Chapter Eight
“If you could please hold still, Your Grace, I cannot finish the hem.”
Helena forced herself to stop fidgeting.
The modiste, a thin, elegant Frenchwoman named Madame Delacroix who had been dressing Duchesses for thirty years, was crouched at her feet, pins bristling from her lips like the quills of an irritated hedgehog.
Around them, the London townhouse’s largest guest chamber had been transformed into a war room of silk and satin, with gowns draped over every available surface and two assistants hovering nearby with measuring tapes and fabric swatches.
“I apologise,” Helena said. “I am not accustomed to standing still for this long.”
“Most ladies find the fitting process relaxing, Your Grace.”
“Most ladies have not spent the past decade mending their own clothes.”
Madame Delacroix’s eyes quickly looked, with up, a quick, assessing glance, and something in her expression softened almost imperceptibly. “Then we must make certain these gowns require no mending. They will be perfect, Your Grace. I guarantee it.”
Helena did not doubt it. The gown she was currently wearing, an evening dress in deep sapphire silk, which cost more than her father had earned in a year.
The gown clung to her figure as though it had been fashioned by nature itself rather than the meticulous hand of a London modiste.
The fabric moved with her, catching the light, transforming her sharp angles into something that looked almost elegant.
She did not recognise herself.
The woman in the glass was a stranger, polished, fashionable, draped in jewels that had belonged to Edmund’s grandmother and probably cost more than the entire village of Willowmere.
Her honey-blonde locks had been artfully arranged by a maid whose sole devotion was to the dressing of hair.
Her countenance was lightly powdered, her lips subtly tinted, and her eyebrows shaped into perfect arches above warm hazel eyes, giving her a perpetual air of gentle surprise.
She looked like a Duchess. Which was, presumably, the point.
You are about to enter society as the Duchess of Westmere, she thought, studying the stranger in the glass.
You are wearing someone else’s jewels and someone else’s clothes and someone else’s title.
This is either a triumph or a disaster, and you will not know which until it is too late to change course.
“The sapphire is perfect for your colouring,” Madame Delacroix said, rising with the satisfied air of an artist completing a masterpiece. “You will be the most striking woman at the Marchioness’s dinner.”
“I would settle for not being the most obviously out of place.”
“Your Grace.” The modiste’s voice was gentle but firm. “You are the Duchess of Westmere. You belong wherever you choose to stand. Remember that, and no one will dare question it.”
It was kindly meant. Helena wished she could believe it.
***
The carriage ride to the Marchioness of Thornbury’s townhouse took twenty minutes. Helena spent nineteen of them in tightly controlled silence, with her gloved hands folded in her lap, her spine rigid against the velvet seat.
Edmund sat across from her, watching her with that quiet, intent expression she had come to recognise.
He had been watching her all day, through every fitting, through each tedious preparation, through the seemingly endless trial of her transformation from Helena Whitmore into something presentable.
He had said very little, but she had felt his attention like a physical weight.
“You are nervous,” he said finally, breaking the silence.
“I am terrified.” The admission slipped out before she could stop it. She pressed her lips together, annoyed at her own lack of control. “Yet I should perish of embarrassment before acknowledging it; I beg you will credit me with a far more admirable fortitude.”
The corner of his mouth twitched. That almost-smile she had catalogued and counted and thought about far more often than she should. “Rest assured, Duchess, I shall not breathe a word of this to any living soul.”
“I should hope so. I have a reputation for composure to maintain.”
“You do.” His voice softened. “And you will maintain it beautifully. You have been maintaining it since the day I met you, despite circumstances that would have broken most people.”
Helena looked at him. The carriage lanterns cast warm shadows across his countenance, softening the sharp planes of his features. He looked, she thought, almost gentle. Almost tender.
She looked away before she could think too much about that.
“What should I expect?” she asked instead. “Tonight. The Ton?” She hesitated. “From people who have already decided what I am before they have met me.”
Edmund was quiet for a moment. When he spoke, his voice was careful, measured, the voice of a man choosing his words with precision.
“They will be curious. The Duke of Westmere wedded suddenly, after four Seasons of conspicuous disinterest. There will be speculation about why. Some of it will be unkind.” He paused.
“Lady Clarissa Beaumont will almost certainly be in attendance. She had expectations. Regarding my marital intentions.”
“She expected you to propose to her.”
“Her family expected it. I never gave her cause to expect anything, but expectations are not always based on evidence.” His jaw tightened slightly. “She is not likely to be welcoming.”
“I see.” Helena filed this information away. “Is there anyone else I should be prepared for?”
“Most of them will be watching to see if you are worthy of the title. A few will be hoping you are not.” Edmund’s eyes met hers. “But you are, Helena. Whatever they say, whatever they think, you are worthy of far more than they will ever understand.”
Something in her chest constricted. He had used her Christian name, the first time since the library, when he had said goodnight, Helena in a voice that had made her heart stutter.
She did not know what to do with his faith in her. It felt too large, too heavy, too much like something she might come to depend on.
“Thank you,” she said quietly. “Edmund.”
His name felt strange on her tongue, intimate in a way that formal address was not. She saw his breath catch, saw something flicker in his expression, saw the careful neutrality waver for just a moment.
Then the carriage slowed, and the moment was gone.
“We have arrived,” Edmund said, his voice carefully level. “Are you ready?”
Helena straightened her spine. Lifted her chin. Arranged her features into the composed mask she had perfected over years of managing crises and concealing fear.
“I am the Duchess of Westmere,” she said. “I am ready for anything.”
She hoped it was true.
The Marchioness of Thornbury’s townhouse was ablaze with candlelight.
Helena moved through the entrance hall on Edmund’s arm, acutely aware of every eye that turned toward them. The whispers began almost immediately, a low, rustling murmur that followed them like a shadow, impossible to escape.
“, that’s her, the vicar’s daughter.”
“, no connections at all, I heard.”
“, simply extraordinary, how on earth did she?”
“, must have trapped him somehow.”
Helena kept her expression serene. She had learned, long ago, that showing pain only invited more of it. The trick was to appear as though the arrows simply bounced off, as though one were made of something too strong to be wounded by whispers.
Beneath her composed exterior, a cold, weeping sorrow took hold, leaving her trembling in secret dread.
The dinner party was modest by ton standards, perhaps forty guests, arranged around a table that could have seated sixty.
Helena was seated near the head of the table, as befitted her rank, with Edmund on one side and a portly viscount on the other.
The viscount spent most of the meal discussing hunting in exhaustive detail; Helena smiled and nodded and made appropriate noises while her mind catalogued every glance, every whisper, and every subtle slight.
They do not believe I belong here, she thought, watching a countess across the table lean toward her companion with a knowing smirk. They look at me and see an imposter. A pretender. A vicar’s daughter who has somehow stolen a position that was never meant for her.
They are not entirely wrong.
She ate mechanically, tasting nothing. She responded to conversation with the automatic courtesy that had been drilled into her from childhood.
She smiled when she was supposed to smile and laughed when she was supposed to laugh and felt, with every passing moment, more and more like a performer in a play she had not been given the script for.
And then she saw Lady Clarissa Beaumont.
Clarissa was beautiful. There was no denying it, she possessed the kind of beauty that had been cultivated and refined over years of careful attention, the kind that announced itself from across a crowded room and demanded acknowledgment.
Her golden hair had been arranged in perfect ringlets.
Her skin was as fair as porcelain, and her sky-blue eyes were framed by astonishingly long lashes.
She was watching Helena with an expression of polite interest that did not quite reach those perfect eyes.
“Your Grace.” Clarissa appeared at Helena’s side during the after-dinner mingling, her voice warm and sweet as honey. “I don’t believe we have been properly introduced. I am Lady Clarissa Beaumont. I was so delighted to hear of Westmere’s matrimony.”
“Lady Clarissa.” Helena inclined her head with careful courtesy. “How kind of you.”
“Not at all. We all wondered, you know, whether he would ever wed. Four Seasons, and he seemed so utterly disinterested in the entire affair.” Clarissa’s smile widened, showing perfect teeth.
“How brave of you, taking all this on. The household, the responsibilities, the expectations of the position. I’m sure with time you’ll manage wonderfully. ”
The words were perfectly polite. The tone was perfectly warm. And the meaning underneath was perfectly clear.