Chapter Twenty
“The report has arrived.”
Helena looked up from the breakfast table, their breakfast table, where they now sat side by side every morning, Edmund’s hand occasionally finding hers between bites of toast. The footman stood in the doorway, bearing a sealed document on the silver tray he carried.
Three days had passed since the letters.
Three days of discovering how to exist together without artifice or the guarded distance that had previously defined their union.
Helena was still unaccustomed to such intimacy, the unhesitating touch of Edmund’s hand, the freedom to speak her mind without measuring her words, and the open door between their bedchambers.
Though neither had yet crossed that threshold, the barrier had fallen.
For now, it was enough. “Mr Whitcomb’s findings,” Edmund said, setting down his tea.
His voice was carefully neutral, but Helena could see the tension in his shoulders.
They had been waiting for the official outcome of the examination that would determine whether Reginald’s challenge could proceed.
The footman delivered the tray to Edmund. Helena watched her husband break the seal, his gaze scanning the lines as his expression shifted from guarded composure to a look she could not entirely decipher.
“Edmund?”
He set down the document. When he looked at her, his eyes were bright with something that looked almost like wonder.
“Dismissed,” he said. “The challenge has been dismissed. Mr Whitcomb found no evidence of fraud or contrivance. He has recommended to the Master in Chancery that no further action be taken.”
Helena’s breath left her in a rush. “Dismissed. Entirely?”
“Entirely.” Edmund picked up the document again, reading aloud.
“‘The examination of His Grace the Duke of Westmere and Her Grace the Duchess revealed a matrimony of genuine domestic partnership, characterised by mutual knowledge, shared responsibility, and evident affection. The challenge brought by Mr Reginald Vane appears to be without foundation in fact and is accordingly dismissed.’”
Helena pressed her hand to her mouth. She had known, had believed, after the examination, that their answers had been convincing, but hearing it confirmed, in official language, with the weight of legal authority behind it, “It’s over,” she said. “Edmund, it’s over.”
He reached for her, pulling her close, pressing his lips to her hair. “It’s over,” he agreed. “He cannot touch us now.”
They sat like that for a long moment, holding each other at the breakfast table, the dismissed report lying forgotten beside the cooling tea.
Helena felt something loosen in her chest, a tension she had been carrying since before their wedding.
The threat that had hung over them for months, the fear that Reginald might somehow succeed, might take everything Edmund had built, was finally, blessedly, finished.
“What happens now?” she asked. “To Reginald?”
“The report will be filed with Chancery. If he attempts another challenge, this dismissal will be cited as precedent.” Edmund’s voice hardened slightly. “His solicitor will advise him to accept defeat. Any further action would be expensive, embarrassing, and almost certainly futile.”
“And if he does not accept?”
“Then we will fight him again. And we will win again.” Edmund pulled back slightly, his hands cupping her face. “Helena, you were magnificent. Every answer you gave, every detail you provided, you were the reason we won.”
“We were the reason,” she corrected. “Both of us. Together.”
He smiled, not the faint, guarded inclination of his lips she had filed for months, but the full, open warmth she had first won in the library. It was an expression he now bestowed upon her daily, offered freely and without reserve.
“Together,” he agreed. “Yes.”
***
The news spread quickly.
Within days, the ton was buzzing with it, the Duke of Westmere’s matrimony had been formally validated, the challenge from his cousin had been dismissed, and the vicar’s daughter from Somerset had proven herself not just adequate but genuinely impressive.
Helena heard the whispers change as she moved through society, felt the subtle shift in how she was regarded.
“Did you hear? The examiner said ‘evident affection.’ Evident.”
“Lady Worthington told me the report was positively glowing. She said she had never seen such a thorough vindication.”
“I always thought there was more to that match than people assumed. One could see it, if one looked closely.”
Helena accepted the changed attitudes with the same composure she had maintained during the attacks.
She was not naive enough to believe that society’s approval was genuine or lasting, these were the same people who had whispered about her origins, who had speculated about her motives, who had taken Clarissa’s side in the quiet war for social position.
But their approval, however fickle, was useful.
And Helena had learned long ago to be practical about such things.
Lady Clarissa, notably, was absent from the social circuit.
Helena had expected her to appear at the first opportunity, had braced herself for some new onslaught, some fresh attempt to undermine the victory they had won. But Clarissa had retreated to her family’s country estate, citing a sudden illness that no one believed but everyone politely accepted.
“She knows she has lost,” Marcus observed during one of his frequent visits to the townhouse. “The examination made clear that her campaign had no foundation. Continuing to attack you now would make her look petty rather than wronged.”
“She looked petty from the beginning,” Helena said dryly. “The ton simply chose not to notice.”
“The ton notices everything. They simply choose which observations to acknowledge.” Marcus’s smile had a sharp edge. “And now they have chosen to acknowledge that the Duchess of Westmere is not to be trifled with.”
Helena did not argue. She had learned, over the past months that society’s currents were complex and often arbitrary. What mattered was not whether she had truly won the ton’s approval, she likely never would, not fully, but that she had survived their scrutiny and emerged standing.
That was victory enough.
***
The letter from Reginald Vane arrived a week after the dismissal.
Edmund read it in his study, with Helena seated across from him. They had fallen into the habit of reviewing correspondence together, another small intimacy that had become unremarkable in its frequency.
“What does he want?” Helena asked.
“To meet.” Edmund’s voice was flat. “He requests a private audience to ‘discuss the situation and explore possibilities for familial reconciliation.’”
“Familial reconciliation?” Helena raised an eyebrow. “After everything he has done?”
“I suspect he has realised that his legal challenge has failed, his social ally has retreated, and his prospects of inheriting anything from the Westmere estate have diminished considerably.” Edmund set down the letter. “He is looking for a way to salvage something from the wreckage.”
“Will you meet with him?”
Edmund was quiet for a moment. Helena watched him consider, saw the calculation behind his eyes, the weighing of advantages and risks.
“Yes,” he said finally. “Not because I wish to reconcile. But because I want him to understand, clearly and finally, that his schemes have achieved nothing except his own humiliation.”
Helena inclined her head. She understood the impulse, the urge to confront the author of such grievance and compel them to acknowledge their wrongdoing in person.
“I wish to accompany you,” she said.
Edmund regarded her with surprise. “There is no necessity for you to.” “I know.” Helena lifted her chin. “But he targeted me as much as he targeted you. His solicitor approached me in public. His ally spread rumours about me throughout society. I have earned the right to witness his defeat.”
A slow smile spread across Edmund’s face. “Have I mentioned that you are remarkable?”
“Once or twice.” Helena returned the smile. “Though I never tire of hearing it.”
***
Reginald Vane was a disappointment.
Helena had built him up in her mind, had imagined someone impressive, formidable, a worthy opponent whose defeat would feel like genuine triumph.
Instead, the man who entered Edmund’s study two days later was merely quite ordinary.
Middle-aged, with the softness of someone who had never worked for anything, his features were arranged in an expression of wounded dignity, which Helena suspected he had practiced in glasses.
“Cousin.” Reginald inclined his head toward Edmund with stiff formality. His eyes turned to Helena, then away, as though looking at her too long might somehow contaminate him. “I see you have chosen to make this a family discussion.”
“My wife is family,” Edmund said evenly. “More family, I think, than you have ever been.”
Reginald’s jaw tightened. But he did not rise to the provocation, he had come for a purpose, and he would not let himself be derailed.
“I wished to speak with you about the future,” he said, settling into the chair Edmund had not invited him to take. “The challenge has been dismissed, as you know. But the underlying issues remain. The terms of your father’s will.”
“The terms of my father’s will are no longer your concern.
” Edmund’s voice was pleasant, even warm.
Helena recognised the tone, it was the same one he had used to dismiss Clarissa at the ball, the courtesy that carried steel beneath its velvet surface.
“You had your opportunity to challenge them. You failed. The matter is closed.”
“Surely there is room.”
“There is no room.” Edmund leaned forward slightly.
“Let me be perfectly clear, Reginald. You spent months attempting to destroy my matrimony. You hired solicitors to harass my wife in public. You cultivated alliances with people who spread malicious rumours about her character. You did everything in your power to humiliate her, to undermine her position, to make her feel unwelcome in her own home.”
Reginald’s countenance registered a momentary astonishment that Edmund should address him with such directness. “I was merely protecting my interests.”
“You were attacking an innocent woman because you believed she was an easy target.” Edmund’s voice had not risen, but something in it had hardened.
“You looked at her and saw what you wanted to see, a vicar’s daughter, out of her depth, vulnerable to pressure.
You never bothered to discover who she actually was. ”
“And who is she?” Reginald’s voice carried a sneer he could not quite suppress. “A fortune hunter who wishes to…”
“She is the Duchess of Westmere.” Edmund’s interruption was quiet and absolute. “She is my wife. And she is worth more than you could ever hope to understand.”
Reginald’s mouth opened, then closed. He looked from Edmund to Helena, finally taking in her presence, the composed expression, the steady gaze, the absolute lack of fear in her posture.
“You have nothing,” Helena said calmly. “No legal standing. No social support. No leverage of any kind. Your ally has abandoned you. Your solicitor has almost certainly advised you that further action would be futile. You came here hoping to salvage something from the wreckage of your schemes, but there is nothing to salvage.”
She leaned forward slightly, and she saw Reginald flinch.
“I am not the frightened vicar’s daughter you imagined,” she continued.
“I am the woman who reorganised your cousin’s household accounts, earned the respect of his staff, and testified before a Chancery examiner with enough detail and conviction to have your challenge dismissed entirely.
I am the woman who faced down your solicitor in public and your ally’s whisper campaign in private, and I am still standing. ”
She paused, letting the words settle.
“What, precisely, did you think you were going to accomplish by coming here?”
Reginald stared at her. His wounded dignity had curdled into something uglier, resentment, perhaps, or the particular bitterness of a man who had been comprehensively outmatched.
“You think you have won,” he said finally. “But society has a long memory. People will always whisper about you.”
“Let them whisper.” Helena’s voice was serene. “I have survived worse than whispers, Mr Vane. And I have discovered that the opinions of people who do not matter are remarkably easy to ignore.”
She rose from her chair, signaling that the audience was over.
“I believe we are finished here. James will show you out.”
Reginald looked to Edmund, as though expecting intervention. Edmund merely smiled, that devastating, gentle smile that Helena had learned to treasure.
“You heard my wife,” he said. “Good day, cousin.”
***
That evening, a different letter arrived.
It was addressed to Helena directly, unusual enough to warrant attention, and bore no return address. Helena opened it in the drawing room, with Edmund reading over her shoulder.