Chapter 29
Two Days Later
“Your Grace.”
Helena groaned, swatting away at the hands jostling her as she kept her eyes closed. Light flared, and she burrowed her face into her pillow.
“Away, Aggie,” she murmured. “Unless my husband has returned from his trip, I will wait to speak with you in the morning.”
“Apologies for the hour, Your Grace,” Aggie offered. “But you must awake.”
Hearing the worry in Aggie’s voice, Helena snapped out of her sleepy state and sat up.
“What is it?” she asked as Aggie pressed a sealed letter into her hands.
“A messenger came knocking at the servants’ entrance,” Aggie quickly explained. “He said to give you this straight away. He says it is from His Grace!”
Helena tore open the letter at once, her stomach dropping as she read the three scribbled lines.
I need you.
Come to me at once at the old mill.
The messenger will bring you there.
Helena flung back the covers, the letter flying from her hands, and scrambled out of bed.
“Where is the messenger?” Helena asked as she hastily pulled on her cloak.
“Outside waiting for you,” Aggie explained, wringing her hands together. “Shall I wake the Dowager?”
Helena shook her head as she hurried to her bedroom door, not even giving the question a moment’s thought.
Nora was a lovely woman and a devoted mother, but after Elara had explained to Helena what had happened to her during Evander’s disappearance, she did not want to risk the older woman’s health.
“No, keep this quiet,” Helena whispered as she hurried down the stairs.
“Perhaps I should come with you,” Aggie urged as she followed.
“All will be well, Aggie, just stay. My husband needs me. I will take care of this on my own.”
“Your Grace, please,” she heard Aggie say. She cut her maid’s words off as she closed the front door and hurried down the walk to where a small carriage was waiting for her.
“What has happened to my husband?” she demanded to know as she reached the driver.
“I only know that I am supposed to bring you to him with haste, Your Grace,” the driver replied, opening her door for her.
Although troubled by this, Helena climbed into the carriage. She would find out soon enough. What mattered was reaching Evander and helping him in any way she could. She had not asked what business Evander was leaving on with Adrian and Damien, and now she regretted it.
For the first several minutes, she sat quietly in the carriage, wondering why Evander needed her so desperately.
As the minutes ticked toward half an hour, her nerves became frayed, and she tried to call out to the driver to ask how much longer it would take.
Only silence answered her, and her stomach tightened with knots as she imagined the worst. She thought about Evander’s scars—how they marred his muscles and told the story of his long torture at sea.
She pressed a hand to her mouth, fearing that something bad might have happened to him, then yelled for the driver to hurry.
No sooner had the words left her lips, though, than the carriage came to an abrupt halt.
She pushed open the door, too impatient for the driver to do so for her, and scrambled out of the carriage.
Fear clawed at her throat as she looked up at the dilapidated mill shrouded in darkness.
She listened. For screams, for groans, but she heard nothing.
Then an even worse thought struck her. What if she was too late? What if he had not been able to sneak his letter out in time? Before her, a small door opened. No light came from within. No voice to call her in. Yet still she went toward it, determined to help her husband any way she could.
“Evander?” she whispered into the pitch black as she stepped through the threshold. “Are you here?”
“Not yet. However, I am certain he will be joining us shortly.”
A shiver ran up Helena’s spine as tears of joy welled in her eyes.
She recognized that voice—one she had not heard in four long, heartbreaking years.
Light flickered when a match was struck, and she spun around.
Her eyes confirmed what her ears had heard, and she let out a sob as her father’s familiar features emerged into view.
“Papa?” she breathed, taking a step toward him. His brown eyes grew soft as a smile spread across his rounded face.
“How are you, my beauty?” he replied, his love thick in his voice.
“You are alive! Oh, how we have missed you!”
Helena sobbed again as she threw herself toward him. A patronizing chuckle escaped from Lord Robinson’s lips as he wrapped one arm around her waist and patted her back with the other.
“Oh, I missed you, too, dear,” he said fondly.
“We thought… We were told you were dead,” she sobbed out, burying her face into his coat as she clutched at his neck. “They told us you were lost at sea.”
“I know,” he answered, his tone pitying. “Alas, it needed to be done.”
Helena stilled. She took a steadying breath and blinked away her tears. Her moment of relief fled as quickly as it had arrived, and she took a wary step back as she remembered why she had come to the mill in the first place.
“I do not understand,” she said, her tone wary as she looked up at her father. “What do you mean it needed to be done? And why was I told Evander would be here?”
She turned around, taking in the damp ruin of the mill, and her arms’ flesh broke out in goosebumps as she realized she was not alone. Lord Ingram stepped out of the shadows, his wicked and pompous smile as always.
“What are you doing here?” she snapped, taking a step toward her father.
“Where else would he be?” Lord Robinson asked as his hands clamped tightly down on Helena’s upper arms. “He is my business partner. He has been by my side every step of the way.”
“I do not understand,” she repeated, looking back up toward her father.
“Our business was growing too risky thanks to a certain duke,” her father explained, his tone tinged with bitterness as he forced Helena into a chair.
“I had to disappear so as not to raise suspicions until he was out of the picture. I was planning on returning earlier, but then his blasted family could not give up their search or believe the stories we paid for.”
More questions bloomed in Helena’s mind as her father approached her, his brown eyes pleading for understanding as he kneeled down in front of her.
“I was always going to come back, my little sunshine. I just needed the right time. I am sorry I left you and your mother and your brother alone, but that is why I left Lord Ingram to so generously care for you in my absence.”
Rage spiked through Helena’s fear, her lips drawing back in a sneer as she looked over to Lord Ingram.
“Generously?” she hissed. “Is that what he told you?”
Ingram’s smile dropped at once as Helena’s father looked quickly toward his business partner.
“Spoiled child,” he snarled. “Nothing was ever good enough for you!”
“You kept us on the edge of poverty!” she shouted. “You compromised my mother! You tried to defile me! You did not care for us, you nearly destroyed us!”
Rage contorted her father’s face before he whipped his head toward the monster that had haunted them.
“Ingram!” Lord Robinson snarled. “What is she speaking of?”
“Nothing but lies from a spoiled little girl too high in the instep!” Ingram yelled back.
“Did he tell you how he earned that hole in his hand?” Helena asked, straining against her father’s grip. “Did he tell you that my husband put it there after he threatened to take my innocence?”
“You did what?” Lord Robinson roared.
“As if you are any better,” Ingram snapped back with open disgust. “Do not forget what we trade in, old friend. I have seen you pluck fresh berries with my own eyes, with their resistance or not, do not dare feign disgust for my appetites when yours rival my own!”
Vomit threatened to surge up Helena’s throat as several things connected in her mind at once. Suddenly, her father’s embrace, something she had longed to feel for four years, felt vile. She wrenched herself free from his grip and whirled on him.
“You?” she breathed, taking a step back. “You captured Evander? But Augustus confessed that he did it!”
“Augustus was our third partner,” Lord Ingram said from behind her. “He was given a larger share of our profits to do the dirty work. He was supposed to kill that blasted duke, but he just had to waste our time with torture.”
Helena let out a groan as her stomach twisted and her mouth began to water, her supper threatening to come up as she heard this.
“This is how you made your riches?” she asked, slowly looking up at her father. “This is how you took care of us? By trading people?”
“It is a nasty business,” Lord Robinson begrudgingly agreed. “But a very lucrative one. One that is threatened now that your husband is back in London. As soon as we resume operations, he will know. And we cannot risk having him come after us again. He needs to be dealt with once and for all.”
His gaze turned pitying as he looked down at her.
“I never dreamed that you would be involved in this,” he said, striking with a quickness that startled her. His meaty fist clamped around her wrist like a vice, sending pain flaring through her arm and hand.
“But you are the key to luring him here. He ignored our letters. Instead of coming out and addressing our threats, he hid behind you. The coward that he is. But once we get him alone, we can be rid of him. I can return home. Be yours and Alex’s father again.
Be a husband to your mother. Just think of how happy it will make her. ”
“No!” Helena snarled, clawing at her father’s grip with all her might.
“Careful,” Ingram chuckled. “Seems as if Redgrave has made her into a beast as well.”
“Helena!” her father commanded through gritted teeth. “Be still!”
She refused, clawing and pulling at her father’s grip as she brought her leg up to kick him in the gut, yet as she swung her leg, an arm came around her throat, clamping down in a way that Evander’s hands never had, never could—because he loved her. Would never hurt her.
As she lost her breath and her love for her father, she fainted.