Chapter 18
HELENA
Mary fussed over her the way she had before her first wedding. Every hair was perfectly in place. Her ribbon was tied beautifully, her dress without a single wrinkle, even though it was not truly a wedding dress.
Gideon had sent her to a dressmaker, but she had felt it foolish to order a gown she would wear only once, and so she had chosen something more understated.
It was cream colored, with modest sleeves that looked humble enough, but it was satin, and satin could pass as a wedding dress if one did not look too closely.
A silver sash had been threaded through her hair, which Mary had arranged into a pretty updo, and it looked rather lovely against her auburn.
She looked at herself in the mirror. Mary had applied a little charcoal around her eyes and something to her lips.
She looked well. She was not going to deny it.
And still it all felt so strange. So wrong. She was to be married again. And to a Duke.
The scandal sheets had been full of stories about the two of them; they were the talk of the town.
The young widow and the man who had so suddenly become a Duke, their hurried engagement and even more hurried wedding on everybody’s lips, as she had expected.
She had thought about retreating from the whole arrangement multiple times over the past week.
But she knew she could not. Gideon had been quite right.
If she was married to a Duke, nobody could touch her.
Nobody could touch Lavinia. Her daughter would have a future that was assured.
She could not drop all of that simply because it felt strange.
“Now look at me,” Mary said, and before Helena could react, reached forward and pinched both her cheeks smartly. “There. Now you look nice and rosy.”
“You remind me of my mother,” Helena said.
“Your mother was quite a few years older than I am.” Mary paused. “But I shall take it as a compliment.” She was quiet for a moment, smoothing an invisible crease from Helena’s sleeve. Then, “I know this is perhaps not the best time to ask, but I had wondered about my future.”
Helena looked at her. “Your future?”
“In an hour you will be Duchess of Blackthorne. His Grace already has a full household in town and another in the country. I had wondered whether there would still be a place for me.”
She grabbed Mary’s arm at once. “Of course there will be a place for you. There will always be a place for you. Do not be silly. I could not enter this new chapter of my life without you. It is unthinkable.”
The very idea was ludicrous. She released Mary’s arm and turned back to the mirror.
“I scarcely know what awaits me. I do not know how to be a Duchess.”
“You did not know how to be a Viscountess either,” Mary said. “And you managed very well. You will do even better as a Duchess. It will all come about, my lady. You will see. And I will be at your side for as long as you want me.”
“Good. Then prepare yourself to spend the rest of your life there.” She took a slow breath. “Oh, Mary. I do not know what I am doing. This is bizarre. Gideon and I...”
“Make a wonderful pair. I thought so from the very beginning. I think the two of you will find your happiness.”
“No,” she said quickly. “We will not find happiness, not in the way you mean. We will find contentment, perhaps. But he and I are not going to be married the way that you and Lawrence were. There is no love or affection here. There is friendship. And that is all.”
“Surely you can acknowledge that he is a handsome man.”
“I can.”
“And that he is kind.”
“That too.”
“And that he makes you laugh, which is more than most managed.”
Helena opened her mouth to reply and found that she could not immediately think of an argument.
“That is beside the point,” she said at last. “Besides, I am already settled. The matter is decided. There is no use in discussing it further.” Mary said nothing.
She simply straightened the silver sash one final time and stepped back to examine her work with the quiet satisfaction of a woman who has made her point and has no need to repeat it.
* * *
The church was already full when they arrived.
Helena had expected a small gathering, a quiet affair, as befitted the circumstances.
She had not expected this. The pews were lined with faces she half-recognized from balls and dinners and the pages of the scandal sheets, all turned toward her as she entered.
The whispers began before she had taken three steps down the aisle.
She felt suddenly alone. For her father was meant to be with her. Her mother was meant to sit in the front pew, turning to her as she walked.
Her place was empty. As was the space at her side.
She gulped and walked on. There, in the third row, she saw Clara, seated beside Benjamin. They smiled at her and it gave her comfort.
In the second row, she saw Gideon’s friends-the Langley husbands and their four wives.
One was prettier than the next and all smiled at her.
They were to be her friends, Gideon had told her, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
As if a friendship sprang up simply because he’d willed it so.
But she hoped it would be true, that they would care. That they would not dismiss her due to the rumors.
As she walked, she caught fragments of conversation as she walked.
…barely knew one another…
…rather sudden…
…the rumors about her family…
…wonder what he sees in...
… must be that pretty face of hers. Otherwise why choose a woman with a child…
She kept her chin level and her eyes forward. She had faced worse than this. She had sat across from Huxley for three years of marriage and learned very well how to look composed when she was anything but.
Gideon was waiting for her at the altar.
He cut a considerable dash, she would give him that, dressed impeccably, as always.
When he turned and saw her his expression did something she had not expected.
It softened. Not in the pitying way of Lord Whitcombe, but in a way that was private, as though the rest of the church had ceased to exist for just a moment.
She reached his side. The whispering continued behind her.
“You look lovely,” he said, under his breath.
“There are rather a lot of people here,” she replied, keeping her voice equally low.
“There always are when there is something worth talking about. They are making a great push to ruin the day, and they will not succeed. Pay them no mind. They will find something else to discuss by Thursday.”
“And if they do not?”
“Then we shall give them something else to talk about on Friday.”
She almost smiled. She did not quite manage it, but it was closer than she had expected to get.
The ceremony began. The vicar’s voice filled the church with the familiar words, and Helena felt them settle over her like something both solemn and absurd.
She had stood here before, or somewhere very like here, and made these same promises to a man who had not kept his.
She thought of Lavinia at home with the nurse they had hired to look after her for the day, probably attempting to name everything in the nursery.
She thought of her father, and what he would have made of all this.
She thought, briefly and painfully, of her mother, who had started the whole chain of events that had led her to this exact spot, in this cream satin gown, beside this unpredictable Duke.
When it came to her vows, she spoke quietly but steadily. She had decided she would not whisper them; she had nothing to be ashamed of, regardless of what anyone in the pews behind her believed.
Gideon answered with a confidence that carried clearly through the church and silenced the last of the murmuring.
It was not a performance; she had seen him perform, and this was different.
He simply meant what he said, in the practical way he had meant it since the morning he had appeared on her doorstep in Bloomsbury and offered to find her a husband.
She supposed this counted.
When the ring was placed on her finger she looked down at it. It was a good ring, not ostentatious, but substantial, the kind of ring that announced its presence without shouting. It caught the light coming through the high church windows and threw a small bright point onto the stone floor.
“Well,” Gideon murmured, as the vicar concluded, “that is done.”
“That is done,” she agreed.
They walked back down the aisle together, side by side, through the assembled faces and the renewed whispering that followed them all the way to the church door.
Outside, the morning air was cold and clear, and for a moment they both simply stood there on the steps while the bells began to ring above them.
“Are you quite all right?” he asked.
She considered the question seriously. The ring was unfamiliar on her finger. Her name was different now. Her life had altered in the space of a morning. And yet, it felt different in a good way.
“I think so,” she said. “Ask me again tomorrow.”
“I will,” he said. And she believed him.
She took his arm, and together they walked down the steps toward the waiting carriage, while behind them the doors of the church opened wide and the whispers spilled out into the street like birds.