Chapter 13
Helena didn’t sleep at all that night, but this time it had nothing to do with the kittens. Kittenish antics weren’t, as it happened, any match for an earl’s kisses when it came to depriving a lady of her rest.
Though perhaps it wasn’t earls’ kisses in general, but only Adrian’s kisses. Yes, his kisses were the reason she’d memorized the length, width and direction of every crack in the ceiling directly above her bed.
She’d floated up the stairs last night, her fingers pressed to her swollen lips, Adrian’s whispered words in her ears, imagining that the most delicious dreams awaited her.
Dreams of his mouth taking hers, his lips softer than any mans’ should be, the silky glide of his hair against her fingertips, and the gentle stroke of his hands over her heated skin.
But as night crept toward day it brought reality with it, as surely as it brought the frigid morning air that crept under her coverlet and bit her toes.
She didn’t have any business kissing Adrian. Phee needed her, and she would never turn her back on her sister. She was leaving Hawke’s Run, leaving them all behind, and that was the end of it.
But Lady Anne wasn’t going anywhere. Sweet, affectionate Lady Anne, with her pretty blue eyes and infectious smile. Lady Anne, who was born to be a countess, and who would love Ryan and Etienne almost as much as she herself did.
Instead of kissing Adrian, she should be encouraging him to kiss Lady Anne, even if the thought of his lips roaming over Lady Anne’s fair skin did cause a wrench in her chest that left her gasping.
But she was a Templeton sister, and the Templeton sisters were matchmakers. Not that it took a matchmaker to see that there wasn’t a lady in England who was a better match for Adrian than Lady Anne. It was a happily-ever-after in the making.
It just wasn’t her happily-ever-after. She was only getting in the way of what was meant to be.
So, for the first time since she’d spied him sneaking into the stables, she didn’t hurry to the window seat when the clock chimed the four o’clock hour, but remained flat on her back in her bed, every limb rigid, and waited until she was certain he’d been to see Hecate and then gone again.
Only then did she rise, dress and make her way to the stables.
Hecate was rolling about on her warm flannel with the remains of last night’s lamb stew in a dish beside her, looking quite pleased with herself.
“Spoiled thing.” She scratched Hecate under the chin, but otherwise didn’t linger, leaving the cat purring contentedly.
She found Mrs. Norris laboring over the fire in the kitchens.
“Oh, good morning, Miss Templeton.” Mrs. Norris turned from her task when the door opened. “You’re up early.”
“We’re both earlier than usual this morning. Here, I’ll do that.” Helena took the tinderbox from the housekeeper and soon had the fire burning, and had set the kettle on to boil. “I rose early this morning to check on Hecate.”
“Ah. How does Miss Hecate do this morning? Any kittens yet?”
“Not yet, no, but it won’t be long now. You can’t imagine how excited Ryan and Etienne are. They’re beside themselves with anticipation.”
“It’s a good thing you’re doing, Miss Templeton, teaching those boys how to be kind to animals. I don’t know that they ever would have learned such a thing, if not for you.” Mrs. Norris sighed, shaking her head.
“I’m not so certain. Are you aware, Mrs. Norris, that Lord Hawke has risen before daybreak every morning this week to check on Hecate? He even changed the hay in her pen, and brought her a flannel.”
Mrs. Norris gaped at her over the edge of her teacup. “Did he, now? Well, I’ll be.”
“I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen the evidence myself.” Helena shook her head. Her heart was crumbling in her chest, yet a smile rose to her lips, all the same. Adrian and Hecate were quite a pair. “He, ah…he doesn’t seem to care much for cats.”
“Mayhap not, but he does care for his boys, and make no mistake.” Mrs. Norris set her teacup in its saucer with a click. “He loves them something fierce, for all that it may seem as though he doesn’t.”
“I don’t question Lord Hawke’s devotion to his sons, Mrs. Norris.
I confess I did so, at first, but Lord Hawke is…
nothing at all like the man I thought he was.
” Oh, dear, perhaps that was just a bit too frank.
She raised her teacup hastily to her lips to keep any more revealing words from escaping. “Er, where’s Abby this morning?”
“I sent her off to scrub the staircase and polish the banisters. We’re to have the ladies from the Benevolent Society over today to decorate for the Christmas fete, you know, and I don’t want them looking askance at my banisters.”
“No, indeed not. I beg your pardon, Mrs. Norris, for all the extra work the fete has caused you. I was the one who suggested we have it here once we discovered Goodall Abbey had flooded.”
“Nonsense, Miss Templeton. It’s for the Poor Fund, and I don’t mind telling you I quite like that we’re to have it here, despite the fuss. It reminds me of happier times at Hawke’s Run. Lady Hawke did love a party, you know, and she adored Christmas.”
There was a portrait of the late Countess of Hawke in the second-floor portrait gallery.
Helena had spent hours gazing at it since she’d come to Hawke’s Run, fascinated by that arresting face, the laughing blue eyes.
Lady Sophie had been a beauty, with dark, lustrous hair, and a mouth so like a rosebud one would imagine she only ever uttered the sweetest words, if it hadn’t been for the impudent curve at the corners of her lips.
“She looks like the sort of lady who would.”
“I don’t excuse his lordship’s shortcomings, but anyone who’d met Lady Sophie can’t help but understand how sharply he feels her loss. I’ve never seen a man more in love with a woman than Lord Hawke was with Lady Sophie.”
Helena hesitated, but it wasn’t often she had a chance to speak to Mrs. Norris privately, and she wasn’t going to get an opening better than this one. She waited for the kettle to boil, then prepared a tea tray and joined the housekeeper at the table. “What was Lady Hawke like, Mrs. Norris?”
“Oh, she was the prettiest little thing you ever saw, Miss Templeton. She had a sharp tongue about her, though, for all that you wouldn’t guess it to look at her, with those big blue eyes of hers.
The boys look rather like her, you know.
Well, except for their green eyes. Those are pure Lord Hawke, those eyes. ”
Helena smiled. “Yes, I noticed that about him right away.”
Mrs. Norris stirred her tea, but she seemed miles away. “Lord Hawke has always tried to do right by his boys,” she said at last. “He didn’t leave Hawke’s Run for an entire year after Lady Hawke passed, but perhaps he should have done.”
“What do you mean?”
“It was dreadfully difficult for him to be here once Lady Hawke was gone, with the boys asking for her every day. By the time his year of mourning was over, he was desperate to get away.” Mrs. Norris turned her teacup in the saucer.
“It started with a business trip to London, but then…ah, well, grief is a strange thing. I think he wanted to lose himself, and sure enough, he found a way to do it. He’s been trying to find his way back ever since, but he hasn’t been able to quite see his way clear. ”
“I—I see.” God in heaven, how dreadfully unfair to Adrian she’d been!
She hadn’t thought it her place to pry into his personal life, but she should have done, because all these months she’d assumed he was another selfish aristocrat, when really, he was just a man with a broken heart.
“Thank you for telling me this, Mrs. Norris.”
“I expect you’ve a right to know, being the boys’ governess. There’s plenty as haven’t a kind word to say about Lord Hawke, claiming he’s a rake, and such. His lordship hasn’t confided in me, mind you, but he never ran off to London to become a rake. He went to escape Hawke’s Run.”
“But not the boys, surely? I can’t imagine he wished to escape them.”
“No.” Mrs. Norris took a thoughtful sip of her tea as she considered the question.
“It’s not the boys he’s running from, Miss Templeton, it’s the memories of what Hawke’s Run once was to him.
The worst of it is, he can’t escape them that way, any more than anyone else can.
Anyone who’s ever suffered a loss knows that, but Lord Hawke, well… he’s struggled to accept what is.”
Helena stared down at her hands. Mrs. Norris was right, of course.
She’d spent many months raging at her mother for abandoning their family, and many more mourning her father’s heartbreaking decline and death.
Even now, more than a year later, her fingers had gone tight around the handle of her teacup just thinking about it.
“I don’t deny his lordship can be a bit trying at times, but don’t you get discouraged, Miss Templeton.” Mrs. Norris patted her hand. “You’ve done those boys a world of good at a time when they desperately needed a friend, and that’s something, it is. It matters.”
Now was the moment to tell Mrs. Norris the truth, to confess that she’d soon have to leave Hawke’s Run and return to Herefordshire, but Helena’s throat was too tight to speak.
“And now we’re to have a Christmas party!
I don’t say it’ll be like old times again—one can’t go back to the past, Miss Templeton, nor should one wish to—but Lord Hawke’s been different since he came home, a bit more like himself.
I have hopes he may be able to see his way forward, at last. I’m rather glad Goodall Abbey flooded, if you want the truth. ”
Goodall Abbey. Helena bit her lip. Did she dare ask? “Lord Hawke seems to be well-acquainted with Lady Goodall and…and Lady Anne.” She stumbled a little over the name, and her cheeks flooded with heat. “I gather they’ve known each other for some time?”