Chapter Six
“These sums simply do not tally.”
Mrs Prescott’s expression faltered, revealing the barest hint of surprise before her professional composure reasserted itself. “I beg your pardon, Your Grace?”
Helena turned the ledger so the housekeeper could see it clearly.
They were seated in the morning room, which Helena had claimed as her headquarters for household management.
The table between them was covered in account books, receipts, and the accumulated paperwork of an estate that had been running on habit rather than attention.
“The kitchen accounts.” Helena pointed to a column of figures.
“The expenditure for preserved meats has been recorded at twelve pounds, eight shillings per quarter for the past three years. But the receipts from the supplier show a price increase eighteen months ago. Either someone has been absorbing the difference personally, or the records have not been properly maintained.”
Mrs Prescott leaned forward, examining the figures Helena indicated. Her brow furrowed. For a long moment, she said nothing.
Then: “I had not noticed the discrepancy.”
“It is easy to miss, when one is not looking for it.” Helena kept her voice neutral.
This was not an accusation, she had already determined that the error was clerical rather than criminal, the result of a kitchen maid who had been copying numbers without understanding them.
“I only mention it because if Mr Vane’s solicitor decides to examine our household records, and he may well do so, we cannot afford unexplained inconsistencies. ”
Mrs Prescott’s eyes met hers. Something passed between them, an understanding, perhaps. An acknowledgment that they were fighting the same battle, even if they had not yet become allies.
“I will speak with Mrs Barrow,” the housekeeper said. “The records will be corrected.”
“Thank you.”
Helena returned to the ledger. She had been working on it for days.
She had spent five days of accounts and inventories and careful, methodical examination of every aspect of Westmere Park’s operations.
Five days of proving, line by line and entry by entry, that she was not a mere cipher of a Duchess.
That she understood the household. That she belonged there.
It was exhausting. It was also, in a strange way, exhilarating.
Years of managing a vicarage on nothing had prepared her for this. She knew how to stretch a budget, and how to identify waste. She could make decisions that balanced immediate needs against long-term stability. The scale was different, wildly, absurdly different, but the principles were the same.
And she was good at it.
Mrs Prescott had noticed. Helena could see it in the gradual softening of the housekeeper’s manner, the way her questions had shifted from testing to genuine inquiry. They were not friends. They might never be friends. But they were beginning to understand each other.
Every domestic detail is now evidence, Helena reminded herself, closing the ledger. Every decision I make, every interaction I have, every competency I demonstrate, all of it builds the case that this matrimony is real.
She was not just running a household. She was building a defence.
The routine had established itself quickly.
They had got into the routine of having breakfast together, at the same end of the table, where Edmund had moved his chair that first night and where it had stayed ever since.
They ate in companionable near-silence, exchanging observations about the day ahead.
Helena found herself looking forward to those mornings more than she wanted to admit.
After breakfast, they separated. Edmund had estate business, tenants to meet, accounts to review, the endless demands of a property of those proportions.
Helena had her own work: the household accounts, meetings with Mrs Prescott, along with the slow process of learning every corner of her new domain.
They crossed paths occasionally during the day. Brief exchanges in corridors. A word in passing about a household matter. Nothing significant. Nothing that would raise eyebrows or cause comment.
And yet.
Helena found herself cataloguing these moments.
The way Edmund inclined his head when he greeted her.
The particular shade of his voice when he said “Duchess”, formal, correct, and somehow warmer than the title should sound.
The way his eyes sometimes lingered on her countenance, as though he was memorising something.
She called him “Your Grace.” He called her “Duchess.” Neither used the other’s Christian name.
It was a wall built of courtesy. A barrier constructed from proper address and appropriate distance. Safe. Correct. Exactly what they had agreed to.
Helena told herself she was grateful for it.
She told herself the faint ache beneath her ribs was simply fatigue.
“This room has never looked this alive.”
Helena turned from the window, startled. She had been arranging the morning room, moving a chair here, a table there, replacing the stiff formal flowers with something softer from the garden, and had not heard Edmund enter.
He stood in the doorway, looking around with an expression she could not quite read. The morning light caught his face, softening his features, making him look younger than his nine and twenty years.
“I hope I have not taken too many liberties,” Helena said, suddenly uncertain. “The room felt…”
“Cold,” he finished. “Unused. Like a stage set rather than a place where people actually lived.” He moved into the room, trailing his fingers along the back of a chair she had repositioned near the fire.
“I have always loathed this room. It reminded me of my grandmother, perfectly arranged and equally unwelcoming.”
Helena felt something flutter in her chest. “I can move everything back, if you prefer.”
“I prefer this.” He looked at her then, directly, with that quiet intensity that always made her breath catch. “You have made it feel like a place where someone might actually want to sit. That is no small matter.”
She did not know what to say. The compliment was simple, sincere, and it pleased her far more than it should have. She was embarrassed by the warmth spreading through her chest, the ridiculous way her pulse had quickened at a few kind words about furniture arrangement.
“Thank you,” she managed. “Your Grace.”
The formality felt strange on her tongue now. Wrong, somehow. But she did not know what else to say.
Edmund nodded once, then withdrew. Helena was left standing in her rearranged morning room, wondering why something as simple as ‘this room has never looked this alive’ could make her feel as though she had won a battle she hadn’t known she was fighting.
***
She found him in the garden the next day.
She had been walking, she tried to walk every afternoon, learning the grounds the way she was learning the house, and had rounded a corner of the hedge maze to find Edmund deep in conversation with an older man in a gardener’s apron.
They did not see her at first. Edmund was crouched beside a rose bush, examining something in the earth, and his features were quite transformed, kindled with an eagerness that left him wholly without defence.
He was gesturing with his hands as he spoke, enthusiasm replacing the careful neutrality he usually wore.
“….. the continental practice of engrafting, if only suitable stock can be secured from abroad.”
Helena had never seen him like that with his wall down, the performance abandoned. This was Edmund without an audience. Edmund as he might have been if he had never inherited a title he did not want.
Then he looked up and saw her watching.
The animation vanished, and the walls came up. In an instant, he was the Duke of Westmere again, composed, correct, distant.
Helena felt something twist in her chest. Not disappointment, exactly. Something closer to grief.
“Don’t stop on my account,” she said, keeping her voice light. “I have never seen a man so passionate about shrubbery.”
The gardener coughed. Edmund’s lips twitched, the almost-smile that she was beginning to catalogue along with everything else about him.
“Roses, Duchess. Not shrubbery.”
“My apologies. I have never seen a man so passionate about flowering shrubbery.”
Now the almost-smile threatened to become real. “You are mocking me.”
“I am observing you. There is a difference.” She moved closer, looking at the rose bush he had been examining. It was bare now, dormant for winter, but she could imagine what it might look like in bloom. “And of what particular variety is the bush, pray tell?”
“A new hybrid. Mr Greenway and I have been attempting to develop a strain that blooms twice in a season.” Edmund’s voice had warmed slightly, the enthusiasm creeping back despite his best efforts.
“Most roses bloom once and then spend the rest of the summer conserving strength. But if we can cross the right varieties?”
He stopped himself. The walls came up again.
“Forgive me. You cannot possibly be interested in horticultural experiments.”
“On the contrary.” Helena crouched beside him, examining the plant with genuine curiosity. “My father grew roses. Not successfully, he had no gift for it, but he treasured them. He used to say that anyone who could convince a rose to bloom had learned something valuable about patience.”
Edmund was quiet for a moment. When she looked up, he was watching her with that unreadable expression.
“Your father was a wise man.”
“He was. Impractical, frequently frustrating, and absolutely hopeless with money. But wise, yes.” She stood, brushing dirt from her skirt. “I should leave you to your horticulture, Your Grace. I did not mean to interrupt.”
“You did not interrupt.” He rose as well, and for a moment they stood facing each other in the winter garden, the dormant roses waiting around them. “You are a welcome addition to any interruption.”