Chapter Four
“Hold still. You’re fidgeting.”
“I am not fidgeting. I am simply adjusting.”
“You are fidgeting.” Rosalind’s fingers were deft and gentle as she wove another sprig of wildflowers into Helena’s hair.
“You have been fidgeting since you woke up. You fidgeted through breakfast. You fidgeted while I helped you dress. If you fidget during the ceremony, I shall be forced to step on your foot.”
“You would not dare.”
“I absolutely would. It is my sisterly duty to prevent you from embarrassing yourself before the Duke of Westmere and all present.” Rosalind stepped back, regarding her handiwork with a critical eye. “There. You look beautiful.”
Helena turned to face the glass.
The woman looking back at her was a stranger.
She was wearing her best dress, which was also, still, her second-best dress, because one did not acquire new wardrobes in the three weeks between accepting a Duke’s proposal and entering into matrimony with him.
The gown was five years old, a soft dove grey that had been fashionable once and was now merely respectable.
Rosalind had altered it slightly, taking in the waist, and added a length of cream ribbon that had been their mother’s.
It bore no resemblance to a bridal gown, yet the blossoms lent it an agreeable grace.
Rosalind had gathered them that morning, before dawn, from the hedgerows along the lane.
Tiny white blossoms, pale blue forget-me-nots, and a spray of something yellow that Helena could not name were woven through her honey-blonde hair like a crown.
Fragile and wild, they framed hazel eyes that seemed altogether too spirited, creating an impression entirely inappropriate for a Duchess.
You are about to wed a Duke, Helena thought, studying her reflection with clinical detachment.
You are wearing a five-year-old dress. The flowers in your hair are from the hedgerow.
This is either a child’s tale or a farce, and you are not entirely certain which.
“Helena?” Rosalind’s voice was softer now, the teasing gone. “Are you quite well?”
“I am perfectly well.”
“You don’t look perfectly well. You look like you’re about to walk into battle.”
“Perhaps I am.” Helena smoothed her skirt with hands that were not quite steady. “Perhaps that is exactly what this is.”
A light rap at the door announced their mother’s voice, thin but determined: “Girls? The carriage is here.”
Helena took one last look at the stranger in the glass. Then she turned away and went to wed a Duke.
The church was small.
Helena had known it would be small, she had attended services there every Sunday of her life, had sat in the same pew with her family, and had listened to her father preach from the pulpit that now belonged to someone else.
But somehow, today, the smallness of it struck her differently.
The worn wooden pews, the simple altar, the light filtering through windows that were plain glass rather than stained, it all seemed inadequate for the magnitude of what was about to happen.
Or perhaps, she thought, it is exactly adequate. A small church for a small wedding for a practical arrangement. Nothing more.
The guests were few. Her mother, seated in the front pew in a wheeled chair that had become necessary the past months, dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief.
Rosalind, was standing beside her, practically glowing with romantic excitement.
The new vicar, Mr Collins, who had arrived two weeks ago to begin the transition, looked thoroughly confused by the entire situation.
He had brought a witness. A man Helena did not recognise, tall, fair-haired, and handsome in an easy, uncomplicated way that suggested he had never questioned his place in the world.
He stood beside Edmund with the comfortable assurance of long friendship, and when Helena entered the church, he leaned over to murmur something that made Edmund’s shoulders tense almost imperceptibly.
Helena filed this away. She filed everything away. It was how she survived.
But as she moved toward the altar, her attention was caught by something else.
A man. Across the lane from the church, was visible through the open doorway. He was well-dressed, middle-aged, and utterly unremarkable except for one thing: he was writing in a small notebook, and he was observing the church with the focused intensity of someone cataloguing evidence.
Helena’s step faltered. Just slightly, not enough for anyone to notice, she hoped, but enough to make her pulse quicken.
She reached the witness, Lord Marcus Tremont, Edmund had told her his name during their one subsequent meeting, his closest friend and the only person he trusted to stand beside him for his matrimonial ceremony, and paused.
“The man across the lane,” she murmured, low enough that only he could hear. “Do you know who he is?”
Lord Marcus’s countenance assumed a guarded composure. A flash of recognition, instantly suppressed, crossed his features. “It is likely of no account.” He said. “A curious villager, perhaps.”
Helena looked at him steadily. “Lord Marcus. I am about to enter into matrimony with your friend. I would appreciate honesty.”
There was a pause. Then, very quietly: “He works for Vane. The cousin. We knew he would send someone.”
It was indeed nothing of great importance, then. Helena filed this too, adding it to the growing ledger of things she would need to address. Later. Once she had fulfilled the purpose of her business.
“Thank you,” she said, and walked the final steps to the altar.
Edmund turned to face her.
He did not resemble a man who was nervous, but a man who looked as if he had braced himself for something difficult, and was determined to see it through with as much grace as possible.
His expression was carefully neutral, but his eyes, those dark, serious eyes that had watched her across a crowded assembly room, held something she could not quite read.
“Miss Whitmore.” His voice was low, formal. The voice of a man performing a duty.
“Your Grace.” She matched his tone precisely.
The vicar cleared his throat. “Shall we begin?”
The ceremony was quick, traditional and did not take very long. The familiar words washed over Helena like water. Dearly beloved, gathered together, holy matrimony, and she responded when prompted, her voice steady, her hands clasped in front of her to hide their trembling.
And then Edmund reached for her hand.
His fingers closed around hers, warm, steady and, gentle. He held her hand as though it were something fragile. Something precious. Something that required care.
No one had held her hand like that since her father had passed.
Helena felt her breath catch, and something crack in her chest. It felt like a wall she had not realised she was still holding up. She looked at their joined hands, his so much larger than hers, hers so pale against his skin, and for one dizzying moment, she forgot that it was an arrangement.
“I, Edmund Charles Ridley, take thee, Helena Anne Whitmore…”
His voice was quiet but clear. He spoke the vows like he meant them, which was absurd, because they both knew he didn’t, couldn’t, not in the way the words implied.
And yet, as he spoke the words, “to have and to hold, from this day forward”, there was a quiet gravity in his voice that made Helena’s chest ache with a feeling she resolutely refused to name.
“…for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer…” She spoke her own vows in return.
Her voice did not waver. She was proud of that.
“…in sickness and in health, to honour and to cherish, till death us do part.”
The vicar pronounced them man and wife.
Edmund lifted her hand, still clasped in his, and pressed his lips to her knuckles. The briefest touch, formal and appropriate and nothing more.
It burned like a brand.
They signed the register. Helena Whitmore became Helena Ridley, Duchess of Westmere. The title settled onto her shoulders like a coat three sizes too large, heavy and ill-fitting and singularly strange.
Duchess, she thought, watching the ink dry on her new name. I am a Duchess now. I am responsible for an estate I have never seen, a household I have never managed, a position I have never wanted.
I am wedded to a man who held my hand like I was something precious.
She did not know what to do with that last thought. So she put it away, locked it in the same place she kept all the things she could not afford to feel, and turned to face her new life.
The wedding breakfast was modest.
Edmund had offered to host something grander, had offered, in fact, to postpone the wedding itself until arrangements could be made for the kind of celebration befitting a Duchess.
Helena had refused. Quietly, firmly, with that particular tilt of her chin that he was beginning to recognise as her way of indicating that a topic was not open for discussion.
“My mother is not well enough for grand celebrations,” she had said. “And I would rather begin as I mean to go on, practically.”
So there they were, in the vicarage’s small dining room, with a breakfast of cold meats and cheeses and a cake that Rosalind had made herself, which was only slightly lopsided.
Mrs Whitmore was exhausted but radiant, tears still tracking down her thin cheeks.
Rosalind was practically bouncing with excitement, peppering Marcus with questions about London society that he answered with the practiced ease of a man accustomed to charm.
And Helena was managing.
Edmund watched her move through the room, refilling her mother’s tea, adjusting the cushion behind her back, quietly directing Rosalind to fetch another plate, smoothing over Mr Collins’s awkward attempts at conversation.
She was everywhere at once, anticipating needs before they were expressed, solving problems before they became apparent.
No one was managing her.
The realisation settled into Edmund’s chest with an uncomfortable weight.
She had just entered into matrimony with a stranger.
She was leaving her home, her family, everything she had ever known.
She was walking into a situation fraught with legal peril and social scrutiny.
And instead of allowing herself to feel any of that, she was taking care of everyone else.
Someone should take care of her, he thought. Someone should ask what she needs, instead of assuming she has no needs at all.
He resolved, silently, to be that someone. Even if she would not thank him for it. Even if she would resist. He would find a way.
***
The breakfast ended. Farewells were exchanged, with Mrs Whitmore weeping openly now, clutching Helena’s hands and murmuring things Edmund could not hear.
Rosalind was embracing her sister with the fierce, uncomplicated affection of the young.
Even Mr Collins managed a few appropriate words, though he still looked rather confused by the whole affair.
And then they were in the carriage, and the vicarage was receding behind them, and Helena was staring out the window with an expression that revealed nothing.
Edmund waited.
The silence stretched between them, not uncomfortable, exactly, but weighted. It was the silence of two people who had just bound their lives together and did not yet know what that meant.
Finally, Helena spoke. “The man across the lane. Lord Marcus said he works for your cousin.”
Edmund had been planning to tell her. Had been waiting for the right moment, the right words. But she had already discovered it on her own, because of course she had. She was Helena.
“Yes,” he said. “A hired observer. Confirming that the wedding took place.”
“He will report back to Mr Vane.”
“Within the day, I expect.”
Helena absorbed this. Her gaze remained fixed on the window, watching the Somerset countryside roll past. “He is watching already.”
“He began watching the moment he heard I had found someone.” Edmund kept his voice calm, factual. She deserved facts, not emotions. “I am sorry for it.”
“Don’t be.” She said it without bitterness, without self-pity. A simple statement of acceptance. “I knew what this was.”
But she let out a breath, very slowly, and Edmund saw something in her face tighten. The first crack in her composure. The first sign that she felt the weight of what they had done.
“You did beautifully today,” he said quietly.
She did not turn from the window. “I did what was necessary.”
“Those are not always different things.”
Now she did look at him. Something flitted across her countenance, which bore the impression of surprise, or even gratitude. Gratitude. A softening of the careful blankness she had worn all day.
“No,” she said slowly. “I suppose they are not.”
The carriage crested a hill, and Edmund heard her sharp intake of breath.
Westmere Park spread out before them.
He had grown up there, had played in those gardens, climbed the trees, and had learned to ride on the sweeping lawns that rolled down to the ornamental lake.
He had cherished it once, before his brother had passed away, and left him with a title he had never wanted and a house that echoed with ghosts.
Now it was simply his home. The place he lived. The place he was responsible for.
But seeing it through Helena’s eyes, he understood how it must appear.
Immense, grand, and inspiring a feeling of total awe.
The main house was Palladian, built by his great-great-grandfather with more ambition than taste.
Wings stretched out on either side like arms waiting to embrace, or, Helena might think, like a trap waiting to close.
The gardens were immaculate, maintained by an army of gardeners he had never counted.
The drive curved through parkland dotted with ancient oaks, past a lake that sparkled in the autumn light.
It was beautiful. It was also, he knew, terrifying.
“It is rather a lot,” he said. “I know.”
Helena was still staring. Her lips parted, closed, and parted again. Finally, she said: “Your Grace, I believe that may well be the greatest understatement of the age.”
Edmund felt the corner of his mouth twitch. The almost-smile that kept threatening to emerge whenever she spoke, that dry, sharp, utterly unexpected wit that had caught his attention across a crowded assembly room and refused to let go.
“You may call me Edmund,” he said. “If you wish. We are wedded, after all.”
She turned to look at him. Her expression was unreadable, but something in her eyes had shifted. Some of her wall had lowered, just slightly.
“Edmund,” she said, testing the word. “Very well. And you may call me Helena.”
“Helena.” He let her name sit on his tongue, feeling the shape of it. It suited her. Classical. Strong. Unexpected.
The carriage began its descent toward the house. Toward their future. Toward whatever came next.
They had a long way to go.