Chapter Three #2
He straightened when he saw her, and Helena caught the trace of something in his expression, relief, perhaps, or anticipation, before it was smoothed away into careful neutrality.
“Miss Whitmore.” He bowed.
“Your Grace.” She did not curtsey. She was not certain why. “Thank you for meeting me.”
“Thank you for agreeing to meet.” He fell into step beside her as she began to walk along the river path, matching his longer stride to her shorter one without apparent effort. “I confess I was not certain you would.”
“I nearly didn’t.”
“May I ask what changed your mind?”
Helena considered several responses, diplomatic evasions, polite deflections, the kind of vague pleasantries that lubricated social interaction without actually communicating anything. She discarded them all.
“I made inquiries,” she said. “About your situation.”
She felt him stiffen beside her. Just slightly, a tension in his shoulders, a catch in his stride, before he recovered.
“I see.” His voice was carefully neutral. “And what did your inquiries reveal?”
“That your cousin, Mr Reginald Vane, has already engaged a solicitor. That he is not waiting to see if you fail to wed, but actively preparing to challenge any matrimony you do contract as fraudulent.” She glanced at him sidelong. “That the threat is considerably greater than you presented.”
The Duke was silent for a long moment. They walked past a stand of willows, their branches trailing in the grey water, before he spoke.
“I did not wish to…”
“Coerce me. Yes, I suspected as much.” Helena stopped walking, turning to face him.
He stopped as well, and for a moment they simply stood there, two people on a muddy path by a grey river, negotiating the terms of their future.
“I am not offended that you understated it, Your Grace. I understand why you did. But I need you to know that I understand what I am agreeing to, if I agree. Including what it will require of us, publicly, to make this matrimony convincing.”
Something shifted in his expression. The careful neutrality cracked, just slightly, revealing something rawer underneath.
“You would still consider it?” His voice was quiet. “Knowing the full scope of the situation?”
“I would not be here if I were not considering it.” Helena resumed walking, and after a moment, he followed. “But I have conditions.”
“Name them.”
She had rehearsed this. Had written out her requirements in a list, memorised them, and prepared herself for negotiation and compromise. She had expected resistance. Arguments. The kind of bargaining that characterised most transactions between people with unequal power.
She had not expected him to say name them as though he were prepared to agree to anything.
“My mother,” she began. “She is to be provided for. A comfortable cottage, near your estate but separate from it, with a nurse to attend her. She will not be moved to an institution or left to depend on the parish.”
“Done.”
Helena blinked. “You haven’t heard the other conditions.”
“I will agree to them as well. But please, continue.”
She felt off-balance, which was not a sensation she enjoyed. “Rosalind is to have a Season. A proper one, with appropriate gowns and introductions and a dowry sufficient to attract respectable suitors. Not a fortune hunter’s target, but not a charity case either.”
“The dowry will be ten thousand pounds. More, if you think it necessary.”
Helena’s step faltered. Ten thousand pounds. It was more than she had dared to imagine, more than most gentlemen’s daughters could expect, more than enough to secure Rosalind’s future with room to spare.
“That is… generous,” she managed.
“It is practical. A sister of the Duchess of Westmere should not enter the matrimonial mart at a disadvantage.” He said it as though it were obvious. As though he had already thought through the implications and arrived at the logical conclusion. “What else?”
“I will fulfil all public duties of a Duchess. I will manage your household, attend social functions, and represent you appropriately in society. I will not embarrass you.” She took a breath.
“But in private, we will maintain separate lives. Separate bedrooms. No pretence of affection that neither of us feels.”
This, finally, made him pause.
“Separate lives,” he repeated.
“I am not naive, Your Grace. I know what most matrimonies of convenience become, polite strangers sharing a house, performing partnership in public while living as strangers in private. I am simply asking that we acknowledge that reality from the beginning, rather than pretending otherwise.”
He was quiet for a long moment. The river murmured beside them. A bird called somewhere in the willows.
“You believe I would be incapable of affection,” he said at last. It was not quite a question.
“I believe we are strangers, and strangers do not become intimate simply because a vicar reads words over them. I am offering you honesty, Your Grace. I will not pretend to feelings I do not have. In return, I ask that you extend me the same courtesy.”
He looked at her then, really looked, with an intensity that made something flutter unexpectedly in her chest.
“I agree to your conditions,” he said. “All of them. But I have one of my own.”
“Yes?”
“Honesty.” The word fell between them like a stone into still water. “If something troubles you, tell me. If I do something that causes you distress, tell me. I would rather hear a difficult truth than a comfortable falsehood. Always.”
Helena considered this. It was not an unreasonable request. It was, in fact, the kind of request a decent man would make, a man who valued directness over performance, substance over show.
“You are very agreeable for a Duke,” she observed.
The corner of his mouth twitched. That almost-smile she had seen before, threatening to become real. “I am told it is my least ducal quality.”
She felt her own lips curve, just slightly, before she could stop them. She looked away, toward the river, before he could see.
“There is one more thing,” she said. “I know about Mr Vane’s preparations.
About the solicitor, the potential witnesses, the case he is building.
I need you to know that I understand what we will be facing, and what it will require of us to face it successfully.
” She turned back to him. “Including what it will require of us to make this matrimony look real.”
He was watching her with that unreadable expression again, the one she had not been able to interpret in her parlour, the one that seemed to contain depths she could not fathom.
“I did not want you to feel coerced,” he said quietly. “I wanted you to choose freely. Even if that meant choosing no.”
“I don’t feel coerced.” Helena met his gaze steadily. “I feel informed. There is a difference.”
Something passed between them, not understanding, exactly, but the possibility of understanding. The foundation on which understanding might, eventually, be built.
“Three weeks,” she said. “To the wedding. That should give us time to have the banns read and make appropriate arrangements.”
“Three weeks,” he agreed.
They stood there for a moment longer, two strangers who had just agreed to bind their lives together, and Helena thought: This is either the most practical decision I have ever made, or the most reckless.
She suspected it might be both.
***
“He agreed to everything?”
Rosalind was practically vibrating with barely contained excitement, her eyes wide, her hands clasped together in front of her chest like a woman at prayer.
“He barely blinked,” Helena confirmed. She was removing her pelisse, hanging it by the door with the careful precision of someone who needed to focus on small, manageable tasks. “Ten thousand pounds for your dowry. A cottage and nurse for Mama. Everything I asked for.”
“Without negotiation?”
“Without hesitation.”
Rosalind stared at her. The excitement in her expression was slowly transforming into something else, something that looked dangerously like romantic speculation.
“Helena,” she said slowly. “That man is either devoted to you already or completely desperate.”
“The latter, obviously.” Helena moved past her sister toward the stairs. “He has to wed before his thirtieth birthday or lose half his estate. Desperation is the only logical explanation.”
“Is it?”
Helena did not answer. She climbed the stairs, entered her room, and closed the door behind her.
She stood in the centre of the small space, the room she had slept in since childhood, with its faded wallpaper and worn rug and window that overlooked the garden where her father had once grown roses.
In three weeks, she would leave her room. Leave her house. Leave everything she had ever known.
In three weeks, she would be a Duchess.
The latter, obviously, she had told Rosalind. Desperation is the only logical explanation.
But as she stood there in the fading afternoon light, remembering the way he had said remarkable like it was simply true, the way he had agreed to her conditions without resistance, the way he had asked only for honesty in return, she was not entirely sure she believed it.