Chapter Seventeen
“They will ask you everything.”
Helena looked up from her untouched tea. Edmund sat across from her in the morning room at the London townhouse, they had returned to the city two days ago in preparation for the hearing. His was face drawn with an exhaustion that had nothing to do with physical tiredness.
“Everything,” she repeated.
“Where you sleep. Who manages the household? What we discuss. How we spend our time together.” Edmund’s jaw tightened. “They will be looking for gaps. Inconsistencies. The kind of vagueness that suggests two people who are strangers pretending otherwise.”
Helena set down her cup. The china rattled slightly against the saucer, her hands were not quite steady, though she was doing her best to hide it.
Tomorrow, they would stand before a legal examiner appointed by the Master in Chancery and submit their matrimony to formal scrutiny.
Every detail of their domestic life would be questioned, catalogued, and weighed for evidence of fraud.
It was legal theatre, Edmund had explained. But if their answers proved unconvincing, if Reginald’s representative could demonstrate meaningful inconsistencies, it would form the foundation of a more damaging action. One that could cost Edmund everything the will was meant to protect.
“We are not strangers,” Helena said quietly.
Edmund’s eyes met hers. Something passed between them, recognition, acknowledgment, the weight of everything they had become to each other over the past months.
“No,” he said, equally quiet. “We are not.”
The silence stretched, thick with implications neither of them was ready to voice. Helena thought of the blanket draped over her shoulders in the garden. The confession in the library. The countless small moments that had accumulated between them like evidence of their own kind.
“What time do we appear?” she asked finally.
“Ten o’clock. My solicitor will meet us at the chambers beforehand.” Edmund paused. “Helena.”
“I will be ready.” She lifted her chin with a determination she did not entirely feel. “Whatever they ask, I will answer honestly. And they will see that this matrimony is exactly what it appears to be.”
A partnership, she thought. A companionship. An affection that neither of us has been brave enough to name.
Edmund nodded once. But his expression said he heard what she did not say.
***
The solicitor’s chambers were located in a grey stone building near the Inns of Court, the sort of place that seemed designed to intimidate, with its narrow corridors and musty air of legal consequence.
Helena walked beside Edmund, acutely aware of his presence at her shoulder, the solid warmth of him steadying her nerves.
Mr Thornton, Edmund’s solicitor, met them in the anteroom. He was a thin, precise man with spectacles and an air of competent anxiety that Helena found oddly reassuring.
“Your Graces.” He bowed. “The examiner is Mr Whitcomb. He was appointed by Chancery at Mr Vane’s request. He is quite thorough.”
“Meaning he has been instructed to find fault,” Helena said flatly.
Mr Thornton’s silence was answer enough.
They were shown into a small chamber, wood-panelled, dimly lit, dominated by a massive desk behind which sat a man Helena assumed was Mr Whitcomb. He was perhaps sixty, with the pale complexion of someone who spent his life in windowless rooms, and eyes that assessed her with clinical detachment.
Reginald Vane was not present. But his shadow hung over the proceedings nonetheless, Helena could feel it in the weight of Mr Whitcomb’s gaze, the prepared stack of papers on his desk, and the careful way he arranged his quill and inkwell.
“Your Grace.” Mr Whitcomb addressed Edmund without rising. “Thank you for appearing. I trust you understand the nature of this examination?”
“I do.”
“And the Duchess?”
“I understand,” Helena said, her voice steady. “You wish to determine whether our matrimony is genuine or merely a legal fiction designed to satisfy the terms of the late Duke’s will.”
Mr Whitcomb’s eyebrows rose slightly. He had not expected directness. “That is an accurate summary, yes.”
“Then let us proceed.” Helena settled into the chair provided, her spine straight, her hands folded in her lap. “Ask your questions, Mr Whitcomb. I have nothing to hide.”
The examination began.
“Your Grace.” Mr Whitcomb addressed Edmund first, his quill poised over a fresh sheet of paper. “Please describe your wife’s daily routine.”
Helena held her breath. This was the first test, the question that would reveal whether Edmund truly knew her or had simply acquired a convenient stranger.
Edmund did not hesitate.
“The Duchess rises at seven o’clock, though she prefers to remain in her chambers until half past. She takes tea before dressing, Darjeeling, with two sugars, though she would prefer I did not mention that.
” A ghost of a smile crossed his face. “She joins me for breakfast at nine. We discuss household matters, correspondence, and whatever book she is currently reading. She has opinions about literature that I have learned to respect, even when I disagree with them.”
Mr Whitcomb wrote rapidly.
“After breakfast, she reviews the household accounts with Mrs Prescott, our housekeeper, and manages correspondence. She walks in the gardens at eleven, regardless of weather. She reads in the library in the afternoon, usually in the window seat near the east windows because the light there is best for her eyes.”
Helena stared at her hands. He knew. He knew everything, every small habit, every preference, every corner of her days that she had not realised he was watching.
“In the evenings,” Edmund continued, “she dines with me, at the same end of the table, not opposite ends, and afterward we retire to the library. We read. We talk. She hums when she thinks no one is listening, though I have never been able to identify the melody.” He paused.
“She goes to bed around eleven, though she often reads later. I can see her light under the door.”
The silence that followed was absolute.
Mr Whitcomb set down his quill. His expression had shifted, from clinical detachment to something that looked almost like surprise.
“That is quite detailed, Your Grace.”
“You asked me to describe her routine. I have described it.”
“Indeed.” Mr Whitcomb cleared his throat. “And what does the Duchess read?”
Edmund listed titles. Not general categories, specific titles, specific authors, with observations about which books she returned to most often and which shelves in the library showed the most wear from her fingers. Helena listened with growing wonder, her heart hammering against her ribs.
He pays attention, she thought. He pays attention to everything.
“Remind me, how does she take her tea?” He asked the question as if to confirm that he did, indeed know how she took her tea.
“Too much sugar.” Edmund’s voice softened. “Though she prefers others not to notice, as I mentioned previously.”
Helena looked up. Edmund was looking at her, had turned slightly in his chair so he could see her face while he answered. And he was smiling. Not the almost-smile she had catalogued and counted, but something fuller. Something real.
Mr Whitcomb’s quill scratched across the paper. “The Duke is smiling,” he noted aloud, and Helena realised with a start that he was recording everything, not just the answers, but the way they were delivered.
“Does the Duchess manage the household accounts?”
“She identified a discrepancy in the kitchen accounts within her first week at Westmere, an error that had been present for three years.” Edmund’s voice carried a note of pride Helena had never heard before.
“Mrs Prescott can confirm this. Our housekeeper would testify, I believe, that the Duchess is the most capable mistress the estate has had in a generation.”
Helena’s throat tightened. He was not just answering questions. He was building a portrait, a detailed, devastating portrait of a man who knew his wife so completely that every answer came without hesitation.
Then, it was Helena’s turn.
Mr Whitcomb shuffled his papers, adjusting his approach. The questions for the Duchess, Helena suspected, were designed to catch her in contradiction, to reveal that she knew less of Edmund than he claimed to know of her.
“Your Grace.” Mr Whitcomb’s quill was poised. “What does His Grace read before bed?”
Helena answered without hesitation. “History, primarily. He is currently working through a collection of essays on the Roman Republic. He prefers books that require concentration, he claims they soothe his troubled thoughts.”
“Does he sleep well?”
Helena paused. This was more personal, closer to the bone. But she had promised to answer honestly.
“He paces when he cannot sleep,” she said quietly. “I have heard him in the corridor, late at night. Walking back and forth, as though movement helps him think.”
“And what does that tell you about His Grace?”
The question was pointed, an attempt to push her toward speculation, toward answers that might reveal the limits of her knowledge.
Helena considered her response carefully.
“It tells me,” she said slowly, “that he carries things alone. That he is not comfortable asking for help. That he has spent so long being responsible for everyone and everything that he has forgotten how to share the weight.” She met Mr Whitcomb’s eyes.
“It tells me that he is a good man who believes he must bear his burdens in silence, and that I wish…”
She stopped. She had said more than she intended.
“You wish?” Mr Whitcomb prompted.
Helena felt Edmund’s gaze on her. Felt the weight of his attention, the intensity of his stillness.
“I wish he knew he did not have to,” she said quietly. “Bear them alone, I mean. I wish he knew that.”
She stopped again. The chamber was very quiet.
Mr Whitcomb wrote something on his paper. Helena did not ask what.
The examination continued for another hour.