Chapter Two #2
“Thank you, Rosalind,” Helena said. “That will be all.”
Rosalind’s face fell. She clearly wished to stay, to witness whatever extraordinary event was unfolding in their sitting room. But her disposition was of the most dutiful and obliging nature, and she retreated with only one longing glance over her shoulder.
Helena poured. The ritual of it, the familiar motions, the steady stream of amber liquid, helped settle something that had come loose inside her chest.
“Milk?” she asked. “Sugar?”
“Neither, thank you.”
She handed him the cup. Their fingers did not touch, but she was aware of the distance between them, the precise measurement of air that separated his hand from hers.
“Miss Whitmore.” He set the cup down without drinking from it. “I will not waste your time with pleasantries we both know are beside the point. I have a proposal to make to you. A practical one.”
Helena’s cup stopped halfway to her lips.
“A proposal,” she repeated.
“My father’s will contains a clause.” His voice was steady, but she could see the tension in his shoulders, the careful way he held himself.
“I must wed before my thirtieth birthday, which falls in six months, or the unentailed portions of the estate pass to a distant cousin. The London townhouse. The income-generating properties. A significant portion of the art collection and investments that support the tenant families on my lands.”
Helena said nothing. She set her cup down with great care, as though it might shatter if handled too roughly.
“I have spent four Seasons attempting to find a suitable wife,” he continued.
“I have failed. The women presented to me want the title, the fortune, the social position. They do not.” He stopped.
Reconsidered. “They are not interested in the man attached to those things. And I find I cannot bring myself to propose matrimony to someone who views me as a convenient collection of assets.”
“So you have come to me.” Helena’s voice was very quiet. “A vicar’s daughter with no fortune, no connections, and no prospects. Because I am, what, too insignificant to be a fortune hunter?”
“Because you made a room full of people disappear by raising an eyebrow.”
The words landed like something dropped from a height. Helena stared at him.
“I have spent four years in ballrooms full of women trying to be noticed,” he said.
“Trying to catch my attention, to charm me, to make themselves memorable through beauty or wit or strategic placement. You were the first person who didn’t seem to care if anyone was looking.
You stood at the edge of that assembly and observed it like a scientist studying a particularly uninteresting species of insect, and when that woman was rude to you, you replied with more genuine cleverness than I have heard in four Seasons combined. ” He paused. “I found that remarkable.”
Remarkable.
No one had ever called Helena remarkable. Sharp, yes. Difficult. Too clever for her own good. Ill-suited for matrimony, according to Mrs Dawkins and her ilk.
Not remarkable.
“I am offering a matrimony of mutual benefit,” the Duke continued.
“You gain financial security, for yourself, your mother, your sister. A house that does not leak. Medicine that does not run out. A Season for Miss Rosalind, with a proper dowry to follow. In return, I gain a wife who will satisfy the will’s requirements without demanding that I perform affection I do not feel for a stranger. ”
“You are offering,” Helena said slowly, “charity dressed as matrimony.”
“I am offering a partnership.” His gaze was steady. “I find charity more demeaning for both parties.”
Silence stretched between them. The fire crackled upon the hearth. From some distant quarter of the house, the steady ticking of a clock made itself heard, while upstairs, the persistent leak continued its quiet, relentless destruction, drip by drip.
“Why should I believe you?” Helena asked at last. “You are a Duke. You could have any woman in England. Why would you settle for a sharp-tongued spinster with nothing to recommend her but her ability to insult people at assemblies?”
“I would not be settling.” He said it simply, as though it were obvious. “And I believe you know your own worth better than that, Miss Whitmore, whatever you may pretend otherwise.”
She felt something crack inside her. Some wall she had built so carefully, so painstakingly, over years of being overlooked and underestimated and told she was too much.
“And if I say no?”
“Then I will thank you for the tea and return to London and continue my search, and you will never hear from me again.” He stood, and she realised with a start that he was preparing to leave, that he was giving her an exit, a graceful way to refuse without confrontation.
“I do not wish to pressure you into a decision. I only wished to… present the option. Honestly. Without pretence.”
Helena rose as well. They stood facing each other in the small sitting room, the Duke of Westmere and the vicar’s daughter, and the distance between them felt like a chasm and a breath at the same time.
“I need time,” she said. “To consider.”
“Of course.” He bowed, a proper bow, the kind she had seen at her one Season and never expected to receive again in her own home. “I am staying at the Rose and Crown in the village for the next three days. If you wish to discuss the matter further, you may send word there.”
He moved toward the door. Helena followed, her mind spinning with numbers and possibilities and the weight of a word she had never expected to hear applied to herself.
At the threshold, he paused. Turned back.
“Miss Whitmore.”
“Your Grace?”
“For what it is worth…” He hesitated, and for a moment, he looked almost human. Almost uncertain. “I meant what I said. About finding you remarkable. It was not a strategy. It was simply true.”
He left. The heavy door of the coach clicked firmly into place behind him, its solid closure bearing the undeniable quality of a fine carriage. The wheels began to turn, carrying him away down the muddy lane.
Helena stood in the doorway and watched until the carriage disappeared around the bend.
“Helena?” Rosalind’s voice came from behind her, breathless with curiosity. “What happened? What did he want? Why was the Duke of Westmere in our sitting room?”
Helena turned. Her sister’s face was bright with questions, with hope, with the kind of romantic speculation that Rosalind had always been prone to.
“Do not,” Helena said.
She walked past her sister, through the house, back to her father’s study. She sat in his chair. She looked at the letters she had been writing, the desperate, pleading letters to registry offices and distant relatives and anyone who might offer her a way out.
She thought about the leak in the ceiling. Her mother’s medicine. Rosalind’s future. The door closing behind them in six weeks.
She thought about the word remarkable, delivered not as flattery but as fact. As though he had observed it, catalogued it, and was simply reporting his findings.
She picked up a fresh piece of paper.
She began to write.