Chapter 24
GIDEON
That evening at dinner, Helena sat across from Gideon and noticed the way he was smiling at her.
“Is something the matter?” she asked. “You seem in a suspiciously cheerful mood.”
“Suspiciously cheerful,” he replied, with a smirk. “What is suspicious about cheerful?”
“Nothing. I simply wondered what had put you in such a good mood. I thought you were working on the estate ledgers all day.”
“I was. But then I took a ride into the village and found my wife in the middle of the public house, working her way through what appeared to be a rather substantial argument. An argument she not only managed to end, but brought to a fruitful resolution.”
“Oh,” she said. “You saw me in town?” She looked down at her plate. “I suppose I ought to have asked your permission first.”
He was taken aback. Helena asking his permission?
The woman he had spent the last several weeks with would never have bothered to ask his permission for anything.
He had had considerable difficulty persuading her to serve him tea without dropping sugar from a great height in defiance.
And now she was wondering whether she ought to have asked his permission to go into the village? It was peculiar, to say the least.
“No,” he said. “Of course not. You may do as you please. I was only curious where the sudden interest in the town came from.”
“Well,” she said, “I am a Duchess now. The village is part of our holdings. I thought I ought to get to know the people there. So I have been doing that — making myself acquainted with the farmers and the villagers. And when I heard about their arrangement for settling disputes, I wanted to see it for myself. And when I heard them arguing—” she paused “—I thought to myself: these foolish men. They are going to throw away a perfectly good neighbor relationship over a silly quarrel. So I spoke up.” She looked back at her plate.
“I thought, well — let us see what this Duchess title is truly worth. As it turns out, it is worth a considerable amount.”
“Indeed it is. And I am glad you spoke up. I was thinking precisely the same from the back of the room.”
“Of course you were,” she said, with a small, sideways look that reminded him of the old Helena.
He sat back. “You know,” he said, “in London, when I told you that you ought to be less formidable — I meant that only while you were searching for a husband. You have one now. There is no longer any need to conceal that nature of yours.”
She looked up at him. “So now you want a formidable wife?”
“I want you to be who you are,” he replied. “I have the feeling that since we arrived here, you and I have not been as — companionable as we were in London. I would hope that might change.”
“What had you hoped, exactly?”
He knew what he had secretly hoped. He had hoped for considerably more than he had any right to. But at the very least he had hoped for this — for what they had been, before it had all become strange and formal and full of careful distance.
“I had hoped that we might be friends,” he said. “If nothing else.”
She was quiet for a moment. “In London we were acquaintances working toward a common goal,” she said. “That is what you proposed.”
That stung more than he had expected. He had felt that they were considerably more than that. Had she truly not felt it?
“Do you regret this marriage?” he asked. He had learned that bluntness was the only approach that worked with her.
“It is not what I had imagined for myself,” she said. “And I did not know what you wished for either. But I will do my best to be a good Duchess and a good wife. Within the terms of our arrangement.”
The terms of our arrangement. He felt as though he were in a meeting with one of his solicitors. But he let it pass.
“I do not want this to feel like a business arrangement,” he said. “Even though it is one, in its origins. I would like us to be a family of sorts — an unconventional one, certainly, but a family. We will be spending the rest of our lives together, after all.”
This time Helena looked up and held his gaze, and did not look away.
He could see it occurring to her, perhaps for the first time in its full weight — that this was not a temporary arrangement, not something with an end point she could see from here.
They were husband and wife. They would be until one of them was not. That was simply what it was.
She parted her lips. Then closed them. Then opened them again.
“It has been difficult,” she admitted. “This transition. I never thought I would be a Duchess, and now I am. I am also a wife and a mother, on a large estate with a great many people dependent upon us. I am still finding my feet. I am sorry if I have been — distant.”
“I understand,” he said. “And I want to be here for you while you find them. Will you let me?”
She nodded.
“Good,” he said. “Then let us begin tomorrow morning. The three of us — you, me, and Lavinia — will take a walk around the lake. I understand it is rather spectacular, and Lavinia will certainly find something to shout at.”
That almost produced a smile. They settled into the second course in a more comfortable silence than the one that had preceded it, and he felt something loosen in his chest — some tightness that had been sitting there since their arrival began, by degrees, to ease.
The following morning he took breakfast alone in his chamber, as was his custom. Helena and Lavinia had their breakfast together in the nursery, and he had no intention of altering that arrangement.
He was waiting on the front steps when Helena emerged, dressed in a pale blue gown with puffed sleeves that looked rather lovely against her auburn hair. Lavinia came behind her in a pink dress, her lips conspicuously decorated with what appeared to be the remnants of a drinking chocolate.
He went down on one knee in front of her. “Did you have drinking chocolate for breakfast, young lady?”
“Yes,” she confirmed solemnly.
He fished a handkerchief from his pocket, dampened the corner with his tongue, and applied it to her mouth.
“Ewww!” Lavinia announced, wiping the back of her hand across her face.
“Yes,” he said. “That is exactly what I used to say when my mother did it to me. Though I was a good deal older than you are. In fact I am not certain I remember being your age at all.”
Lavinia tilted her head to one side, examining him.
“Pap,” she said, and reached both arms toward him.
He stood and settled her on his hip. “Very well. But we really must teach you to say up.”
“And why is that,” Helena said, with the glimmer of the old Helena he had been looking for at dinner. “Are you expecting to encounter young ladies who need convincing you are not her father?”
“I am married,” he said. “I have no plans of that sort.”
“You are married,” she said, “but our arrangement stipulated that you were free to—”
He let out a slow breath. “I have no intention of taking a carte blanche on that front,” he said, beginning to walk, “if that is what you are suggesting. I would also point out that we have been married less than three weeks, and I would prefer not to be discussing the taking of lovers at this hour of the morning.”
“Lovers,” Lavinia repeated, with great clarity and satisfaction.
He closed his eyes. “Yes. Thank you. We are going to have to be very careful what we say in front of her. She is going to be like a little parrot.”
“And she will be a very accurate one,” Helena agreed.
They walked for a while in comfortable silence, lifting a hand now and again at passing members of staff.
The morning was clear and cool, the grass still damp with dew, and the path wound downward through a stand of old oaks before opening out to the water.
It was, as he had promised, rather spectacular.
The lake lay calm and bright, with a family of swans moving across it with the dignity of those who know they have the right of way.
“Duck!” Lavinia announced, pointing.
“Swan, actually,” he began.
“Duck,” Lavinia said, in the tone of one who has closed the matter.
“Yes,” he agreed. “Duck.” He set her down on the path. She tottered forward toward the water with the enthusiastic single-mindedness of a small person who has identified a destination and intends to reach it.
“No, Lavinia—” Helena moved, but he was already there, catching her hand.
“You need to take care,” he explained to her. “The water is very deep. You could fall in.”
“In?” she said — and immediately pulled toward it with renewed interest.
He realized at once the mistake he had made. She had not previously contemplated the possibility of going in. He had now rather helpfully introduced it to her.
Helena scooped her up. Lavinia began to wail into her mother’s shoulder. Gideon bit his bottom lip and looked at Helena.
“You look rather Friday-faced,” she said, not unkindly.
“I wish I were better with her,” he said, over the sound of Lavinia’s protests. “That I understood her better.”
“Lavinia has learned that crying sometimes gets her what she wants. I am trying to ensure she does not make a habit of it. And you must understand that she is simply too young for reason. She cannot help it.”
“I know,” he said. “I have a habit of speaking to her as though she were rather older than she is.”
“In,” Lavinia said, tears still making tracks down her cheeks.
“No,” Helena said. “We are not going in the water. But we can walk around it.” She set Lavinia down, taking her hand.
Lavinia raised her other hand in Gideon’s direction.
He took it — felt the small, warm, pudgy weight of it in his palm — and thought, not for the first time, that he wished she were truly his.
The three of them walked on, Lavinia a step or two in front, examining everything she encountered with the thoroughness of a very small naturalist. The swans maintained their dignity at a distance. The sun came through the trees in long slanted bars and landed warm on their faces.
“Do you know how to make daisy chains?” Helena asked.
He looked at her. “I beg your pardon?”
“Daisy chains. Do you know how to make them?”
“Is that — not a peculiarly female occupation?”
“It ought not to be. It is very peaceful. You should try it. I can teach you.” She said it with complete seriousness.
He let out a short laugh, and then saw that she meant it. “Very well.”
“You think it beneath you?”
“I never said that.”
“You have rather large hands,” she said, looking at them with an air of scientific assessment. “I doubt you would be able to manage it. That is perhaps why men do not attempt it — their fingers are not delicate enough.”
“I assure you,” he said, “my fingers are very delicate. I have been told so on numerous—” He stopped. Closed his eyes briefly. “That did not quite come out as I had intended.”
“I dare say it came out exactly as you intended,” she replied, but she was smiling now. “Perhaps you would like to prove me wrong?”
“I would,” he said. “I see a considerable quantity of daisies just over there. Shall we?”
They walked to the edge of the field and sat down in the grass — he spread his jacket first, so she and Lavinia had something to sit on.
Helena produced several small pieces of apple from a handkerchief in her pocket, which immediately occupied Lavinia, and then the two of them set about picking daisies.
He was, it had to be said, not immediately a natural.
The stems broke with alarming consistency, and a pile of casualties accumulated beside him at a rate that was frankly embarrassing.
Meanwhile Helena produced two neat chains and fashioned them into a double crown for Lavinia’s head with the efficiency of long practice.
“Perhaps you were right,” he said. “And I will tell you, this is not relaxing in the least.”
“That is because you are not doing it correctly.” She shifted toward him, their arms pressing briefly together, and then did something he had not expected.
She placed her hands over his and guided them, showing him the motion slowly.
Her hands were soft and warm against his, and the touch of them sent something through him that was disproportionate to the situation, which was after all a woman teaching a man to string flowers together beside a lake on a Tuesday morning.
He realized he had stopped breathing and took a sharp, quiet breath. She glanced at him.
He withdrew his hands gently. “Let me try now.”
He did, and to his genuine surprise, managed to string several daisies together before ruining one.
“There,” she said. “You see — your fingers are capable of delicate work after all.”
“I have an excellent teacher,” he said, with a smile. “And these fingers are indeed capable of a great many delicate things.”
“Indeed,” she replied, and a smirk passed between them, warm and quick and familiar.
He thought: perhaps they could find their way back after all.
The playful ease that had always come so naturally between them was still there — it had not been lost, only misplaced somewhere along the journey here.
The question now was whether he could find a way to tend that small flame without, in his usual fashion, accidentally putting it out.