Chapter 11
CHAPTER 11
“ I think we’ve become objects of speculation!” Patricia said the morning after the never-ending dinner party, sounding charmed and delighted by the idea.
Helen, who had once again had a simply wretched night of tossing and turning—how many such nights did one need to actually perish from it, she wondered—jolted hard enough that she dropped her toast.
Patricia narrowed her eyes. “You know, you’ve been awfully jumpy of late. Do you think you’re coming down with some sort of nervous ailment? People are always coming down with those in books.”
Helen, fearing her ailment had an ancient dual title, said, “I think that’s just in books.”
“I would have said so, too,” Patricia allowed. “Except, I present: the jumping. Perhaps it’s the miasma of city air! That’s a very romantic thing to die of, you know.”
Helen scowled. “Now I’m dying?”
Patricia looked solemn. “We shall all die one day,” she said, imitating the thick burr of the local vicar in Northton. “And thus, we shall be reunited with the Lord our God, be it ever so, amen.”
“He does always make it sound as though we should look forward to our demises,” Helen said consideringly. “But I remain unconvinced. I shall live for a while yet, instead.”
“Be it ever so, amen,” Patricia agreed.
Helen rolled her eyes at her sister’s antics, but felt moderately cheered, nevertheless. Patricia. I am doing all this for Patricia.
“But you never let me tell you how we’ve become famous!”
Bah. Forget Patricia. Helen would find another, less persistent sister to protect and cherish.
“Of course,” Helen said tiredly. “Go on, then.”
Patricia snapped open that morning’s gossip sheets with a dramatic flourish, then read aloud in an equally dramatic voice.
“’ Lord F— offered one of his simply divine dinner parties last evening, which was attended by the best and brightest of the ton.’”
“George is going to have that bit framed,” Helen commented, earning a snort from her sister.
“Isn’t he, though? All right, let me get to us, though. ‘ The music was offered by one Miss F—, whom, we must say, acquitted herself admirably in her debut before a London crowd.’ That’s me, Helen! I ‘acquitted myself admirably!’”
Helen felt a rush of relief. Oh, thank God. The papers had written about Patricia’s skill at the pianoforte. That was good for them, as it happened; men seemed, strangely, to value pianoforte ability impossibly high on their list of desired marital accomplishments.
“You did,” she agreed. “I daresay more than admirably. If you’d been anything less than marvelous, they’d not have asked you to play for so long. And you got everyone dancing, which is a skill in itself. I didn’t know you knew so many country reels, darling, but they were quite a hit.”
Patricia, flushed with delight, laughed. This, Helen thought, was a good reminder of why she was going through all this nonsense with that dratted duke. If Patricia was forced to marry George, she’d never have this happy, carefree look again. And Helen’s sister deserved to feel like this always.
“The curate once gave me a massive book of them while he was cleaning out the rectory,” she said. “I actually know about a hundred more, for they were the only new music I had that year that Papa forgot to send the allowance home.”
This reminder of why she wanted to protect her sister hit Helen like a blow. Patricia had suffered too much already from their negligent father. Helen could not permit her to suffer again from a negligent husband—or, worse, an outright malicious one.
She swallowed down the memory and smiled, not willing to disrupt Patricia’s moment of triumph.
“Well,” she said. “It served you well. You deserve those accolades and more.”
“Thank you,” Patricia said, shimmying with pleasure in her seat. “But wait! I’ve not yet gotten to the part about you!”
Damn , Helen thought ferociously. Damn, damn, damn !
Aloud, she said, “Oh, I’m sure it’s not?—”
“You haven’t even heard it yet,” Patricia complained. “Listen. ‘ But perhaps the even more staggering accomplishment from the F— sisters is how the elder Miss F— entranced Duke X—, a notoriously hard-to-please dinner partner. This author even heard rumors that His Grace was seen smiling ! Perhaps there is something for provincial charm, after all. Mothers, consider sending your daughters to frolic among the sheep and heather. What they learn there may let them snare a duke, upon their returns!’”
Patricia shot her sister a glowingly triumphant look.
“That’s not about me,” Helen said.
Patricia’s look dropped into one of flat skepticism.
“That is very much about you,” she corrected. “For one, you sat next to the Duke of Godwin, and that’s who they always call ‘Duke X,’ though I’m not sure why…”
“It’s for ‘Xander,’” Helen answered absently, her mind whirling about the potential for scandal, or even mere gossip, that this piece would bring. “A diminutive of Alexander. I heard his sister use it.”
When she glanced back at Patricia, her younger sister was giving her a look that suggested she considered overhearing nicknames as proof positive of Helen’s identity in the gossip rag. It was logically weak, but as Helen feared it was not inaccurate, she let it slide.
“For another,” Patricia went on imperiously, “he was indeed smiling. And ‘provincial charm?’ ‘Sheep and heather?’ That obviously refers to Northton. Besides,” she concluded with the air of someone who knew she possessed a winning hand, “they mentioned that this person was the sister of the accomplished pianist. If it isn’t you, then the performer isn’t me.”
Patricia was looking quite pleased with herself.
“Patricia, are you trying to exploit how I love you?”
“Yes,” Patricia said happily.
Helen let out a garbled cry of dismay and dropped her head to her arms.
This was, of course, when George entered—as he had a bloodhound’s nose for whenever he would be least helpful, and some sort of magical ability to appear whenever and wherever those moments occurred.
“I don’t know how the two of you ,” he said without preamble as he entered; he managed to make the mere pronoun sound like an insult, “have managed to get yourselves so close to the Lightholders, but Helen, you must take advantage of this immediately.”
“It’s not me,” Helen mumbled from her arms.
“Don’t be an idiot,” George snapped. That was a fair estimation of the difference between her sister and her cousin, wasn’t it? One teased her, the other insulted her to her face. How delightful that it was the latter who held Helen’s fate—and Patricia’s—in his hands!
When Helen looked miserably up at her cousin, his eyes were boring into hers.
“This is either the stupidest or most brilliant thing you could have done,” he said. “If you shame us in front of the Lightholders, there will be retribution, dear cousin. Mark me.”
His eyes flickered to Patricia, who, fortunately, missed the look as she was still watching Helen with concern. As if Helen’s feelings were what really mattered in all this!
It was only when Helen gave the slightest nod to indicate that she understood that George continued, a vicious grin on his face.
“Make your moves, dear cousin,” he said. “And make the right ones. Or else I shall be forced to make moves of my own.”
He swept from the room with a flourish.
Patricia looked after him doubtfully. “He really does seem to think that he’s perpetually the main personage in some sort of dramatic play, doesn’t he?” she asked mildly. “Do you think it brings him satisfaction?”
Helen’s laughter was a bit wet, but Patricia was kind enough to ignore it.
Xander felt more pleasure than was warranted when he received the note.
Garden, it said in a delicate, feminine script. Midnight.
It was ludicrously brief, and he tried not to read too deeply into the absence of character in the thing. She should have met his previous silly little note about urchins with something, oughtn’t she have?
Or maybe he should be annoyed. She wasn’t meant to be summoning him. He was a duke!
But, try as he might, all he could feel was anticipation. It was ridiculous, but he’d actually had fun bantering with Helen over dinner at Ezra’s party. He would have said that there was something familial in the discourse, except for the fact that he did not feel the slightest bit brotherly toward Miss Fletcher—perish the thought.
Comfort , his brain supplied as the minutes of dinner ticked endlessly on, Xander struggling to stay engaged on his family, not the meeting that lay ahead. Familiarity. Intimacy .
The terms made him balk—especially the last one—but he forced himself to consider them. Yes, those concepts fit. He’d only ever felt them with his family before; even his liaisons, though physically intimate, had occurred between the Duke of Godwin and his partners. Last night, he’d felt like Xander.
He shouldn’t let himself feel this way, he knew. It was a distraction.
But Helen was temporary, he reminded himself, though he wasn’t sure it came as a comfort. Soon enough, she would be married off to some gentleman he found for her, and he would be free to go back to the way things had been before her.
Which was good . It was good.
All thoughts of anything being good vanished from his mind when Helen entered his garden nearly a quarter of an hour before their appointed meeting time. She looked… Well, she was still attractive; she always was, despite her fears to the contrary. But she looked exhausted, not just as though she’d slept poorly but as though something was weighing on her.
Xander held himself back from moving to take her into his arms.
She stopped short when she spotted him.
“You’re early,” she said.
“So are you.”
She opened her mouth as though she was going to offer him one of her usual retorts but then closed it again without saying anything more. He suppressed a pang of disappointment.
Eventually, not looking in his direction, she asked, “Have you seen the gossip sheets?”
Foolishly, Xander was surprised. He shouldn’t have been; he should have been extremely concerned with the gossip. But he had spent the day sorting through his own feelings and thus had neglected to think overmuch about the way his name had been linked with hers in the scandal sheets.
This was another sign that she was dangerous. He didn’t want to heed the warning.
“It will pass,” he said. This was likely true. Smiling was not so great a scandal, after all, not even when it came from the lips of the Duke of Godwin. “We did nothing untoward.”
Well, they’d done nothing untoward at the party, at least.
With a sigh, she turned fully to face him, then joined him on the stone bench, leaving enough space between them that not even the hem of her cloak touched the toes of his boots.
“Under normal circumstances, it would,” she agreed, not sounding at all encouraged by the idea. “But my cousin…”
She trailed off, and Xander found that he could not contain his curiosity any longer.
“Is he harming you?” he demanded, hot fury already building within him. It was a man’s duty to protect and safeguard the women in his family. He should never, ever be the threat to them himself.
Xander’s anger flared when Helen did not look shocked at the question.
“Not in the way you’re thinking,” she said, which cooled him only a single degree. “He’s just…unkind. Not violent.”
Something about the way she said unkind made Xander wonder if this was a crime punishable by death, which evidently showed on his face because Helen rolled her eyes at him. It was this display of spirit that encouraged Xander more than anything else. Viscount Northton could live another day—though he should watch himself.
“He thinks I’m an idiot,” she explained, and, alas, there was Xander’s ire again. “Though I don’t think it’s personal. He thinks everyone is an idiot unless they’re…well, you, more or less. Rich. Titled. Male—of course.”
This was so commonplace as to barely warrant comment, Xander knew. London was filled with women whose kinsmen disdained the whole of their sex and who made sure their womenfolk knew it. Those noblemen didn’t deserve the title, in Xander’s opinion. They were neglecting their duties—their primary duty, which demanded that they protect their families from all harm.
“And so you seek a husband to get away from him,” Xander supplied, but he knew, even before Helen heaved a sigh, that there was more to it.
“Yes,” she said. “But the urgency comes from George’s quarter. I didn’t want to come to London, you see,” she explained. “I’m of age; I have a modest inheritance from my father, enough to let a small cottage somewhere. But Patricia…”
Her sister was young, Xander thought. Too young to be free from her guardian.
“Why didn’t you seek a husband in the North, then?” he asked, even though something inside him found the idea distasteful. “If you didn’t want to come to London.”
She pressed her lips into a grimace.
“Because George insisted that Patricia marry this Season—or else he would force me to marry him myself to ensure his good care of her.”
Xander was already halfway to his feet—to do what, he didn’t know. To kill Viscount Northton? It was probably a bad idea, but he was a duke, a Lightholder. No doubt he could get himself out of trouble with some combination of wealth, title, and influence.
But Helen shook her head.
“I might have managed that,” she explained. “Patricia—well, you’ve seen her. She’s sweet. Young. Kind. There are plenty of men who would like a kind wife, even if many of them would prefer a rich one. But then George changed his terms—we both had to be married by the end of the Season or else—” She cleared her throat rapidly. “—or he would marry my sister, instead.”
Xander let himself fall back hard onto the stone bench, the jarring contact grounding him.
It was brilliantly devious in its own way. Northton clearly sought to control both his cousins. As Helen and Patricia did not, as far as Xander knew, have any great dowries or massive fortunes, Northton was apparently doing so out of his own perverse desire for authority over those with fewer options than him.
Helen, he could not fully control—not legally. So he manipulated her by going for the person she loved the most, whom he could bully without risk of repercussion. And, if he forced Patricia to marry him—which he could, as her guardian—he would secure his position as her lord and master for as long as they both lived.
“Bastard,” he breathed. This startled a laugh out of Helen.
“I wish,” she said, sounding so defeated that it made Xander itch to hit something. “Then he wouldn’t have inherited. But, alas, he is just evil—and born on the right side of the blanket.”
Xander’s mind raced. He needed to find Helen a husband immediately; that was obvious, even though it made him feel strangely itchy. Ideally, he’d find one for Patricia, as well. The sooner both sisters were free from their cousin’s malicious grasp, the better.
“I see,” he said. “Well, we shall?—”
“No,” she interrupted. “You don’t understand. George reads the gossip sheets, too. He’s vain enough that he practically searches them for places he might have been mentioned. He knows about the gossip surrounding us. We must call off our deal.”
“No,” he said, the word reflexive and immediate. “Helen, if we do that, I can’t help you.”
She rubbed at her temples, and the gesture looked automatic as if she often found herself needing to massage away a budding headache.
“If you help me,” she said with a sigh, “you shall be embroiled in scandal. My cousin will make sure of it.”
Ah.
Again, his emotions refused to behave as they ought. He should be grateful, or at least relieved, that she was acting sensibly. That she wanted to put a stop to this before either of them risked further damage to their reputations.
Yet he could not quite manage it.
“I see.”
He was…conflicted, he supposed. He was pleased to avoid scandal; of course, he was. He’d been raised to protect the family above all else.
And yet something uncomfortable poked at the back of his mind. Something that wanted him to hold on to her.
Absurd.
“Right.” She cleared her throat. “Well, I appreciate your help thus far…not that it was really all that helpful,” she added, and, for some reason, that irksome little comment of hers caused something to twist in his chest.
Ridiculous.
“I appreciate your swift response to this matter,” he said, and now he sounded like he was speaking to his bloody solicitor. That shouldn’t have bothered him, either. They’d had a deal, and now it was over. It was business.
Helen’s brief smile suggested that she knew his feelings—which was quite a feat, given that Xander did not understand them himself.
All he knew was that, as she backed slowly away toward the entrance of his garden, he was filled with the strangest, most irrational urge to follow her.
He was a sensible man, though, so he stayed where he was.
“Goodbye, Your Grace,” she said, her accent thick as she faded into the shadows.
“Goodbye, Helen,” he said, half to himself, wondering why, exactly, he felt rather sorry that he would never again see Miss Helen Fletcher.