Chapter Sixteen #2
“Helena.” Rosalind stopped walking, turning to face her sister with unusual seriousness.
“He looks at you like you’re the answer to a question he’s been asking his whole life.
I saw it in London, and I see it even more clearly here.
The way his eyes follow you across a room.
The way his voice softens when he says your name.
The way he touches the small of your back when you’re walking together, so gently you probably don’t even notice. ”
Helena had noticed. She had noticed all of it.
“He counts my laughs,” she said quietly.
Rosalind’s eyebrows rose. “I beg your pardon?”
“He told me. A few weeks ago. He keeps count of every time I laugh, because each one feels like a gift to him.” Helena’s voice was unsteady. “He said it is never enough.”
“Oh, Helena.” Rosalind’s expression shifted from surprise to something softer. “That is the most romantic thing I have ever heard.”
“It is terrifying.”
“Why?”
“Because.” Helena stopped. Took a breath. “Because if I let myself believe it, and if I am wrong?”
“You are not wrong.” Rosalind took both her hands. “And even if you were, even if there were some infinitesimal possibility that you were misreading the situation, is not the chance of being happy worth the risk of being disappointed?”
Helena did not answer. She did not know how.
But she started observing Edmund more carefully after that.
She noticed the way he adjusted her chair at dinner, ensuring she had the warmest spot near the fire. The way his eyes found her in any room, tracking her movements with quiet attention. The way he said her name, Helena, as though it were something precious, something worth savoring.
She noticed, and she let herself feel what she had been fighting for months.
***
The Dowager Duchess joined them for dinner that evening.
It was the first time Edmund’s mother had dined with them since Helena’s arrival at Westmere. She had been a ghost in the house, glimpsed occasionally in corridors, present at formal occasions, but never truly engaged. The grief that had frozen her since her son’s demise had seemed impenetrable.
But tonight, she appeared in the dining room in a gown of deep purple rather than her habitual black. Her hair was dressed more softly. And when she sat, she actually looked at them, at Helena and Edmund and Rosalind, rather than through them.
“Miss Rosalind,” she said, her voice still cool but no longer frozen. “I understand you are enjoying your first Season.”
Rosalind, to her credit, did not miss a beat. “Very much, Your Grace. London is overwhelming, but in the most wonderful way.”
“It was overwhelming to me as well, when I first arrived. The noise. The crowds. The endless social obligations.” The Dowager paused. “I found the gardens the only place I could breathe.”
Helena and Edmund exchanged a glance across the table, surprise, shared and silent. This was more than the Dowager had said to either of them in months.
“I have been spending time in the gardens here,” Helena offered carefully. “They are beautiful.”
“They were my refuge, once.” The Dowager’s gaze drifted to the window, to the darkness beyond. “Before I forgot how to need one.”
The moment stretched. Then, impossibly, the Dowager’s lips curved into something that might almost have been a smile.
“The roses should be blooming soon,” she said. “Edmund has been working on them for years. He inherited his grandfather’s gift for cultivation, though he would never admit it.”
“Mother.” Edmund began.
“It is a compliment, Edmund. Learn to accept them.” She turned her attention to her plate, but something had lightened in her face. Something had thawed.
After dinner, when the Dowager had retired and Rosalind had gone to write letters, Helena found Edmund standing at the library window, staring out at the dark gardens.
“Your mother made a jest,” she said, coming to stand beside him.
“She did.” He sounded slightly dazed. “She has not made a jest in years.”
“Something is healing.”
“Yes.” He turned to look at her, and in the firelight, his expression was open in a way she had rarely seen. “You did that. I do not know how, but you brought warmth back into this house. Warmth I did not realise I was missing until it appeared.”
Helena’s heart hammered against her ribs. “Edmund.”
“You do not have to say anything.” His voice was gentle. “I know you are not, I know this was not what you agreed to. I simply wanted you to know. What you have done. What you mean. To this house. To my mother.” He stopped. “To me.”
She should say something. Should take the opening he was offering, should tell him everything she had been holding back. The words were right there, pressing against her lips.
I could tell him, she thought. I could just tell him. That this arrangement has become the centre of my life. That I no longer want separate rooms or separate lives. That I want him.
She opened her mouth.
She closed it.
Not yet, she told herself. Not with the hearing in three days. Not when everything is still so uncertain. After. I will tell him after.
“Goodnight, Edmund,” she said softly.
“Goodnight, Helena.”
She left him standing at the window, and retreated to her chambers, and lay awake for hours staring at the ceiling.
Not yet, she repeated to herself. But soon.
Very soon.
***
The next afternoon, Helena was reading in the garden.
The weather had turned mild, warm enough to sit outside with a book, though the breeze still carried a hint of chill. She had found a bench in a sheltered corner, away from the house, where the early flowers were beginning to bloom in profusion.
She heard footsteps approaching but did not look up. She knew the rhythm of Edmund’s walk by now, could distinguish it from any other.
He did not speak. Simply appeared beside her, a blanket draped over his arm.
“The air has turned cool,” he said quietly.
Before she could respond, he draped the blanket over her shoulders. The wool was soft, worn from use, and it smelled of cedar and something else, his soap, she realised. The scent she had come to associate with safety. With home.
He turned to walk away.
“Edmund.”
He stopped.
Helena clutched the edges of the blanket, breathing in his scent, her heart so full she thought it might burst.
“Thank you,” she said.
He glanced back at her. His expression was soft, unguarded, full of something she was finally ready to name.
“Always,” he said.
And walked away.
Helena sat alone in the garden, wrapped in his blanket, and let herself want what she had been afraid to want.
Three days remained until the hearing.
And then, she promised herself, she would finally tell him.