Chapter Three
“You are writing to Margaret Lennox.”
Helena did not look up from her letter. “I am writing to Mrs Cavendish, who was Margaret Lennox before she entered into matrimony with a solicitor and moved to London. And you are reading over my shoulder, which is rude.”
Rosalind did not move. “You haven’t written to Margaret in three years. Not since her wedding.”
“Then I am overdue for correspondence.”
“Helena.” Rosalind’s voice was patient in the way of younger sisters who had learned to see through their elders’ deflections. “You are writing to a woman wedded to a solicitor, two days after a Duke proposed matrimony to you in our sitting room. I am not a simpleton.”
Helena set down her quill.
She had spent the past hours in a state of deliberate inaction, suspended between dread and resolve.
She had not written to the Duke of Westmere.
She had not sent word to the Rose and Crown accepting or declining his extraordinary offer.
She had, instead, done what she always did when faced with a decision that could alter the course of her life: she had gathered information.
“I am making inquiries,” she said finally. “Before I make a decision of this magnitude, I would like to understand what I am deciding.”
“What is there to understand? He is a Duke. He needs a wife. He chose you.” Rosalind’s eyes were bright with the romantic optimism that Helena had long since abandoned. “It is quite like an incident in a romance!”
“A romance, as everyone knows, concludes at the altar. Real life continues afterward, with all its complications and disappointments intact.” Helena folded her letter with precise, measured movements.
“I have no intention of binding myself to a man, Duke or otherwise, without understanding exactly what that binding entails.”
The letter to Margaret was carefully worded.
Helena had spent an hour crafting sentences that appeared casual while extracting maximum information.
She had mentioned, as though in passing, that she had encountered a certain Duke at a local assembly and found herself curious about his circumstances.
She had asked, with the idle interest of a woman making conversation, whether Margaret’s husband had heard anything of the Westmere estate situation.
It was not subtle. Margaret would see through it immediately. But Margaret had always been discreet, and Helena was depending on their old friendship, dusty though it was, to ensure the information flowed in only one direction.
“You could simply ask him,” Rosalind pointed out. “The Duke, I mean. He seemed, quite forthcoming.”
“Men are rarely forthcoming about the things that matter most.” Helena sealed the letter with wax, pressing her father’s old seal into the soft red surface.
“They tell you what they think you want to hear, or what serves their purposes, or what makes them appear in the best light. They do not tell you the whole truth unless compelled.”
“That is terribly cynical.”
“That is terribly realistic. There is a difference, though I grant it can be difficult to distinguish.”
She sent the letter that afternoon.
The reply came faster than Helena had expected, which suggested Margaret had found the inquiry interesting enough to prioritise. Helena took the letter to her father’s study, closed the door, and read it three times before setting it down.
Then she sat very still for a long moment, staring at the opposite wall.
Mr Reginald Vane, Margaret had written in her neat, careful hand.
A distant cousin of the Duke, I am told.
My husband says he has already engaged a solicitor, a Mr Gibbs, quite aggressive in reputation, and has been making inquiries about the terms of the late Duke’s will.
There is apparently a clause requiring matrimony before a certain date, and Mr Vane has been preparing to make a case against the Duke.
Preparing. The word sat heavy in Helena’s chest.
Margaret’s letter continued: According to my husband’s sources, and you know how solicitors gossip among themselves, Mr Vane has been cultivating relationships with certain members of society who might be persuaded to testify, should the Duke wed, that the match was contrived solely to satisfy the will’s requirements.
He is building a case, Helena. Not waiting to see if he inherits, but actively working to ensure that any matrimony the Duke contracts can be challenged as fraudulent.
Helena read the paragraph a fourth time.
The Duke of Westmere had told her about the inheritance clause. He had told her about the deadline, the cousin waiting in the wings, the pressure he was under. What he had not told her, what he had carefully, deliberately omitted, was that his cousin was already at war.
This was not a man waiting to see if opportunity fell into his lap. This was a man sharpening knives.
And the Duke had understated it. Had come to her with honesty, yes, but honesty carefully trimmed around the edges. He had uttered no falsehood; he had merely exercised a careful discretion as to which truths he chose to reveal.
Helena put down the letter.
She thought about the man who had sat in her parlour, drinking tea from her chipped cups, telling her she was remarkable.
She thought about the careful way he had presented his proposal, practical, reasonable, almost clinical in its lack of emotional manipulation.
He could have told her about Mr Vane’s preparations, and painted a picture of siege and desperation, pressured her into agreement by making her feel the urgency of his situation.
He hadn’t.
I did not want you to feel coerced, she imagined him saying. And she believed it. Believed that he had weighed the truth against her freedom to choose, and had chosen to give her the latter at the expense of the former.
It was, she realised with some surprise, an honourable thing to do. Foolish, perhaps. Strategically unwise. But honourable.
She picked up her quill.
***
“You told him what?”
Helena’s mother was sitting up in bed, a rare good day allowing her the strength to receive visitors, even if the visitor was only her eldest daughter, bearing news that apparently warranted sitting up for.
“I told him I would meet him to discuss terms.” Helena adjusted the pillows behind her mother’s back, a gesture of care that had become instinctive over the years. “It is not an acceptance. It is a negotiation.”
“A negotiation.” Catherine Whitmore’s eyes, still sharp, still knowing, despite the illness that had stolen so much else, studied her daughter’s face. “With a Duke.”
“Dukes are still men, Mama. They can be negotiated with.”
“Can they?” A faint smile touched her mother’s lips. “I confess I have limited experience in the matter. Your father was merely a vicar, and he was not much for negotiating. He simply gave me everything I asked for and called it affection.”
Helena felt the familiar ache that came with mentions of her father. Even though three years had elapsed, it still caught her unawares, the sudden sharp edge of absence, cutting through the numbness she had carefully cultivated.
“This is not affection,” she said. “This is an arrangement. A practical solution to practical problems.”
“Is it?”
“He said as much himself. A matrimony of mutual benefit. I gain security; he gains a wife who will not expect romance.”
Her mother was quiet for a moment. Then: “You have spent five years taking care of everyone else, Helena. Your father, when he was ill. Me, since then. Rosalind, always. You have carried this family on your shoulders without complaint, without rest, without anyone to lean on.” She reached out, her thin fingers finding Helena’s hand.
“Let someone take care of you for once.”
“He is not offering to take care of me.” Helena’s voice was steady, but something in her chest felt less so. “He is offering a business arrangement.”
“Darling.” Her mother’s smile deepened, knowing and gentle and infuriating in its certainty. “A man does not drive to Somerset twice to conduct business.”
“He only came once.”
“He will come again.”
Helena opened her mouth to argue, then closed it. There was no point in arguing with her mother when she had that look in her eyes, the look that said she saw things Helena did not, or understood truths Helena was not ready to acknowledge.
“I should let you rest,” Helena said instead, rising from the bedside chair.
“Helena.”
She paused at the door.
“Whatever you decide,” her mother said softly, “decide it for yourself. Not for me, not for Rosalind. For you. You deserve that much, at least.”
Helena did not trust herself to respond. She nodded once, tightly, and left the room before her mother could see the way her eyes had begun to sting.
She sent word to the Rose and Crown that afternoon. A single line: I am willing to discuss terms. Tomorrow, two o’clock, the path along the river.
The reply came within the hour: I will be there.
***
The day was cool and grey, the sky heavy with clouds that threatened rain but had not yet committed to it.
Helena wore her warmest pelisse, brown, practical, slightly worn at the cuffs, and walked with her hands clasped behind her back, a posture that her governess had once called “entirely too masculine” and that Helena had adopted permanently out of spite.
Rosalind trailed behind at a distance that was appropriate for a chaperone but far enough to prevent eavesdropping. Helena had extracted a promise of silence, which Rosalind had given with visible reluctance and an expression that suggested she intended to watch very carefully indeed.
The Duke of Westmere was waiting by the old stone bridge.
He looked different that day. Less polished, somehow, his coat was simpler, his cravat less elaborate, as though he had dressed for a country walk rather than a formal call. It made him look younger. More approachable. More like a man and less like a title.