Chapter Eleven
“You have been staring at that same page for twenty minutes.”
Edmund did not look up from the book he was not reading. “I am contemplating the passage.”
“You are contemplating your wife.” Marcus dropped into the chair across from him, entirely uninvited. “The book is upside down, by the way.”
Edmund glanced at the volume in his hands. It was, in fact, upside down. He had not noticed. He set it aside with as much dignity as he could muster, which was not considerable.
“I was resting my eyes.”
“You were pining away. There is a difference.” Marcus stretched his legs toward the fire, the picture of elegant indolence.
He had arrived at the London townhouse a few days ago, ostensibly to attend a series of social engagements but actually, Edmund suspected, to meddle.
Marcus had always been a dedicated meddler. “Where is the Duchess this morning?”
“Paying calls.” Edmund’s voice was carefully neutral. “She has developed quite a circuit of acquaintances.”
“Has she? How industrious.” Marcus’s eyes gleamed with amusement. “And how is it that you are so precisely informed of her daily affairs?”
“We do live in the same house. One cannot help but be aware of comings and goings.”
“One cannot help,” Marcus agreed pleasantly. “Particularly when one has rearranged one’s entire parliamentary schedule to ensure one is home for breakfast every morning, regardless of how early one’s meetings might otherwise begin.”
Edmund said nothing. There was nothing to say. Marcus was not wrong.
He had rearranged his schedule. He had adjusted his commitments, shuffled his appointments, and done everything in his power to ensure that he was present every morning when Helena came down to breakfast. Not because he needed to be, the household ran perfectly well without his oversight, but because breakfast had become the anchor of his day.
Those quiet hours at one end of the dining table, sharing observations and plans, watching Helena butter her toast with precise, and measured movements, they had become essential in ways he could not explain and did not wish to examine.
“She is remarkable, you know,” Marcus said, his voice softening slightly. “The way she handled Gibbs at the Stanhope musicale. Half the ton is still talking about it.”
“I know.”
“The other half is revising their opinions of her. Lady Worthington told my mother she had quite underestimated the new Duchess of Westmere.”
“Excellent.”
“Edmund.” Marcus leaned forward, his playful demeanor shifting into something more serious. “You cannot keep doing this.”
“Doing what?”
“Pretending you don’t feel what you obviously feel. Watching her from across rooms and through windows and over the tops of books you’re not actually reading. Your heart is entirely devoted to your wife. Everyone can see it except, apparently, you.”
The words landed like stones in still water. Edmund felt the ripples spread through him, denial, recognition, and terror.
“My heart is not,” he began.
“You sent her wildflowers.” Marcus’s voice was gentle now, almost kind. “From the hedgerows. The same flowers she wore in her hair on your wedding day. Don’t try to tell me that was strategic, Edmund. Don’t insult us both.”
Edmund closed his eyes.
The wildflowers. He had not thought about why he had arranged them, had simply seen a vendor at the market with baskets of wild blossoms and thought of Helena standing in the small church at Willowmere, tendrils of honey blonde hair escaping their pins, flowers woven through her curls like a crown.
He had wanted to give her that moment back.
Had wanted her to know that someone remembered.
That he remembered.
“It changes nothing,” he said finally. “Whatever I feel, it changes nothing. We have an arrangement. She made her terms clear, separate lives, separate bedrooms, no pretence of affection. I agreed to those terms.”
“Terms can be renegotiated.”
“Not when the other party has no interest in renegotiation.” Edmund opened his eyes, meeting Marcus’s gaze with a bleakness he usually kept hidden.
“She entered into matrimony with me for her family’s security, Marcus.
For the cottage and the dowry and the future I could provide. She did not wed me for this.”
“Have you asked her?”
“I know what she would say.”
“Do you? Because I have been observing her as well, and I am not certain you do.” Marcus rose, moving to the window with restless energy.
“She looks at you, Edmund. When you’re not watching, when she thinks no one can see, she looks at you as though you are a puzzle she cannot solve.
As though she wants to believe something but is afraid to let herself. ”
Edmund’s heart stuttered. He did not trust himself to respond.
“Tell her,” Marcus said quietly. “Whatever the risk, tell her. Because the alternative is spending the rest of your life wondering what might have happened if you had.”
He left before Edmund could formulate a response.
Edmund sat alone in the silence, Marcus’s words echoing through his mind. She looks at you. He wanted to believe it. He wanted it so desperately that he did not trust his own judgement, could not distinguish between what he was seeing and what he wished to see.
The door opened, and Helena appeared in the entrance, still in her pelisse from her morning calls, her cheeks flushed from the cold air outside.
“Edmund.” She paused, noting his expression. “Is something the matter?”
Everything, he thought. Nothing. You are standing in my doorway, and I cannot look at you without wanting things I have no right to want.
“Nothing is amiss,” he said aloud. “I was merely contemplating.”
“With a book upside down?”
He glanced at the volume he had set aside. Her lips curved, that almost-smile he had catalogued and counted and treasured.
“It is a philosophical text,” he said gravely. “Some philosophies are better understood from unconventional angles.”
She laughed. A real laugh, surprised and genuine, the kind that transformed her sharp features into something luminous. Edmund felt it like a physical blow, the joy of it, the warmth, the devastating realisation that he would do anything, sacrifice anything, to hear that sound again.
His soul was irrevocably bound to hers, and his heart was entirely in her possession.
The knowledge settled into him like something inevitable. Not a surprise, exactly, some part of him had known for weeks. But the conscious acknowledgment was different. The conscious acknowledgment made it real.
He held his wife in his heart, who had agreed to separate lives. Who had built walls he could not breach. Who deserved better than a husband who had fallen for her despite his promises.
“I am going to Hyde Park this afternoon,” Helena said, still smiling slightly. “The weather is fine enough for walking, and I find I need the air.” She hesitated, something flickering in her expression. “Would you care to accompany me?”
Edmund should refuse. Should maintain the distance that kept them both safe. Should protect himself from the particular agony of wanting what he could not have.
“Yes,” he said instead. “I would like that very much.”
***
Hyde Park in early spring was a study in contrasts.
The trees had not yet leafed, their bare branches traced delicate patterns against the pale sky.
But beneath them, the first flowers were pushing through the cold ground: crocuses in purple and white, early daffodils nodding in the breeze.
The air smelled of damp earth and growing things, of winter retreating and something new beginning.
Helena walked beside Edmund, her arm resting lightly in the crook of his elbow.
She was dressed simply, a walking dress in deep green that brought out the warm hazel colour of her eyes, her brown pelisse buttoned against the chill.
No jewels, no elaborate hairstyle. Just Helena, looking more like herself than she had at any society event.
Edmund found he could not look away.
They were not alone, of course. The park was crowded with the ton’s finest, all taking advantage of the rare pleasant weather.
Carriages rolled past on the main drive, their occupants nodding acknowledgment.
Couples strolled along the paths, children ran across the lawns, and everywhere, eyes followed the Duke and Duchess of Westmere with avid interest.
Let them look, Edmund thought. Let them see that she is mine.
The possessiveness of the thought startled him. He had never been possessive, had never cared enough about anyone to want to claim them. But Helena was different. Helena made him want things he had thought beyond his reach.
“You are quiet today,” Helena observed. “More than usual, I mean.”
“Am I?” Edmund forced his attention to the present moment. “Forgive me. My mind was elsewhere.”
“Anywhere interesting?”
Everywhere you are, he wanted to say. My mind goes wherever you are, because I cannot seem to think of anything else.
“Merely estate matters,” he said instead. “Nothing of consequence.”
Helena glanced at him sidelong, and he had the uncomfortable sense that she saw through his deflection. But she did not press, and they continued their walk in companionable silence.
They had reached a quieter section of the park, away from the main paths, where the trees grew closer together and the crowds thinned, when it happened.
A child ran past them, laughing, chasing something Edmund could not see. A ball, perhaps, or a wayward hoop. She was perhaps five or six, with dark curls escaping from beneath her bonnet and the heedless energy of someone too young to have learned caution.
She tripped on a root.
The fall was sudden, one moment running, the next sprawled on the ground, her cry of surprise turning to one of pain. Blood welled from a scrape on her knee, bright against her white stockings.
Before Edmund could react, Helena was moving.