Chapter Eighteen
“I cannot believe we must attend another house party.”
Helena looked up from her packing, three gowns, carefully folded, for the weekend at Lord and Lady Everston’s country estate. Edmund stood in the doorway of her dressing room, his expression a mixture of resignation and something softer that made her heart flutter.
“It is only two days,” she said. “And Lady Everston has been a vocal supporter of our matrimony. Her invitations carry weight.”
“Her invitations carry tedium.” But Edmund’s lips twitched, almost smiling. “Though I suppose there are compensations.”
“Oh?”
“You will be there.”
A warm blush rose to Helena’s cheeks. For a week now, ever since that quiet evening on the settee when their fingers had intertwined, an unspoken change had settled between them.
Every glance lingered a moment too long, and every chance touch sent a delicate thrill through her heart.
She was, for the first time since her wedding, beginning to believe it might be real.
The thought both terrified her and exhilarated her. It kept her awake at night, staring at the connecting door, imagining what might happen if she simply opened it.
“Flattery will not excuse you from attending,” she said, turning back to her packing to hide her flushed face. “We go together or not at all.”
“Then I suppose we go together.”
His footsteps fell softly across the carpet, and as he drew near, a gentle warmth enfolded her. She held her breath, half-hoping he might reach out, to lay a reassuring hand upon her shoulder or touch her hair, to grant her but one of those sweet intimacies she had come so deeply to desire.
Instead, he simply stood there. Close enough that she could feel his breath stirring the loose tendrils at the nape of her neck.
“Helena.”
“Yes?”
“After this weekend.” He stopped. Started again. “There are things I would like to discuss with you. When we return.”
Her heart stuttered. “What things?”
“Things that have waited too long already.” His voice was quiet, rough with something she did not dare name. “But they can wait two more days.”
He withdrew before she could respond, his footsteps receding down the corridor. Helena stood motionless beside her half-packed trunk, her hands trembling slightly, her mind racing with possibilities she had spent months refusing to consider.
Two more days, she thought. She did not let herself finish the thought. She was too afraid of wanting it too much.
***
Lord Everston’s estate was everything a country house party should be, elegant, comfortable, and filled with precisely the sort of guests who would report favourably on the Duke and Duchess of Westmere’s obvious domestic felicity.
Helena moved through the arrivals and introductions with practiced grace, acutely aware of Edmund at her side.
He had not left her all afternoon. Had stayed close, attentive, his hand finding the small of her back at every opportunity. The touches were small, appropriate, entirely proper, and yet each one sent sparks dancing across her skin.
He is courting me, she realised with a start. His own wife. He is courting me as though we were just beginning, as though everything that came before was merely prologue.
The thought made her dizzy with hope.
She should have known better. Hope, in her experience, was merely the prelude to disappointment.
Lady Clarissa Beaumont arrived late.
Helena saw her carriage from the window of the drawing room, recognised the crest, the matched greys, the elegant figure that emerged and swept up the front steps as though she owned the house and everyone in it. Her stomach tightened with a familiar dread.
“She was not on the guest list,” Helena murmured to Edmund, who had come to stand beside her.
“Lady Everston mentioned she might make an appearance.” Edmund’s voice was carefully neutral. “A last-minute addition. I believe there was some connection through her mother.”
“How convenient.”
“Helena.” Edmund touched her elbow, drawing her attention from the window. “Whatever she says, whatever she does, remember that she is irrelevant. Her opinion means nothing. Her barbs cannot touch you unless you allow them to.”
“I know.” Helena managed a smile. “I have survived worse than Lady Clarissa.”
But something cold had settled in her chest nonetheless. Clarissa never appeared without purpose. And her intentions, where Helena was concerned, were never without malice.
***
The evening passed in a blur of conversation and card games and the careful social maneuvering that Helena had learned to navigate.
She played her part well, smiled at the right moments, laughed at the appropriate jests, performed the role of happily wedded Duchess with a skill that had become almost second nature.
But she was aware of Clarissa the entire time. Aware of those sharp blue eyes tracking her across the room. Aware of the calculated smiles, the whispered conversations, the particular way Clarissa seemed to be waiting for something.
Helena did not know what. She knew only that she did not like it.
Edmund disappeared briefly after dinner, some matter requiring his attention in the library, Lord Everston had said, an issue with the estate that needed a ducal opinion. Helena had watched him go with a twist of anxiety she could not explain.
Twenty minutes elapsed before the card game concluded, and the company began drifting toward the music room for the evening’s entertainment. Helena excused herself.
She needed air, and a moment away from the watchful eyes and the constant performance. She would find Edmund, perhaps, make sure he had not been cornered by some tedious neighbour wanting to discuss crop rotation or hunting rights.
She was walking past the small salon when she heard voices.
Edmund’s voice. And another, female, low, intimate.
Helena stopped.
The door was slightly ajar. Through the crack, she could see candlelight, shadows moving against the wall. She could hear, “, so glad we have this moment alone. It has been too long since we could speak privately.”
Clarissa’s voice. Honey-sweet, dripping with implications Helena did not want to understand.
“Lady Clarissa, I do not believe…” Edmund’s voice, tight with something Helena could not identify.
“Please. Let us not pretend, Your Grace. We have known each other far too long for pretence.”
Helena should leave. Should walk away, should trust her husband, and should not stand in a corridor eavesdropping on a conversation that was clearly none of her business.
But her feet would not move.
She leaned closer to the door. Through the crack, she could see them now, Edmund standing near the fireplace, his posture rigid, and Clarissa beside him. Too close. Far too close. Her hand rested on his arm, her body angled toward him in a pose of intimate familiarity.
Helena’s heart stopped.
No, she thought. No, this is not, he would never,
But even as she thought it, doubt crept in like poison through a wound.
Edmund’s face was turned away from her. She could not see his expression, could not tell if he was welcoming Clarissa’s touch or repelled by it. She could only see Clarissa’s profile, with her perfect porcelain face arranged in an expression of fond reminiscence.
“I have always admired you, Your Grace,” Clarissa was saying.
“Your patience. Your willingness to do what must be done, even when it is… inconvenient. This matrimony, for instance. So practical. So sensible. Not everyone would have the fortitude to enter an arrangement so devoid of genuine feeling.”
Helena felt the words like a blade between her ribs.
Arrangement. Devoid of genuine feeling.
“Lady Clarissa.” Edmund’s voice was sharp now, but Helena barely heard him. Her mind was racing, connecting dots in patterns she did not want to see.
And then Clarissa looked up, looked directly at the door, directly at Helena standing frozen in the corridor, and smiled.
“Oh! Your Grace.” The surprise in her voice was perfectly adjusted.
“I did not see you there. I was just telling the Duke how wonderful it is that he has found such a practical arrangement.” She released Edmund’s arm with deliberate slowness, letting her fingers trail along his sleeve.
“Not all matrimonies need be about affection, do they?”
Helena’s composure snapped into place like armour.
She did not look at Edmund. Could not look at Edmund. If she looked at him, she would see something she could not bear, confirmation, perhaps, or worse, the uncomfortable expression of a man caught in a situation he did not know how to escape.
“Indeed not, Lady Clarissa.” Her voice was perfectly even, perfectly polite, perfectly lethal. “Some of us enter into matrimony with affection, and some of us, simply manage with what is available.” She turned and walked away.
Her spine was straight. Her steps were measured. She did not run, did not flee, and did not betray by so much as a tremor that her heart was shattering with every step.
Behind her, she heard Edmund call her name.
She did not stop.
Her room was quiet.
Helena closed the door behind her and stood in the darkness for a long moment, breathing carefully, forcing her racing heart to slow. She would not cry. She had not cried in years, had taught herself to convert grief into action, pain into purpose. She would not start now.
You knew, whispered a voice in the back of her mind. You always knew. He wedded you because he was pressured to wed. Because you were convenient. Safe. Unlikely to expect affection.
Women like Clarissa exist. Beautiful women. Women who belong in his world. Women who understand the rules, who speak the language, who do not need to be taught which fork to use or how to address a marquess.
He was never going to cherish a vicar’s daughter from Somerset.
The logic was devastating in its simplicity.
Helena had always believed herself unworthy of affection, too sharp, too difficult, too much for anyone to genuinely want.
Her father had treasured her, but fathers were obligated to cherish their children.
Her mother and sister cherished her, but that was family.
No one outside the bonds of blood had ever chosen her.
Edmund had not chosen her either. He had needed a wife. She had been available.
But the examination, she thought desperately. The way he answered, the way he knew everything about me,
Of course he knew, the voice replied. He is observant. He pays attention to details. It is strategy, not affection. It was always strategy.
The wildflowers,
Evidence for the legal challenge. Nothing more.
The library evenings,
Companionship. He was lonely. You were convenient.
His fingers interlaced with mine,
Helena pressed her hand to her mouth, choking back a sound that might have been a sob.
She had been such a simpleton. She had allowed herself to hope, to want, to imagine that perhaps, she had found something real. And all the while, she had been nothing more than what she had always been: a practical solution to a practical problem.
***
The connecting door loomed on the far wall of her bedroom. That barrier between his world and hers, that symbol of the separate lives they had agreed to maintain.
She had almost opened it. Had almost crossed the threshold and told him everything she felt.
She was grateful she had not humiliated herself by confessing affection to a man who saw her as nothing more than a convenient arrangement.
Helena crossed to the wardrobe, took out her bag, and started to pack.
A firm rap upon the door broke the quiet of the room.
“Helena?” Edmund’s voice, urgent with concern. “Helena, please. Let me explain.”
She did not answer. Her hands kept moving, folding, packing, with the mechanical motions of a woman who had learned long ago that action was the only antidote to despair.
“I know what it looked like,” Edmund continued through the door. “But it was not, she cornered me. I was trying to extricate myself. I never invited her attention, I never encouraged anything.”
“Your Grace.” Helena’s voice was perfectly steady. “I am tired. Perhaps we can discuss this in the morning.”
Silence followed. Then, he spoke quietly: “Please do not call me that. Not anymore. Not after everything.”
“After everything?” Helena laughed, a sharp, broken sound she did not recognise. “After everything, Your Grace, I find I understand our situation perfectly. You needed a wife. I was available. The arrangement has served its purpose. There is no need for pretence between us.”
“Helena.”
“Goodnight, Your Grace.”
She heard him stand there for a long moment, heard his breathing through the door, felt the weight of his presence on the other side. Then, finally, his footsteps retreated down the corridor.
Helena stood very still.
She did not cry. She had survived worse. She would survive this.
But when she finished packing and sat on the edge of her bed, her hands folded in her lap, her posture perfect, her face composed, she felt something inside her crack and splinter and fall apart.
I gave him my heart, she thought.
And I was nothing more than a convenient solution.
Tomorrow she would find a way to leave. Would return to London, to Rosalind, to whatever remained of the life she had thought she was building. She would not make a scene or cause a scandal. She would simply withdraw.
Helena Whitmore had never expected to be cherished.
She should have known better than to hope for a miracle.