… he didn’t deny it. He didn’t say a word in your defence.”

She blinked, once, twice, to keep the sting from showing.

“No,” she whispered. “He wouldn’t have, would he?”

“You should have come to me,” Nathaniel said, stepping forward now, urgency rising in his voice. “You should have let me fight for you. I would have fought for you. You know that, don’t you?”

“I couldn’t. I didn’t know who you were anymore.” She paused. “And I didn’t know who I was.”

The next morning, Evangeline woke before the sun, the air in her room heavy with the scent of early spring damp and chimney smoke. She dressed slowly, the familiar ache in her chest still tender from the night before. The children would be expecting lessons soon, but she needed some air, some space to breathe without walls pressing in on her.

She walked the garden path behind the house, past the frost-bitten roses and toward the glasshouse. There, among pots of sleeping geraniums, she found Charlotte sitting on the stone bench, legs swinging, her hands wrapped around a steaming mug.

“You’re up early,” Evangeline said, sitting beside her.

“I couldn’t sleep,” Charlotte replied without looking up. “Sometimes I get dreams of Mummy, or of music. I think they are a sort of the same.”

Evangeline’s chest tightened.

Charlotte looked at her then, studying her face the way only children can.

“You know Papa, don’t you?”

Evangeline hesitated. “I did, but that was a long time ago.”

“Did he love you?”

The question wasn’t cruel. It was asked with all the rawness of youth and curiosity.

Evangeline reached for her hand and held it gently.

“I think,” she said slowly, “I think that we were two people who wanted to be brave, but weren’t. Not then.”

Charlotte tilted her head. “You’re brave now, aren’t you.”

“Not always. But I’m trying to be braver.”

Later that week, a letter arrived addressed to Lord Ashcombe, bearing the seal of the Duke of Harrowden, Julian’s father. Rosalind opened the letter, as she often did with correspondence, and her expression curdled like cream in the sun.

Evangeline caught sight of it as she entered the foyer to retrieve the music sheets she had left behind.

“That’s none of your concern,” Rosalind said quickly, folding the paper.

“I didn’t say it was.” She quickly responded.

Rosalind stepped closer, lowering her voice. “I know who you are. It took me a few days, but I remember that face. It’s the same one that nearly brought this family to ruin.”

Evangeline didn’t flinch. “Then you also remember I was never given a chance to defend myself.”

Rosalind’s lips curled. “You had the chance to stay and face the consequences. You chose flight over decency.”

“I chose survival.”

They stood, breath to breath, the years between them still hot with judgment.

“You think slipping back in as a music tutor will earn you redemption?” Rosalind spat. “Or are you hoping for something more… permanent?”

Evangeline said nothing, but she held the other woman’s gaze until it was Rosalind who turned away.

That night, thunder rolled over the moors. Rain battered the windows, and the house seemed to exhale its age with every creak and groan of the timbers.

Evangeline could not sleep. She went to the music room again, this time barefoot and cloaked in her dressing gown. Her fingers hovered over the keys, and then she began to play, but not the waltz, something gentler, much softer. A lullaby half-remembered from her childhood. She sang quietly, barely audible, a wordless melody meant only for herself.

She didn’t hear him approach.

Nathaniel stood in the doorway, watching her with an expression so open, so bare, it frightened her.

“That song,” he said. “You used to hum it on the balcony. The night before… before everything.”

She didn’t stop playing. “I remember.”

He crossed the room slowly, until he was standing beside her, but did not sit. His voice, when it finally came, was fragile and edged with a hurt he had never voiced aloud before.

“Why didn’t you tell me it wasn’t true?”

“Because I didn’t think it would matter.”

“It would have mattered to me.”

She looked up at him. “Would it have changed anything, Nathaniel? Your father still would have demanded my exile. Your family still would have turned their backs. And you… you still married her, didn’t you.”

He lowered his head. “I thought you had gone willingly. I thought you had chosen Julian.”

“And you didn’t even ask me.”

He looked at her then, fully, and the silence between them rippled with something old and raw.

“I’m asking now.”

Evangeline rose from the bench. Slowly, she reached into the folds of her gown and withdrew a small, yellowed letter.

She handed it to him.

“Your brother gave me this the day before it all began. Read it. And then tell me what you believe.”

She left him standing there, the letter trembling in his hands, as the music in the room faded into a memory.