Chapter Fourteen
The gentleman's face would not leave her.
Helena lay awake long past the hour she ought to have been asleep, staring up at the sloped attic ceiling while Peggy's steady breathing filled the darkness beside her.
She had believed herself, in the weeks since fleeing London, reasonably well hidden. Her shortened haircut, the servant's plain wool, a false name worn so consistently now that it sometimes felt more hers than the name she'd been born to.
She had believed, or had at least allowed herself to hope, that the distance between London and Yorkshire, and the thoroughness of her disguise, might together prove sufficient to keep her safe.
Yet, a single face in a crowded market square had shown her, in the space of a few uncomfortable seconds, precisely how fragile that hope truly was.
As the hours ticked by, still Helena did not sleep. Instead, she imagined the various ways her carefully constructed safety might yet unravel.
She imagined the gentleman from the market recalling, days or weeks from now, precisely where he had seen her before and mentioning it, in some idle drawing room conversation, to exactly the wrong listener.
She pictured a carriage arriving at Rowan Hall's gates, her father's cold, disappointed face, Crawford's practised smile waiting to claim what he believed was already owed to him.
By the time the grey dawn light finally began creeping through the small attic window, she had slept scarcely an hour. And when she rose to dress, her whole body was heavy with the exhaustion of a night spent at war with her own imagination.
The exhaustion made her clumsy in ways she had not been clumsy in weeks.
First, she scorched a full tray of breakfast bread and earned a sharp reprimand for the waste of good flour.
Then she dropped an entire stack of clean plates while laying the dining room for breakfast, the crash of shattering china echoing through the hall loud enough to bring Mrs Ellis hurrying from the far end of the corridor.
"Nell." The housekeeper surveyed the wreckage of broken china with visible dismay. "Whatever has come over you this morning? You've not made a mistake of this size in weeks."
"Forgive me, ma'am. I'm—I didn't sleep well."
It was, at least, true, though it explained rather less than Mrs Ellis's expression suggested she wanted explained.
"Sleep or no sleep, a servant can't afford to lose her concentration so thoroughly. We've a household to run, and broken china doesn't mend itself for want of an apology." Mrs Ellis's tone softened only slightly. "See it swept up, and mind yourself more carefully through the rest of the day."
"I will, Mrs Ellis," she promised.
Helena proceeded to spend the remainder of the morning proving unable to heed her own good intentions.
She folded an entire basket of linens with the corners tucked wrong, requiring Bess to redo the whole lot with an exasperated sigh loud enough to carry down the corridor.
She forgot, twice, instructions Mrs Ellis had given her scarcely ten minutes before.
She mixed up an arrangement of fresh flowers meant for the drawing room with a similar bundle intended for the late baron's old study, delivering roses where lilies were wanted and discovering the error only once Whitby, with considerable patience, pointed it out to her.
The other maids exchanged glances throughout the morning that Helena caught only peripherally, too consumed by her own circling anxiety to properly register the growing concern behind them.
It was Mary who found the solution, midway through the afternoon, as the household began its slower preparations for the evening's supper.
"Mrs Ellis," Mary said, with the easy, practical confidence that made her so well liked among the staff.
"Cook's asked for fresh herbs from the kitchen garden, and I thought Nell and I might fetch them together—two pairs of hands will finish the job twice as quick, and she looks like she could do with a bit of air, if you don't mind sparing her. "
Mrs Ellis, evidently grateful for any solution to Nell's evident distraction, agreed readily enough, and within a few minutes Helena found herself walking beside Mary through the kitchen garden's neat rows of herbs and vegetables, the late afternoon light slanting gold across the rose bushes and fruit trees that marked the garden's far border.
They had scarcely reached the roses before Mary set down her basket and turned to face her directly.
"Nell. What's happened?"
"Nothing's happened. I'm only tired—"
"You've barely said two words to anyone all day, and you look as though you've seen a ghost."
Mary's voice carried none of its usual teasing lightness, only genuine, careful concern.
"I've never once seen you this distracted. Something's wrong, and I'd rather you told me than watched you break every plate in the household trying to hide it."
Helena hesitated, the weight of the secret she had carried so carefully since leaving London pressing against her chest.
"I can't," she said shakily; the words came out with less conviction than she intended.
"You can." Mary reached for her hand, holding it with a gentle firmness.
"Whatever it is, Nell, I swear to you it stays between the two of us.
I've never once repeated a confidence in my whole life, and I don't intend to start now, whatever you tell me.
We're friends. I'd like to think that means something. "
It was the quiet sincerity of it, more than anything else, that finally broke through the careful wall Helena had maintained.
She exhaled shakily,
"My name isn't Nell," she said, and once the words had begun, she found she could not stop them. "It's Helena. Helena Winford. My father is the Earl of Winford."
Mary's eyes widened, but she said nothing, only tightened her grip on Helena's hand and waited.
Helena, having now crossed the threshold she had guarded so carefully for two months, found the rest of it spilling out in a rush she could no longer contain.
"There was a ball," she began, her voice low, her eyes fixed on a fallen rose petal browning at the toe of her boot rather than on Mary's face.
"Lord Crawford—he's a viscount, and everyone in London knows what he is, what he does to women who won't have him—he sent a maid to fetch me to the conservatory, told me my sister had been taken ill there.
It was a lie. He was waiting for me alone, and when I tried to leave he caught my wrist, only for a moment, and then the room filled with guests who'd come looking for air.
All they saw was the two of us standing close together in the dark. "
She swallowed.
"He said nothing to explain it. He let them believe whatever they liked."
"The devil he did," Mary breathed.
"By morning it was all over London. My father had five gentlemen call within the day, all of them discussing my future in his library without once asking what I wanted.
And that evening he told me Crawford had offered for me, and that I was to accept, because no other man would have me now and my refusal would ruin my sister's prospects along with my own. "
Her hands had gone cold in the evening air, and she pressed them together in her lap.
"I told him I'd rather stay unmarried the whole of my life than be given to the very man who'd ruined me on purpose. He didn't listen. He said the wedding would take place within a fortnight."
Mary made a small, wordless sound of outrage, but did not interrupt further, and Helena pressed on before her own courage could fail her.
"I didn't sleep at all that night. I only lay there, hour after hour, thinking of everything I'd ever done exactly as I was told, and what it had earned me—a husband who'd trapped me on purpose and a father who knew it and sent me to him anyway."
She could still feel the chill of that room if she let herself, the candle guttering low, her own reflection in the dark window glass.
"The next afternoon I heard two of our maids talking belowstairs about a girl who'd left service to marry a farmer. She’d left a chest of old clothes behind that no one had troubled to give away yet.
I don't know what came over me. I went down that very night and took the lot of it—a cloak, boots, an old apron—and sat before my mirror with my sewing scissors and cut off my own hair by candlelight. "
"All of it?" Mary's hand had risen, unconsciously, toward her own dark plait.
"To my shoulders. I couldn't risk anyone recognising me by it—everyone in London knew my hair."
Helena's throat tightened at the memory.
"I burned what I'd cut off in the grate before dawn, so no one would find it and wonder. Wrapped it in a bit of cloth first, so it wouldn't smoke too badly. I remember watching it catch and thinking I was watching some other woman burn, not myself at all."
Mary said nothing, only shifted closer along the low garden wall, her shoulder pressing warm against Helena's.
"I'd never done an honest day's work in my life before I came here, Mary.
Not one. Every single thing you've taught me, and Mrs Ellis, and half the girls in that kitchen—the beds, the silver, even the herbs I told you my mother taught me—none of it was true.
I learned it all in these past weeks, badly, by breaking things and burning bread and ruining Bess's linen folds. "
A short, unsteady laugh escaped her.
"I let you all believe I was simply clumsy. I was inventing my whole history as I went, and praying no one asked me a question I couldn't answer."
"I did wonder," Mary admitted quietly. "How a girl who'd never held a mop still knew to press a poultice properly, or hold a wine glass so fine. I didn't like to ask."
Helena tried to smile, but failed.
"So what's changed?" Mary asked. "It's been weeks since you arrived here, Nell."
Helena exhaled, shaking her head.
"At the market yesterday, a man almost recognised me," she explained.
Helena's hands had begun to tremble again, just remembering it, and she pressed them flat against her knees to still them.
"I told him he was mistaken. He believed me, or said he did, and walked on. But I can’t sleep properly now…
And I don't know what to do. If he remembers where he saw my face, if word reaches London, or my father sends men looking, or Lord Crawford decides his pride demands some manner of revenge, I don't know what becomes of me then.
I've nowhere else to go, Mary. This is the only safety I've managed to build for myself, and I'm terrified it's already begun to crumble. "
Mary was quiet for a long moment, studying her with an expression Helena could not immediately read, and Helena felt her heart climb into her throat.
"I understand why you ran," Mary said simply.
"I've seen enough unhappy marriages in this village to know full well that a title and a fortune buy a woman precious little happiness, if the man beside her doesn't love her properly.
My own aunt married for duty rather than affection, and I've watched what that cost her every day of my life since.
I don't judge you for choosing otherwise, Nell, whatever the rest of London might say of it. "
"You're not mad at me?"
"Of course not," Mary said, squeezing her hand more firmly still. "And I'll tell you this besides—your secret is safe with me. I'll not breathe a word of it to another living soul, not to Mrs Ellis, not to Peggy, not to anyone, no matter what happens. You have my word on it."
The relief that moved through Helena at those words arrived with such force that she felt tears rise before she could master them, and Mary, without any particular fuss, drew her into a brief, steadying embrace, holding her until the worst of it had passed.
They sat together beneath the oak's spreading branches for some while afterwards, the herb basket forgotten beside them.
Helena felt lighter than she had in the whole of the two months since fleeing Winford House.
The simple, unburdening relief of having finally spoken the truth aloud to someone who had received it with kindness rather than judgment settling over her like peace.
"Whatever your birth," Mary said eventually, as the light began to lengthen toward evening and the distant church bells signalled that supper preparations could not wait much longer, "you're part of this household now, same as any of us.
And you've a friend who'll stand by you, whatever comes. I want you to know that, truly."
Helena, wiping the last of her tears away, managed a small smile.
"Thank you, Mary. I don't know how I'd have borne these past two months without you."
They gathered the abandoned basket and made their way back toward the house as the bells continued their steady toll.
Helena's steps felt lighter than they had been at any point since the market.
Yet, despite the relief she felt having shared her secret with Mary, she was still worried about what would happen next. Had the man made Isaac suspicious about her story? What would he do if he learned the truth?