The Hunted Duke's Convenient Bride

Chapter One

“I am afraid the position has been filled.”

Helena Whitmore had prepared herself for many outcomes that evening, awkward introductions, stilted conversation, perhaps even the quiet humiliation of being overlooked entirely. She had not, however, prepared for the particular cruelty of hope extinguished in a single sentence.

Mrs Gage, the distant connection who had promised, in a letter thick with reassurances, to introduce Helena to the Dowager Viscountess Marchmont, delivered the news with the serene indifference of a woman who had never wanted for anything in her life.

“Filled?” Helena heard herself say, her voice admirably steady. “I understood the Viscountess was still seeking a companion.”

“She was. She found one. A rector’s daughter from Devonshire, I believe. Lovely girl. Very quiet.” Mrs Gage’s gaze drifted over Helena’s shoulder toward something more interesting. “These things do move quickly, you know. One cannot expect positions to remain open indefinitely.”

Six weeks, Helena thought. Forty-two days to find a home, an income, and a miracle. I had managed two out of three before. The miracle has always been the sticking point.

“Of course,” she said aloud. “I quite understand.”

She did not understand. She understood nothing except that the ground beneath her feet had shifted once again, and she was running out of places to stand.

Mrs Gage had already turned away, her attention captured by a passing acquaintance with better connections and a more fashionable gown.

Helena was left standing in the assembly rooms of Lower Hartwick, Somerset, dressed in her second-best dress, which was, by unfortunate necessity, also her best dress, with nothing to show for three weeks of correspondence and carefully managed expectations.

She added this failure to the mental ledger she kept of disasters. The column was growing distressingly long. She was running out of room for new entries.

The assembly rooms were modest by London standards, she remembered enough from her single, abbreviated Season to make the comparison, but they had been decorated with determined provincial optimism.

Candles flickered in brass sconces that could have used a better polish.

A quartet of musicians played something vaguely recognisable in the corner.

The local gentry circled and bowed and made the same observations about the weather they had been making for thirty years.

Helena retreated to the edge of the room. Not to sulk, she did not have the luxury of sulking, but to calculate. If the companion position was no longer an option, she needed another plan. She always needed another plan.

The vicarage must be vacated in six weeks. Mama’s medicine costs more each month. Rosalind needs a Season she cannot afford and a dowry that does not exist. The roof leaks in three places, and I have seventeen pounds, four shillings, and sixpence to my name.

She had written to registry offices in Bath and London. She had written to her mother’s distant cousins in Shropshire, who had not replied. She had written to a widow in Cornwall who was seeking a governess, though Helena’s qualifications for the position were dubious at best.

None of it had yielded results. None of it was likely to yield results. She was five and twenty years old, the daughter of a deceased vicar who had been beloved, educated, kind, and completely hopeless with money. She had no fortune, no connections, and no prospects.

What she did have was a sharp tongue, an unfortunate tendency toward honesty, and an ailing mother who needed her.

I will fix this, she told herself, as she had been telling herself for three years. I always fix things.

The trouble was, some things did not wish to be fixed.

She observed the room with the detached precision of someone who had long since accepted that she was not part of it.

Lady Cranston was holding court near the refreshment table, her voice carrying across the assembly in that particular way of women who believed their opinions were gifts to the world.

Young Miss Hartley, not to be confused with the elder Miss Hartley, who had wedded last spring, was being led through a country dance by Mr Peters, whose expression suggested he was counting the minutes until the music ended.

And there, near the entrance, stood a man who looked as though he would rather be anywhere else in the world.

Helena noticed him because he was impossible not to notice.

Tall, taller than most of the men in the room, with dark hair and a face that might have been handsome if it had not been arranged into an expression of such profound discomfort.

He was dressed impeccably, his coat cut in a style that whispered London tailoring, his cravat tied with the kind of understated elegance that cost more than Helena’s entire wardrobe.

He was, she assessed with the clinical eye of a woman who had learned to read people quickly, wealthy. Titled, almost certainly. And utterly miserable.

Bored aristocrat, she filed him under. Almost certainly a lord of some variety. Not my concern.

She looked away, then looked back.

Because there was another man watching him.

This one was older, perhaps five and forty, with a florid complexion and the soft physique of someone who had never denied himself a meal or a bottle of wine.

He stood at the opposite side of the room, but his gaze was fixed on the uncomfortable aristocrat with an intensity that made something prickle at the back of Helena’s neck.

It was a hungry look. Calculating. Possessive in a way that had nothing to do with affection and everything to do with anticipation.

The uncomfortable aristocrat was aware of being watched. Helena could see it in the slight tension of his shoulders, the way his gaze carefully avoided the corner where the older man stood. He did not like it.

Neither, for reasons she could not name, did she.

Not your concern, she reminded herself. You have enough problems of your own.

She turned her attention to more practical matters, specifically, the question of whether she could reasonably leave the assembly early without causing offence, and whether causing offence was something she could still afford to care about.

“Miss Whitmore!”

Helena suppressed a sigh and composed her features into an expression of polite indifference. Mrs Dawkins was approaching with the determined momentum of a woman with gossip to share.

“Mrs Dawkins. How lovely.”

“I saw you speaking with Mrs Gage.” Mrs Dawkins’s eyes glittered with the particular excitement of someone who suspected bad news. “I do hope everything is well? I know you had hopes of… that is to say, we all understood you were inquiring about a position of some kind?”

The emphasis she placed on position made it sound vaguely scandalous, as though Helena had been applying for work in a house of ill repute rather than seeking respectable employment as a lady’s companion.

“Everything is quite well, thank you.” Helena smiled. It was not a warm smile. “I find I am simply exploring my options.”

“At your age, I suppose one must.” Mrs Dawkins patted her arm with the condescending sympathy of a woman whose options had never required exploration.

“Such a shame you never wedded. Though of course, with your father’s illness, and then your mother’s condition, I suppose you simply never had the opportunity. ”

I had one Season, Helena thought. One Season, cut short when Papa fell ill.

I nursed him for two years until he passed away.

I have spent every day since then holding my family together with determination and string.

I have not had another Season because I cannot afford the ribbons for it, much less the dresses.

“Indeed,” she said aloud. “Life does take unexpected turns.”

“Well.” Mrs Dawkins leaned closer, her voice dropping to a theatrical whisper.

“You should not despair entirely. I have heard, though I should not say, of course, but I shall, because you are practically family, I have heard that the new vicar is a widower. He is youngish, and by no means unattractive. Perhaps, were you to render yourself a little more agreeable?” Helena stared at her.

“You are suggesting,” she said slowly, “that I pursue the man who is taking my family’s home.”

“One must be practical, dear.”

“How very practical indeed. Shall I throw myself at his feet when he arrives to take an account of the silverware, or should I wait until he has counted the candlesticks?”

Mrs Dawkins’s mouth opened and closed. Behind her, someone made a sound that might have been a cough.

Or might have been a laugh.

“Well,” Mrs Dawkins huffed. “I was only trying to help. There is no need to be sharp, Miss Whitmore. Though I suppose that is why you remain unattached. Young men do not care for wit in a wife.”

“How fortunate, then, that I have given up on young men entirely.” Helena’s voice was perfectly even. “They are, I find, exhausting to maintain and rarely worth the investment.”

A further sound drew her attention, a laugh, beyond all doubt. Surprised and wholly sincere, it was the kind of spontaneous impulse that had escaped prior to any attempt at restraint. Helena glanced toward the source.

The uncomfortable aristocrat. He was looking at her. His expression had shifted from miserable to something approaching startled amusement, as though he had not expected to find anything entertaining in the assembly and was unprepared for the discovery.

She raised one eyebrow. Do I know you?

He did not answer. He had no need to not need to. She knew perfectly well she did not know him.

She looked away.

Mrs Dawkins was still sputtering something about gratitude and charitable intentions, but Helena had stopped listening. Her heart was beating in a strange, uneven rhythm that had nothing to do with the exchange and everything to do with the way the stranger had laughed.

Not your concern, she told herself again. He is wealthy and titled and miserable, and you are poor and common and practical, and your paths will never cross again after tonight.

She made her excuses to Mrs Dawkins, not that Mrs Dawkins deserved excuses, but Helena’s mother had raised her with manners even if she had not always succeeded in deploying them, and made her way toward the door.

She did not look at the stranger again.

She absolutely did not notice that his eyes followed her across the room.

***

The vicarage was quiet when Helena returned.

It was always quiet now. The house that had once been filled with her father’s laughter, Rosalind’s chatter, and the steady rhythm of a family that worked, had grown still. As if it, too, was waiting for someone to tell it what came next.

Her mother was asleep. Helena checked on her, carefully, quietly, the way she had been checking for three years, and found her peaceful, her breathing even, and the lines of pain in her face softened by rest. The medicine was working. For now.

Six weeks of medicine, Helena calculated. Perhaps seven, if I am careful. After that…

She did not finish the thought. There was no point in finishing thoughts that had no good endings.

Rosalind had left a note on the kitchen table, written in her sister’s cheerful, looping hand: Did you find anything? I made soup. It is not terrible.

Helena smiled despite herself. Rosalind was nineteen, sweet and romantic and blissfully optimistic in a way that Helena had once been and could no longer remember how to access.

She deserved a Season. She deserved a proper dowry and pretty dresses and the prospect of bestowing her heart to someone suitable.

She deserved better than a sister who possessed no remedy for what was past repair.

Helena wrote back: Not yet. The soup was better than not terrible. Go to bed.

Then she went to her father’s study.

It was hers now, technically. Everything was hers now, the responsibility, the debts, the impossible task of preserving a family from ruin with nothing but determination.

She had not moved her father’s things. His books still lined the shelves.

His Bible still sat on his desk. His spectacles still rested beside the inkwell, as though he might return at any moment to put them on.

She sat in his chair.

She allowed herself one minute of despair.

Sixty seconds, she thought. Sixty seconds to feel everything you are not permitted to feel. The fear. The exhaustion. The terrible, selfish wish that someone else would fix this for once. That you could stop being strong. That you could crumble, just for a moment, and let someone catch you.

The minute passed.

She straightened her spine. She pulled out paper and ink, and began to write.

A letter to a registry office in Bristol she had not yet tried.

A letter to her mother’s second cousin once removed, who lived in Northumberland and had never responded to previous correspondence but might, perhaps, this time.

A letter to a school in Bath that might, possibly, need a teacher of French, though Helena’s French was serviceable at best.

She wrote until her hand ached. Until the candle guttered. Until the words blurred on the page and she could no longer tell if she was writing hope or desperation.

I will fix this, she told herself, sealing the last letter with wax that dripped unevenly because she was too tired to be careful. I always fix things.

On the shelf, her father’s Bible sat silent and unhelpful.

Her hands were steady as she stacked the letters. Steady as she blew out the candle. Steady as she stood and pushed in the chair and told herself that tomorrow would be better, that something would work, that she had not run out of options yet.

But when she reached for the doorknob, she stopped.

And in the darkness of her father’s study, surrounded by his books and his silence and the weight of everything she could not carry, Helena Whitmore’s hands finally, began to shake.