Chapter 11
“Uncle Gabriel,” Helena said over breakfast the next morning, “I woke up with a maid in my room, and she wouldn’t tell me why—only that she was there on your orders!”
Gabriel let out a sigh, recalling his conversation with Lady Agnes of the night before.
Lady Agnes had been clear that the best thing to do was to tell Helena what had happened, and unfortunately, he did agree with that.
It was the best way—maybe the only way—to ensure that his headstrong niece would make safe choices.
“She was there on my orders,” he agreed.
“Well, I’m not going to have that,” Helena said tartly. “I’m not a child, Uncle Gabriel, and I’m much too old to have someone in my bedroom watching me while I sleep.”
“I agree that isn’t a solution we can move forward with,” Gabriel said. “But we do have a problem, Helena, and something needs to be done about it.” He thought back to his conversation with Agnes once more. “I’d like to work together with you to try to determine the best solution.”
Helena folded her arms. “Solution to what? To the fact that you feel entitled to let the staff into my room at all hours of the night?”
“No,” Gabriel said. “The fact that you leave your bed and walk about the manor in your sleep.”
“What?” Helena barked out a laugh. “I don’t do that. Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Yes, you do,” Gabriel said. “I’m sorry, Helena. I know it might be alarming—difficult to hear, maybe. But you were walking around last night. Do you have any memory of it?”
Perhaps she saw something serious in his expression—she paled slightly and unwrapped her arms from around herself, tucking her hands into her lap.
“No,” she said quietly.
“It’s all right,” he told her. “You didn’t do anything wrong. Nothing bad happened, and we just took you back to your bed. But you must see that it isn’t very safe to have you wandering around the manor. You might have fallen down the stairs.”
She bit her lip. “I won’t do it again.”
“You can’t control it,” he said. “You were asleep. That’s why I needed to make sure someone was watching you.
And if you think it’s the best solution, we can continue with that moving forward.
I can move a maid’s bed into your room. But I agree with you that you’re old enough to need a private space.
So my thought was to put a lock on your door. ”
“You want to lock me in?” Her eyes blazed. “You can’t do that, Uncle Gabriel. No!”
“We have to do something,” he pointed out. “What would you like to do about it? You know we can’t just let you get hurt.”
She thought for a moment. “What if you locked my wing of the house?”
“What do you mean?”
“There are doors that close in my hallway,” she pointed out. “The double doors at the end that lead to the rest of the house. Lock those doors. If you lock them, I’ll still be confined…” She made a face at the word. “But I won’t feel quite so contained as if you locked me in my room.”
“You would be all right with that?”
“No,” she said. “I despise the very idea of it. But you’re right. I can’t exactly go around falling down stairs. I’ll do myself a serious injury that way.” She sighed. “Are you sure this wasn’t a one-time thing?”
“Do you have reason to believe it might have been?”
She sighed. “I did have a nightmare last night.”
Gabriel’s heart twisted. “About your parents?”
Helena looked down.
“You used to have those dreams all the time, when you first came to live with me,” he said quietly. “I thought they had gone away. You haven’t spoken about them in years.”
“I don’t have them as often anymore,” she said. “But sometimes they do come back.”
“Is it the same dream you had as a child?” he asked her. “The one where you’re with them, and then out of nowhere, they’re gone?”
“That’s right,” she said softly. “The same dream. And I try to search for them, but no matter where I look, I can’t find them.”
“That’s probably what prompted you to get out of your bed,” he mused. “You were searching for your parents. Even in your dream, you were compelled to get up and look for them so strongly that it led to you walking around the manor.”
“That’s so odd,” Helena said with a scowl. “I’ve never heard of such a thing.”
“Well, you were lucky,” Gabriel said firmly. “You didn’t do anything to cause yourself harm. You went into the library, and that was all.”
“I wonder why I would have gone there,” she mused.
Then a wicked grin crossed her face. “Maybe it had nothing to do with my mother and father,” she said. “Maybe I wanted to read a book, and I knew the only way I’d ever be allowed to do so would be if I snuck it out while you were asleep.”
Gabriel grinned at her. He was grateful for how well he and Helena got along.
Even though she could be stubborn, and even though he had anticipated this conversation being a difficult one, the truth was that it was always easy to get along with her in the end.
“You can read the books in the library if you want to, Helena.”
“Can I?”
“Some of them,” he amended. “Not all. But you tell me which ones you want to read, and if I decide they’re appropriate, you can read them.”
“You’d better not just say none of them are appropriate.”
He laughed. “If you want me to select some proper ones for you, I’m happy to do that.”
“No,” she said firmly. “You’ll choose books for babies if I let you do it. I want to do the picking.”
He nodded slowly.
“You’re too protective, Uncle Gabriel.”
“I had a feeling you would say that when I proposed a lock on your door.”
“Yes, but at least that makes sense,” she agreed. “But I’m not a child anymore. Soon enough, I’m going to be a lady, and I’ll have to be able to make choices on my own. To live life on my own. You can’t keep me safe from everything.”
“I know that,” Gabriel murmured. “But taking care of you is a duty your mother and father trusted me with. Since that carriage accident, I’ve considered it to be the most important duty in my life to make sure that you were safe and that you got to grow up to live a full life.
Nothing matters more to me, Helena. I know you realize that. ”
“I do,” she said. “But books aren’t going to harm me.”
“That’s true. And since you’ve been so agreeable about what we need to do to protect you from danger in the case of another sleepwalking incident, I can be agreeable about this.” He offered her a small smile. “You’re right. You are growing up.”
“How is it you know so much about sleepwalking anyway?” she asked him. “Did my parents do it or something?”
“No,” Gabriel said. “At least, not to my knowledge. I actually didn’t know anything about it. But we were lucky in another way.” He took a deep breath. This part might be difficult to explain. “Lady Agnes was the one who discovered you.”
“Lady Agnes?” Helena’s eyes widened.
“And she had read all about it in a book,” Gabriel said.
“You see, reading is useful for a lady,” Helena said. “But…I don’t understand. What was Lady Agnes doing here while I was asleep?”
“I told her that she could come over to read the book she was reading when she was here the other day,” Gabriel explained.
“In the middle of the night?”
“You know how a lady’s reputation can be torn to shreds over the slightest misunderstanding,” he said. “We both agreed it would be best for her to come at night so that she wouldn’t be seen.”
“Except that if she was seen coming here in the middle of the night, the damage to her reputation would be that much worse,” Helena pointed out. “Why don’t you just lend her the book she wants to read?”
“Do you object to her being here?” This was an important question. If Helena did have a problem with it, they would have to figure something else out. It was Helena’s home, after all, and it was vital to Gabriel that she be comfortable in it.
“I don’t mind at all,” she assured him. “I like Lady Agnes. She’s one of the most interesting people I’ve ever met.
If I didn’t think it would cause you to go into a fit, I’d tell you that I want to be just like her when I grow up.
But surely she doesn’t want to be sneaking in here and putting her reputation at risk? ”
“I don’t think she cares all that much about reputation,” Gabriel said.
Helena grinned. “I didn’t think she did either. So she was here last night?” A thought occurred to her. “Is she still here? Why didn’t she come to breakfast? She should eat with us.”
“No, she’s not still here,” Gabriel said.
“I told her she could stay as long as she wanted to, that she didn’t have to rush out in the morning.
I told her that we would figure out a way to get her out of here that wouldn’t raise suspicions if she was seen.
She seemed to agree to that idea. But this morning, I sent a maid to her room to check on her, and the maid came back and reported that she was already gone.
There was no sign of her having been in the room at all. She must have snuck out at sunrise.”
“I wonder why she would do that,” Helena mused.
“I don’t know,” Gabriel admitted. “I could only guess. But I’m sure she had her reasons.”
“Maybe she finished reading her book,” Helena suggested.
“She didn’t. I thought of that too, but then I went to the library to check, and she had left it with a bookmark in it,” he said. “The bookmark was only about halfway through, so I know she has plenty of reading left to do.”
“Will I get the chance to see her again?” Helena bounced up and down in her seat.
“You will,” Gabriel said. “We had an agreement that she would come here in two days’ time to continue her reading, so she’ll be here then. I’ll send her a letter and tell her she can come during the day. These nighttime escapades don’t seem to be to anyone’s benefit.”
“And you’ll let me visit with her while she’s here?”
“I don’t seem to be having much success at keeping the two of you apart,” Gabriel said. “Just promise me that you aren’t going to decide you like her so much that you want to embrace a life of spinsterhood.”
Helena laughed. “Uncle Gabriel…don’t you realize that if I was going to emulate someone and choose to remain unmarried by doing so, my role model wouldn’t be Lady Agnes at all—it would be you?”