Chapter 6
“Ido apologize, but could we make haste?” Helena asked, staring nervously out of the shop’s large windows. The rain was already starting to come down. Small, even little droplets that at the moment were not so worrisome. Yet she knew a bigger storm was coming.
At her side, the modiste looked up at her and beamed.
“Perfection takes patience, Miss Robinson,” she sang cheerily.
Helena did her best to smile back, trying as always to be positive. Yet ever since meeting the Duke of Redgrave, such a task had seemed nearly impossible. He riled her in a way no one else ever had.
“Luckily for you, Miss, perfection is not far away,” the modiste went on, bowing her head to her work. “I just need to bring the hem up in the front a little bit, pin up your sleeves, maybe make a stitch or so in the waist…”
The modiste’s voice drowned out as Helena turned back to her troubling thoughts.
The Duke had looked positively tortured when she had first walked out in her wedding dress, and she wondered why he had appeared so.
Aggie had told her a little of what had happened to him the night before, that he had been abducted some years past, and that whispers among the staff spoke of torture, though no one seemed to know the particulars.
However, that had been years ago. Could he still be hurting?
How could he not? Are you not still hurt by your father’s death?
Guilt and heartache speared into Helena’s chest. She needed to be more patient with him, she realized.
More compassionate. Such emotions used to come so easily to her until her interaction with Lord Ingram a few weeks ago.
Now, aside from Jeremy, she realized she had started to look at all men as if they were harboring some sort of evil intention.
“Do you need some water, Miss? You look pale,” Aggie spoke up.
Helena snapped out of her troubling thoughts and shook her head, even though she was burning up in her wedding dress. It was a beautiful design, there was no doubt about it, but as soon as she put it on, her heart began to race and her temperature spiked. She could not wait to get it off.
Should a dress and a wedding feel so wrong?
“No, just a distraction from my nerves,” Helena replied. “How did your errand go?”
Aggie smiled.
“The correspondence from the bakery and the stationery shop is picked up and waiting for you in the carriage,” she said with a hint of triumph. “Once you finish your fitting, His Grace said we may go back to the Winterbourne Estate.”
Relief poured through Helena as she nodded her head, then drew in a deep breath.
“Do try to hold still if you please, Miss,” the modiste murmured. “I do not wish to prick you.”
“Of course,” Helena said, willing herself to be still. “Apologies.”
The modiste looked up at her again, this time with a smirk and a raised brow.
“You may make it up to me with a bit of gossip, if you wish,” she replied.
“I beg your pardon?” Helena asked, her brow furrowing. “Gossip about what?”
“About the Duke of Redgrave, of course!” the modiste whispered excitedly. “This was he, was he not?”
Helena leaned back, appalled. However, the modiste was clearly not as skilled at reading expressions or body language as the Duke was, for the woman took it as permission to keep talking.
“Everyone in the country has heard about him. It is said that he has returned from the dead and is more beast than man. Not even the devil’s fire could burn him!
That is what the scar on his face is from, according to the tales.
He is supposed to have them all over his body!
This is why he always wears gloves and such high cravats.
Some say he was taken by wicked men trading in innocent women, and that he tried to stop them and paid dearly for it.
Tortured for days on end. Others say the devil took him and he climbed up right from hell! ”
Helena gaped at the way the modiste shared the gossip, and she could tell from the woman’s eagerness that she wanted those stories to be true.
Disgust slid down into Helena’s belly, growing her distrust of people.
But beneath the disgust, her chest ached.
She thought of the Duke’s gloves, never once removed, not even to hand her down from the carriage.
She thought of his cravat, pulled so high and tight despite the warmth of the day.
‘Paid dearly for it.’ She did not want to know what such words truly meant, yet she could not stop herself from wondering.
Just what happened to him?
“Pray, tell me how you know him, Miss,” the modiste urged. “Is he a friend of your family? Are you around him often? Does he truly have fangs, as they say? Do his eyes verily glow? Oh, I must know!”
Helena slowly shook her head, mortified.
“He is not my friend,” she said at last, her voice low and trembling.
“But he is a man, madam, one who bled and suffered so that other women might be spared a fate none of us can even imagine, and you sit here weaving him into some fireside tale for your own delight. Have you no shame? He deserves better than to be spoken of as some curiosity for your amusement.”
She had not meant to shout, but the more she talked, the angrier she became, and so her voice grew louder.
Even as the last of it left her, she felt a flicker of surprise at herself, at the heat in her own voice over a man who had done nothing since their meeting but treat her as if she was poisonous. She could not explain it.
The modiste blanched as her mouth fell agape.
“I… No, Miss. Apologies. I did not mean to offend you.”
The modiste nodded vigorously as she bowed, as if trying to hide her suddenly flushed face, which was now bright red from forehead to chin.
Good. You should be embarrassed.
“I believe you have everything you require from me,” Helena stated, needing now more than ever to get out of the shop, out of the town, and into her own room back at Winterbourne Estate. “You may finish the rest of the stitches without my presence, I am sure.”
“Yes, of course. Miss. I am… Please accept my apologies,” the modiste murmured nervously as she rose to her feet and followed Helena to the changing room.
“My maid can help me,” Helena snapped. “You may stand out there and wait for the dress. Aggie!”
“Coming, Miss!” Aggie called, flying around the corner.
Helena glared at the modiste as she shut the curtain with a harsh snap.
“The nerve!” Helena whispered vehemently. “Did you hear her!”
“Yes, Miss,” Aggie agreed, her hands moving quickly down the long line of pearl buttons.
“How can people be so cruel? How can they believe such atrocious stories?”
“I do not know, Miss,” Aggie commented, then hesitantly added. “Though I was surprised that you defended His Grace. After bickering with him all day long, I thought—”
“I was not defending him!” Helena snapped. “I was showing common courtesy!”
“Of course, Miss,” Aggie agreed.
Helena closed her eyes and took in a deep breath, then reached back to hold Aggie’s hand.
“Please accept my apologies, Aggie. I did not mean to snap at you,” she said with a pleading look.
Aggie gave her a kind smile.
“I know, Miss,” Aggie said in an assuring tone.
Helena took another deep breath as Aggie gently pulled the sleeves of the wedding dress down her arms.
“I believe I am just out of sorts,” she confessed. “This wedding is coming upon us so fast, and with Jeremy’s sudden departure, I am even more perplexed. He loves to plan a party. Why is he not here? What is so important in London that could take him away from this?”
Aggie was quiet as she finished helping Helena out of the wedding dress, then stepped back, holding it gingerly in her arms for a brief second.
“I do not know, Miss,” she said softly, holding up the dress. “But what I do know is that this gown truly does look lovely on you, and I am sure Mr. Winterbourne will adore you in it.”
Helena thought of the way the Duke’s jaw had tightened when she stepped out in it, how his eyes had gone dark just before he looked away. As if the sight of her had displeased him greatly.
“Thank you, Aggie. That is very kind of you to say,” she replied, then let out a dry laugh. “I had worried a little when His Grace had so few words to say about it.”
She told herself it did not matter. She did not know why it should sting at all, the opinion of a man who plainly could not stand the sight of her. And yet it did.
“You need worry about nothing, Miss,” Aggie assured her as she hung up the dress and reached for the dark blue day gown Helena had worn into the shop. “I am sure he is just unused to being asked about such things. Most men are.”
“Yes,” Helena agreed as Aggie helped her get dressed. “Yes, of course you are right. Perhaps I put too much pressure on His Grace. Some things are best left to women.”
She let out a wry chuckle as she thought, well, except for Jeremy. He has a rare and good eye for women’s fashion and flowers.
Helena and Aggie hurried along, and once Helena was dressed again, she gave a stiff farewell to the still-embarrassed modiste, who curtsied and hid her face as they left the shop.
The rain had shifted from a soft drizzle to a deluge, but to their surprise, the Duke had had the carriage moved to the front of the shop.
As soon as they opened the modiste’s door, the carriage door flew open, and they both hurried to the safety of the small space.
“Get us back to Winterbourne Estate posthaste!” the Duke’s voice boomed as Helena and Aggie huddled into the seat across from him.
The carriage took off at once, but none of them were even given time to settle into an uncomfortable silence before the loud neighing of horses erupted through the loud rush of falling rain, and the carriage came to a sudden stop that had Helena flying toward the Duke.