Chapter Nine #2
The Edmund she had come to know, the man who laughed in libraries and spoke passionately about rose hybrids and moved his chair so they could eat dinner together, that man did not feel like a strategist. He felt like someone who genuinely cared.
Who paid attention because he could not help himself.
Who remembered small details about herb gardens because, for reasons Helena could not fathom, those details mattered to him.
She did not know which interpretation was true.
She was terrified to find out.
“Your Grace, have you been instructing the staff about my tea preferences?”
Edmund looked up from the documents he had been reviewing. They were in his study, Helena had come to discuss a household matter and found herself distracted by the realisation that her tea had been prepared exactly as she liked it, without her having to ask.
Too much sugar. Just the right temperature. In the particular blue-patterned cup she had mentioned preferring, once, to Mrs Prescott, weeks ago at Westmere.
“I may have mentioned a few things,” Edmund said mildly. “A good host attends to his guest’s comfort.”
“I am not your guest.” Helena heard the edge in her own voice and could not quite smooth it away. “I am your wife.”
A subtle change passed over Edmund’s countenance, the mere shadow of a smile, revealing a fleeting warmth he was accustomed to concealing.
“Then I suppose I should attend to it even more carefully.”
Helena stared at him. She had anticipated some evasion, an attempt to treat the matter with levity, or to offer some rational excuse that might allow her to attribute his conduct to mere usefulness, rather than the deeper motive he now displayed.
Instead, he had acknowledged it. Had implied that he intended to continue. Had suggested, in his quiet way, that being her husband meant more to him than being her host.
“Why?” The word came out before she could stop it.
Edmund set down his quill. He regarded her steadily, his dark eyes unreadable in the afternoon light.
“Why what?”
“Why do you do these things? The books from Westmere. The garden for my mother. The instructions about my preferences. You never mention any of it. You never ask for acknowledgment or gratitude. You simply do it. Why?”
He was quiet for a long moment. When he spoke, his voice was careful, the voice of a man choosing his words with precision.
“Would you believe me if I said it brings me satisfaction to see you comfortable?”
“I would believe that you believe it.”
“But you would not believe it yourself.”
Helena hesitated. The honest answer was complicated, a tangle of hope and fear and the desperate need to protect herself from wanting something she might not be allowed to have.
“I would believe,” she said slowly, “that you are a kind man who does kind things. What I cannot determine is whether those kind things are done for my sake or for the sake of our situation.”
Edmund’s expression changed, betraying a flash of sorrow he was quick to master. “You think I am playing a part.”
“I think I cannot afford to assume otherwise.” Helena’s voice was steady, but her hands had begun to tremble slightly.
She folded them together to hide it. “We both know what is at stake. We both know that our matrimony must appear genuine to defeat your cousin’s challenge.
Every kindness you show me, every evidence of care, it all serves that purpose, whether you intend it to or not. ”
“And if I told you that purpose was the furthest thing from my mind when I arranged your mother’s garden?”
“I would want to believe you.” Helena met his eyes. “I would want to believe you very much. And that is precisely why I cannot allow myself to do so.”
The silence stretched between them. Edmund’s jaw tightened, and for a moment Helena saw something raw in his expression, frustration, perhaps, or the ache of being misunderstood.
Then he nodded once, as though accepting a verdict he did not agree with but would not contest.
“I understand,” he said quietly. “You have every reason to be cautious. I will not press you to trust what you are not ready to believe.”
He returned to his documents. Helena stood there for a moment longer, feeling as though she had won an argument she had not wanted to have.
Then she left, and the study door closed behind her with a soft click that felt like something ending.
She wrote to Rosalind that evening.
Dearest Roz, she began, her quill moving across the paper with unusual hesitation.
I find myself in a peculiar situation. The Duke, my husband, continues to demonstrate what can only be described as thoughtfulness.
He has had my favourite books sent from Westmere to London.
He has arranged a garden for Mama’s cottage with specific instructions about where the roses should be placed.
He instructs the servants about my tea preferences without ever mentioning it to me directly.
In short, he behaves exactly as a devoted husband might behave. Which would be wonderful, if I could determine whether the devotion is genuine or merely performed for the benefit of those who are watching our matrimony for signs of fraud.
He is either the kindest man in England or the most strategic. I cannot determine which, and it is deeply irritating.
She set down the quill and stared at the letter.
It was not fair to burden Rosalind with her confusion, her sister was young, romantic, inclined to see the best in everyone.
She would not understand the complicated calculus of trust and self-protection that governed Helena’s every interaction with her husband.
But Rosalind was also the only person in the world to whom Helena could tell the truth.
She finished the letter and sent it.
The reply came a few days later.
Dearest Helena, Rosalind wrote in her cheerful, looping hand, has it occurred to you that both might be true?
Helena read the sentence three times.
A man can be kind and strategic, Rosalind continued.
He can do thoughtful things because he genuinely cares and because those thoughtful things serve a practical purpose.
The two are not mutually exclusive. Perhaps your Duke is simply intelligent enough to recognise that treating his wife well is both morally correct and tactically advantageous.
Or perhaps, and I offer this possibility with the understanding that you will dismiss it immediately, he holds you in his highest esteem and does not know how to say so.
Either way, I think you should stop looking for reasons to doubt him and start looking for reasons to believe. You have spent your entire life protecting yourself from disappointment. Perhaps it is time to risk disappointment in exchange for the possibility of something better.
Your loving sister, Rosalind
P.S. The garden is beautiful. Mama sits by the window every afternoon and watches the roses. She says they remind her of Papa.
Helena put down the letter.
She stared at the wall for a very long time.
***
The wildflowers appeared on her writing desk three days later.
Helena discovered them when she came down for breakfast, a small crystal vase filled with delicate blossoms. White flowers, pale blue forget-me-nots, a spray of something yellow she could not quite identify.
They were arranged simply, without artifice, exactly as they might have appeared growing wild in a hedgerow.
Exactly as Rosalind had arranged them in her hair on her wedding day.
There was no note. No explanation. Just the flowers, sitting on her desk as though they had always been there, as though someone had not remembered a small detail from weeks ago and arranged for its recreation in a London townhouse far from any hedgerow.
Helena stood before the vase and felt her careful defences begin to crack.
He remembered, she thought. He remembered the flowers in my hair. He remembered, and he found a way to give them back to me.
She reached out and touched a petal. It was soft beneath her fingertip, and impossibly delicate. The kind of thing that should not survive transport, should not survive arranging, should not survive at all outside the wild tangle of a country lane.
But here it was. On her desk. Because Edmund had remembered.
Her throat had grown tight and she could feel the tears building up.
She pressed her fingers to the petals and thought about a man who did small things without ever mentioning them, who paid attention to details no one else noticed, who was either the kindest person she had ever known or the most calculating.
Stop it, she thought fiercely. Stop being kind for whatever reason you are being kind.
I don’t know how to be owed kindness without repaying it.
I don’t know how to accept tenderness without expecting it to be withdrawn.
I don’t know how to want something this much and not protect myself from the wanting.
But she did not move the flowers. She did not throw them away or pretend she had not seen them or dismiss them as another piece of strategic performance.
She left them on her desk, where she could see them while she worked.
And if her hand shook slightly when she picked up her quill to begin the day’s correspondence that was her own business.
No one needed to know.