Chapter 8 #3
The floor above housed a succession of elegant guest chambers, each complete with its own dressing room and fireplace, making it plain that Lord Ashcombe's London residence had been designed to accommodate visitors on a considerable scale.
Seeing that every room was already being searched, Helena continued upward.
The fourth floor was altogether quieter.
Here the grandeur of the house gave way to a more domestic comfort.
Helena passed the nursery, where wooden toys stood neatly arranged upon shelves and a rocking horse occupied one corner, followed by a bright schoolroom furnished with slates, copybooks, and shelves of children's books.
Beyond it was a comfortable bedchamber she supposed belonged to a governess or nursery maid, and across the landing a pleasant sitting room overlooking the gardens. At the end of the passage stood one more door. Helena crossed the distance toward it, and with curiosity, she opened it.
The room was larger than she had expected, stretching almost the breadth of the house beneath the roof.
Sunlight filtered through the high windows, revealing furniture carefully draped beneath white holland covers, rolled carpets stacked neatly against one wall, and traveling trunks bearing destinations from years gone by.
Shelves held ledgers, neatly labeled boxes, and household items that had long since been replaced but evidently never discarded.
Several portraits—their canvases protected beneath linen cloths—leaned against the far wall, while a cradle, highchair, and tiny cradle-board had been tucked away together, preserved rather than forgotten.
It struck Helena that the Wycliffe’s were not a family inclined to throw away the chapters of their lives. They simply stored them carefully until another generation might have use for them.
The room was so still that the calls of the servants below reached her only as distant echoes. Then, she heard Oliver’s voice giving a command, "Forward, men! We shall have Bonaparte this time!"
Helena followed the sound of his voice as he issued commands, and found Oliver lying on his stomach behind a large cabinet, a regiment of wooden soldiers spread out before him in battle.
"Forward! You shall never escape, Bonaparte!" he declared, moving one soldier triumphantly across the floor. Catching sight of Helena, he looked up with a broad grin. "Oh, hello!"
Helena smiled. "Are we defeating the French?"
"How could we not?" Oliver replied with a giggle.
"Quite easily," Helena said, raising an eyebrow. "No army ever won a battle on an empty stomach. What do you say we go and have some breakfast? Then your soldiers can return to the field with renewed strength."
Oliver considered the request for a moment before giving a solemn nod. "Very well."
Together they descended the staircase, where they found Tristan waiting at the bottom.
"I found him in the storage room," Helena explained. "He was conducting a campaign with what I believe are your old soldiers."
"Nurse went to the kitchen after helping me dress," Oliver explained. "Mama was still getting ready, and I was bored." His face grew uncertain. "Am I in trouble?"
Tristan looked toward Helena but said nothing.
Helena crouched beside Oliver. "That is not for me to decide. But perhaps next time you might tell your mama where you are going. She was very worried."
Oliver frowned. "But then it isn't hiding, and that’s not fun."
Helena smiled gently. "Perhaps not. But tell me, would you enjoy it if you could not find your mama?"
Oliver shook his head fiercely. "No."
"That would be rather frightening, would it not?" Helena continued.
He nodded, his expression becoming thoughtful. "Should I say I'm sorry?"
Helena tilted her head. "Are you sorry?"
Oliver looked down at one of the soldiers still clutched in his hand. "If I made Mama frightened... then, yes."
"Then I think she would be very pleased to hear you say so." Helena paused before adding, "And if you disappeared again tomorrow without telling her, would that show her you were truly sorry?"
Oliver was silent for several moments before giving a reluctant sigh. "No... it would not."
Helena smiled "Goodness, you are a clever boy. Come, let us find your mama. I daresay your uncle is ravenous by now."
Oliver hurried ahead at once, following the sound of his mother's voice calling to him.
Tristan and Helena fell into step behind their nephew.
After a moment Tristan spoke. "You have a remarkable way with him. Indeed, I suspect with children generally."
Helena glanced at her husband with a small smile. "Perhaps he was simply in an accommodating mood today," she replied. "It may not always be so."
“Perhaps.” Tristan smiled. "Shall we meet in the study after breakfast? There are a few matters concerning Blackmere House that I should like us to go over together."
“Most certainly.”
And so began Helena's first week at Blackmere House, and it passed more easily than she had expected.
She quickly learned the habits of the Wycliffe household: The hour Beatrice preferred not to be disturbed, the precise manner in which Oliver liked his breakfast prepared, and the particular subjects that could persuade Georgiana to speak for twenty minutes without drawing a breath.
Each morning after breakfast, she joined Tristan in his study to review the day's engagements and household affairs before attending to her own responsibilities.
There was much to absorb, yet never so much that she lost confidence.
Tristan seemed to know instinctively when guidance was needed and when experience would teach her better than any explanation.
As the days passed, they slipped into a routine that neither had planned but which suited them remarkably well.
Once the business of the morning had been attended to, each devoted themselves to their own responsibilities until the family gathered again in the afternoon, whether over lunch, tea, or a stroll through the gardens.
Oliver's latest scheme often dictated the course of the day, usually requiring Tristan to become a general, an explorer, or a dragon before the hour was out.
Beatrice and Georgiana played his games with varying degrees of enthusiasm, while Helena found herself drawn in more often than she expected.
By evening they gathered in the drawing room, each occupied with a book, embroidery, correspondence, or some other pursuit, conversation rising and falling with comfortable familiarity.
It was when she and Tristan found themselves alone that Helena noticed the change. Before their engagement they had spoken of art, books, childhood memories, and the small observations that revealed a person's character.
Suddenly their conversations revolved around tenants, correspondence, family concerns, and the endless decisions that accompanied the management of Blackmere House. At some point those exchanges had become the natural language of their marriage, though neither of them had remarked upon it.
Without quite realizing it, Helena found herself noticing the smallest particulars. The milk he preferred in his tea. The measured cadence of his footsteps upon the staircase. The low, patient voice with which he read to Oliver before bed.
They were insignificant observations in themselves, yet each revealed another facet of the man he had become, rather than the boy she had known.
Somehow, she was discovering him all the same, not through conversation, but through the ordinary moments of each day, until she found herself watching for them without thinking.
Whenever the others were occupied, Helena often withdrew to the little sitting room she had discovered on the day she went in search of Oliver, tucked away on the nursery floor.
The room quickly became her own retreat.
There she practiced her drawing, wrote letters to Charlotte, or filled the pages of her sketchbook with ideas for paintings she hoped one day to complete.
One afternoon she laid her pencil aside with a sigh.
The image she carried so clearly in her mind refused to appear upon the paper before her, no matter how many times she tried.
Closing the sketchbook, she allowed her gaze to wander about the room in search of anything that might distract her from her frustration.
Apart from a landscape painting and a portrait of a lady hanging on the walls, a finely crafted writing box rested upon one of the bookcases. It was fashioned from polished wood, its lid adorned with delicate inlays of mother-of-pearl that shimmered softly in the light from the window.
Curious, Helena crossed the room and lifted it carefully from the shelf. The lock was small and elegantly made, though firmly secured when she tested it with the lightest touch.
It was certainly not Tristan's. The workmanship possessed a grace that suggested it had belonged to a lady, though there was nothing to reveal which one.
For a moment she considered asking Georgiana about it, then thought better of satisfying her curiosity at another's expense.
Returning the box to precisely the place in which she had found it, she decided to venture downstairs in hopes tea would shortly be served in the parlor.
***
That evening, Helena lay awake long after the household had retired.
She had finished the book she had been reading some time before, but sleep remained elusive.
At length she slipped from beneath the covers, wrapped her dressing gown about her, lit a candle, and made her way downstairs to the library in search of another volume.
She had barely crossed the threshold before she realized she was not alone.
Tristan sat in one of the armchairs near the fire, with a glass of cognac resting on the table near his elbow, untouched. He was neither reading nor writing, merely gazing into the fire. There was something unfamiliar in the way he sat, a weariness she had never before associated with him.