Chapter Twelve
“You look pale, Your Grace. Are you quite well?”
Helena managed a smile for Lady Worthington, one of the few members of the ton who had shown her genuine kindness over the past weeks. “Perfectly well, thank you. The room is simply rather warm. I thought I might step into the corridor for a moment.”
“Of course, of course. These crushes do become stifling.” Lady Worthington patted her arm with maternal concern. “Do take care of yourself, my dear. You have been managing admirably, but even the strongest constitution requires rest.”
Helena nodded her thanks and slipped away from the crowded drawing room.
The Viscount Carrington’s evening party was smaller than some she had attended, perhaps sixty guests rather than a hundred, but the press of bodies, the heat of too many candles, and the relentless weight of being watched had become suddenly unbearable.
She needed air. She needed silence. She needed, more than anything, a moment to think without the constant pressure of performance.
The corridor was blessedly quiet. Helena walked past closed doors and the soft, guttering flame of the sconces, her footsteps muffled by thick carpet, her mind churning with thoughts she could not seem to organise.
It had been three days since the walk in Hyde Park. Three days since she had watched Edmund watch her comfort that child. Three days since she had seen something in his expression that she could not name and did not dare to hope she understood.
He had been different since then. Not distant, exactly, if anything, he had been more present, more attentive, more likely to appear at her elbow with a cup of tea or a quiet observation about the room.
But there was something beneath the attention that felt almost like restraint.
As though he was holding something back.
As though there were words pressing against his lips that he would not let himself speak.
Helena was quite at a loss what to think of it. Indeed, she knew not what to make of anything any longer.
Rosalind’s voice echoed in her memory. He harbours a passion for you. I know you don’t believe it yet.
Her sister’s letter, arriving just that morning: Has it occurred to you that both might be true?
The wildflowers on her desk, wilting now but still beautiful, still present, still unexplained.
She paused at the end of the corridor, pressing her fingertips to her temples.
Her head ached. Her heart ached worse. She was exhausted from the constant effort of not hoping, the endless work of telling herself that Edmund’s kindness was strategy, that his attention was performance, and whatever she thought she saw in his eyes was merely her own desperate imagination.
It would be easier if she did not want him.
If she could regard him with the same practical detachment she had felt in those first days, a business partner, a means to an end, a solution to her family’s problems. But somewhere between the library laughter and the wildflowers and the way he said remarkable as though it were simply true, she had stopped being able to pretend.
She wanted him. She wanted him in ways she had never wanted anyone, not just his protection, not just his position, but him. His quiet attention. His unexpected humour. The way he looked at her as though she were the most interesting person in any room.
And she was terrified.
Because wanting meant risking. And risking meant the possibility of loss. And Helena had lost enough already. She had lost her father. She had nearly lost her mother. She had lost her home, her security, and her carefully constructed independence.
She was not certain she could survive losing Edmund too.
Suddenly, the low, confident tones of gentlemen, speaking with absolute lack of reserve, reached her ears from a room just ahead.
Helena should have moved past, and continued her search for a quiet corner where she could compose herself before returning to the party.
She heard Edmund’s name and stopped.
“Come now, Westmere.” The speaker’s voice was unfamiliar, smooth, and aristocratic, with an undercurrent of mockery that made Helena’s spine stiffen.
“We all know why you entered into matrimony with her with a deadline approaching, and no better option. Practical, I’ll grant you.
Surely you cannot expect anyone to credit it as a match of affection.
” Helena’s breath caught. She pressed herself against the wall beside the door, her heart pounding so hard she was certain the men inside must hear it.
Say something polite, she thought. Deflect. Agree. Call it what it is, an arrangement, a convenience, a matrimony of mutual benefit.
Confirm what I have been telling myself for weeks.
Edmund’s voice came through the door, and it was nothing like she expected.
“You will not speak of my wife in that manner.”
The words were quiet. Almost soft. But there was something beneath them, a hard edge, a warning, that Helena had never heard from him before. This was not the composed, careful Duke who navigated society with practiced neutrality. This was something else entirely.
The other man laughed, a dismissive sound that made Helena’s hands clench. “Pray, have I touched upon a sensitive nerve?”
“You mistake me.” Edmund’s voice remained quiet, but the hardness had sharpened into something dangerous. “I am not being sensitive. I am informing you of a boundary you would be unwise to cross.”
“My dear Westmere, I meant no offence. I am simply stating what everyone already knows.”
“What everyone knows,” Edmund interrupted, “is what everyone has decided to believe without evidence. Allow me to provide some clarity.”
Helena held her breath.
“My wife is the most capable, intelligent, and remarkable woman I have ever known.”
The word landed like a blow. Remarkable.
He had said it to her, in Somerset, at the musicale, in a dozen small moments between.
But this was different. This was Edmund speaking when he did not know she was listening.
When there was no audience to impress, no legal strategy to serve, no reason to perform.
“She manages a household better than most men manage their estates,” Edmund continued.
“She has reorganised accounts that had been neglected for years. She learned every servant’s name within days of her arrival and treats each of them with respect they have rarely received from their betters.
She has endured the cruelty of people who are not fit to lace her boots, and she has done it with more grace and composure than they deserve. ”
Helena’s hand went to her mouth. Her eyes were burning.
“If you believe, for one moment, that I wedded her because I had no better option.” Edmund’s voice dropped lower, and Helena had to strain to hear. “, then you are a greater simpleton than I gave you credit for. She was not my only option. She was my only choice. She will always be my only choice.”
The other fell utterly silent.
“And if you speak of her with anything less than respect in my presence again,” Edmund finished, his voice soft as silk over steel, “you will discover that quiet men are not always gentle ones.”
The silence stretched. Helena pressed her back against the wall, her hand still covering her mouth, her entire body shaking.
Not with fear.
With something else. Something she had no name for. Something that felt like every wall she had built crumbling at once, like foundations giving way, like the terrifying, exhilarating sensation of falling with nothing to catch her.
She was not my only option. She was my only choice.
He had said it with such certainty. Such quiet, devastating conviction. As though it were the simplest fact in the world, as though there had never been any question, any doubt, any possibility of anything else.
He means it, Helena realised. He actually means it.
She heard movement from inside the parlour, and footsteps approaching the door. She pushed away from the wall and walked quickly down the corridor, her legs unsteady, her vision blurred with tears she refused to let fall.
She found an empty alcove near the servants’ stairs and pressed herself into it, her back against the cold wall, her breath coming in short, sharp gasps.
He defended me.
When he didn’t know I was listening. When there was no one to perform for. When it would have been so easy to agree, to deflect, to call our matrimony exactly what I have been calling it,
He defended me.
She thought of every kindness over the past weeks. The books, the garden for her mother, and the wildflowers appearing without explanation. The way he said her name, and how he way he looked at her when he thought she was not watching.
She had interpreted all of it through the lens of doubt. Had told herself it was strategy, that every gentle gesture served the purpose of defeating Reginald’s challenge, of making their matrimony appear genuine to watching eyes.
But there had been no watching eyes in that parlour. No legal advantage to be gained. Only Edmund, defending her to a man who had insulted her, with words that came from somewhere far deeper than strategy.
Rosalind was right, Helena thought, and the realisation shattered something inside her. He holds me close to his heart. He cherishes me.
And I,
And I am devoted to him as well.
The knowledge rose up like a wave, overwhelming in its force. She had been fighting it for weeks, resisting it, denying it, building walls against it. But the walls were rubble now, demolished by a few quiet words spoken in a parlour when Edmund had not known she could hear.