Chapter 11
Chapter Eleven
“If you let go of that leash,” Helena said, “he will be in the Serpentine.”
Newton’s leash was wrapped twice around Annabelle’s wrist and pulling hard enough that she had to lean back against it, which she was entirely aware looked ridiculous to anyone watching.
Newton had spotted something in the willows across the path: a squirrel, a pigeon, a very large leaf, and committed to reaching it with the absolute conviction of a creature who had never encountered a deterrent that worked.
“Newton.” She dug her heels in. “Newton, there is nothing in those—”
Newton found the squirrel, but the squirrel quickly fled. Newton gave chase for approximately four seconds and then stopped, sat, and looked back at Annabelle over his shoulder as though this had all been her idea, and she had merely slowed him down.
Helena was laughing into her fan.
“I fail to see what is amusing,” Annabelle said, unwinding the leash from her wrist.
“All of it.” Helena lowered the fan. “A duke’s sister, hauled through a public park by a tabby. There is a satirical print in this.”
“There is not.” She checked her gloves.
The right one had acquired a scuff at the heel. Newton was already investigating a park bench with the diligence of a natural philosopher: nose along the seat, down the leg, at the iron foot. Whatever conclusion he reached, he reached it in silence and moved on.
They fell back into step together. The path along the water was quiet at this hour: a nursemaid with two small children and a hoop rolling away from her at some speed; a rider picking his way through the trees to the east; the Serpentine flat and blue under the clear sky.
Helena walked without speaking.
And Annabelle knew her silences the way she knew her own handwriting. The comfortable kind; the thinking kind; and the kind that had been building toward something since they left the house and intended to arrive whether it was invited or not.
She kept her eyes on Newton and gave the silence space.
“You were gone for twenty minutes last night,” Helena said.
Annabelle’s heart slammed against her ribs, and she took in a calming breath, hoping her expression gave nothing away. “I needed air.” She said.
Helena hummed, amusement threading through the sound. “You came back with very pink cheeks.”
“It was cold.” Annabelle cleared her throat once.
“Please. Your cheeks were not pink from the cold, and you know it.” She kept her tone conversational. “You didn’t speak to anyone for the rest of the evening.” Now, she turned to look her square in the eye, “I arranged things for you so Mama would never notice.”
Annabelle looked at the ground ahead of Newton’s paws. “I know,” she said. “Thank you.”
“I don’t want your thanks. I want to know what happened.” Helena gestured toward the south path, where the willows at the bend were already visible. “Come sit with me.”
Newton slowed at the turn as though he had been consulted. They followed him.
The bench was tucked behind the willows, set back from the water, usually empty at this hour and empty now.
Annabelle sat. Newton climbed into her lap at once, circled once, and settled with his purring going at low volume. Helena sat beside her, folded her hands, and waited.
She told her then. She had been working out the shape of it since well before dawn, which helped. ‘
Helena let her finish before she said anything.
“So…he kissed you,” she said.
Annabelle’s cheeks heated. “Yes.”
Helena seemed to be having quite a bit of fun at her expense. “On the east balcony…alone, with the entire company on the other side of the door.”
This was getting uncomfortable. So, Annabelle glared at Helena. “That is an accurate account of the geometry, yes.”
“And before you pulled away…” Helena continued, now sounding way too amused for Annabelle’s liking.
“I didn’t pull away immediately.” Annabelle said it directly, because Helena would find the omission within thirty seconds regardless. “I am being honest with you. Before I pulled away, I…I didn’t.”
Helena looked at the water. She was working through something; whatever it was, she worked through it before she spoke, which was not always her habit but was always a sign she was being careful.
“So…how was it?” she said at last.
Annabelle gasped, her head snapping around to glare at her friend as her cheeks exploded into scorching fumes. “That…That is not—”
Helena shook her head and said, “I am asking because I need to understand the scale of what you are dealing with.” She held Annabelle’s gaze steadily. “The answer is already on your face, so you may as well say it.”
Annabelle looked at the button on her coat that her fingers had apparently located without her knowledge, and were turning at the edge. She made them stop.
“Yes,” she said. “All right. Yes.”
Helena exhaled slowly through her nose and said nothing for a moment. Newton adjusted his weight in Annabelle’s lap and pressed against her palm, and she scratched behind his ears without looking at him.
“Right,” Helena said quietly. Then, after a moment: “I see.”
“You’re not going to say anything else?”
“I am composing myself.” She smoothed her skirt with both hands. “I have composed myself through worse shocks this season. The man in the toga. Lord Fenwick.” She paused, “I am composing myself rather more urgently now.”
“Helena—”
“I am fine.” She straightened. “I have composed myself.” She turned back to Annabelle with an expression that was, for about two seconds, very carefully controlled.
Then she said, “The Duke of Silverford,” and then she said nothing further, because apparently even a fully composed Helena Thrupton required a moment to absorb certain categories of information.
“Yes,” Annabelle said. “I know.”
“I have to tell you something,” Helena said.
“I need you to hear it before you decide how you feel.” She turned to face her on the bench.
“His reputation is not drawing room talk. It is consistent, and it comes from women who have no reason to embroider it. Lady Somerton’s cousin, the one who married Viscount Hale, told me directly that he is discreet about it, but he’s made his rounds across every attractive widow, opera singer, actress and dancer in London. ”
The willows moved slightly above them. Farther along the bank, the nursemaid had recovered the hoop.
“I know what he is,” Annabelle said.
“Then you know that whatever last night was for him…it is not something he has a map for.” Helena’s voice was even, without cruelty, in the way it was when she had decided a thing needed saying, too much to soften it.
“I know I’ve been teasing you about this, but this…
You’re my friend, and I want you to be safe.
The Duke does not pursue unmarried women, to his credit.
But that means he has no framework for this…
and either it was nothing, a moment he’ll put away and not repeat, or it wasn’t nothing.
And that,” she said, “is considerably worse. Because he still doesn’t stay. ”
Annabelle looked at the water. A pair of mallards had appeared at the far bank, making their way east with no apparent urgency.
“Do you like him?” Helena said.
“That is not a relevant question.”
“I think it is very much the relevant question.”
Annabelle did not answer immediately. She watched the mallards reach the shadow of the far bank and disappear behind the reeds. Newton stirred in her lap and put his paw on her arm, as though to draw her back.
“I don’t know him,” she said, at last. “He is…not what I expected. But I don’t know him.
” She turned the truth over carefully before she offered it.
“I know that he cares about James, even when he is terrible at it. Above all… Heavens, he is Lucien’s closest friend,” Annabelle said.
She had said it to herself since the early hours of the morning, and it had not lost its weight in repetition.
“Lucien left London trusting that things were orderly. He trusted the house next door. He trusted me.” She felt the full shape of it settle. “If he ever found out—”
“He won’t,” Helena said quietly.
“There is no version of this that ends well for me.” She said it plainly. “So, it does not happen again. That is the end of it.”
Helena looked at her for a long moment and then nodded once.
Annabelle lifted Newton off her lap, set him on the path, and stood. Helena rose beside her and handed over the leash without comment.
They turned back toward the main circuit. Newton led from the front, tail up, at his habitual pace. The grey light was the same as it had been an hour ago, flat and cold over the water. The park looked entirely unchanged. The world continued its indifference at a comfortable volume.
They walked without talking for a while, and this was a different silence from the one they had walked in on the way out.
It was the silence of two people who had said everything that needed saying and had arrived at the other side of it, and Helena kept pace without comment, and Annabelle was glad of her for it.
Annabelle kept her eyes on Newton and thought about the letter she owed her aunt, the new planting book she had ordered that had not yet arrived, and whether the third-floor linen press had been properly aired.
None of it held.
The warmth of his hands through the thin drape of her costume; how they had spread at her waist before she had formed a single thought about it, deliberate and unhurried, as though he had known exactly where he was going to put them.
The sound he had made when she stopped holding herself at a distance: low, rough, entirely unmanaged.
The way he had said her name, not her title, as though there were no other version of her worth speaking to. She had not meant to hold onto any of it. It had stayed anyway, and it came back now with the faithfulness of things her memory had decided were worth keeping against her better judgment.
Half past eleven. The morning had progressed entirely without Dominic’s participation.
He had done what he should not have done.