Chapter Twenty-One #2
The Duchess smiled today. Not at me, at the rose garden, glimpsed through the window of the carriage as we approached the house. It transformed her face. For a moment, she looked young and unguarded and full of wonder. I do not think she knew I was watching.
I find I want to see that expression again. I do not know how to make it happen, but I intend to try.
Helena turned the page. Another entry, dated two days later.
She laughed at dinner. A genuine laugh, surprised out of her by something Marcus said.
It was brief, she caught herself almost immediately, her composure snapping back into place, but I heard it.
I felt it. It sounded like bells, or perhaps like sunlight.
I am not certain those comparisons make sense, but I find I do not care.
I only know that I want to hear it again.
And another.
She reorganised the morning room today. I walked in and found her directing servants, furniture being moved, the entire space transformed.
She looked up when I entered and for a moment I saw uncertainty in her face, as though she expected me to object, to assert my authority over a space she had dared to change.
I told her the room had never looked so alive.
She seemed surprised. Why does she expect so little kindness?
Who taught her that she did not deserve it?
Helena’s hands were trembling. Edmund watched her turn page after page, her eyes moving rapidly across entries that spanned their entire matrimony.
Every smile he had noticed. Every laugh he had catalogued.
Every moment of genuine feeling that had slipped past her defences, observed and recorded and treasured.
She hums when she thinks no one is listening. I have not identified the melody, but I find myself listening for it. I arrange my movements through the house to pass by wherever she might be, hoping to catch the sound.
She stood in the garden today, examining the rose bushes I have been cultivating. She asked intelligent questions about grafting techniques. She remembered things I had mentioned weeks ago. No one has ever listened to me talk about roses as though my words mattered.
***
She defended herself against Clarissa’s insinuations with such grace that I wanted to applaud.
And then I found her in the corridor, shaking, her composure cracked, and the cost of her bravery visible for the first time.
I took her hands. I told her she was remarkable.
I meant it more than I have ever meant anything.
Helena reached the final entry, dated the night before the examination, when they had returned to London to face Reginald’s challenge.
Tomorrow we stand before the examiner. Tomorrow our matrimony will be scrutinised, questioned, evaluated for evidence of fraud. I should be worried. I should be preparing strategies and rehearsing answers and doing all the things a prudent man would do in such circumstances.
Instead, I am sitting at this desk, watching the firelight play across the ceiling, and thinking about how many times Helena has smiled since we arrived in London.
Forty-seven. Forty-seven smiles in three weeks.
Not all of them directed at me, some for Rosalind, some for Marcus, some for the small pleasures of daily life.
But I have witnessed them all. I have counted them all.
I have treasured each one as evidence that she is not as unhappy as she pretends to be.
I am entirely devoted to her. I have formed an attachment for her for weeks, perhaps from the very beginning.
And tomorrow, I will tell a stranger everything I know about her, her routines, her preferences, her small habits and private pleasures, and it will sound like evidence for a legal proceeding.
But it will not be evidence. It will be devotion. It will be months of attention, distilled into answers that prove nothing except how thoroughly I have fallen.
I do not know if she has formed an attachment for me. I do not know if she ever will. But I know that I will spend the rest of my life trying to deserve her. And if I am very fortunate, perhaps one day she will believe that I do.
Helena closed the journal.
She did not speak. She sat very still, the leather-bound volume clutched in her hands, her face unreadable.
Edmund waited. He had given her everything now, every secret, every vulnerability, every corner of his heart laid bare.
The letters had been confessions he had never meant to send.
But the journal was different. The journal was a record of his devotion, day by day, smile by smile.
It was proof that his attention had never been strategy. It had always been affection.
“Edmund.” Helena’s voice was barely a whisper. “You recorded every smile?”
“Everyone I witnessed.” He knelt beside her chair, taking her hands in his.
“I could not help it, Helena. From the beginning, you captivated me. I did not know how to express it, did not know if you would welcome such expression, so I recorded it instead. Every smile, every laugh, every moment of genuine feeling that slipped past your defences. I wrote it all down because I wanted to remember. Because I needed proof that those moments had happened, that they were real, that you were more than the composed, armoured woman you showed the world.”
Helena’s eyes filled. This time, she did not blink the tears away. She let them fall, streaming down her cheeks in silver tracks that caught the morning light.
“I thought I was invisible,” she said. “I thought.” Her voice cracked. “I thought no one truly saw me. That people saw what I could do for them, what I could manage, what burdens I could carry. But you saw me.”
“I saw you.” Edmund raised her hands to his lips.
“I saw you from the first moment, at that assembly in Somerset. A woman who could silence an entire room with a single raised eyebrow. A woman who faced humiliation with such grace that it became a triumph instead.” He paused.
“I saw you, Helena. And I have not been able to look away since.”
She made a sound that was half laugh, half sob. Then she was in his arms, the journal falling forgotten to the floor as she wrapped herself around him with a fierceness that took his breath away.
“My heart is entirely yours,” she said against his shoulder.
“My affection for you is so vast it fills me with dread. For months my heart has been yours, yet I was too fearful to confess it, quite unaware that you were observing my every smile, counting my laughs, and noting me as I rearranged the furnishings. I had not the slightest suspicion.”
“You could not have known.” He held her tightly, feeling the tremors that shook her body, the release of feelings she had held back for too long. “I did not want you to know. I was too afraid of making you uncomfortable, of adding to your burdens, of being one more thing you had to manage.”
“You were never a burden.” She pulled back, her face wet, her eyes blazing with intensity.
“Never, Edmund. You were the only person in my entire life who made me feel like I was not carrying the world alone. Even when I did not understand it, even when I was interpreting everything you did as strategy, I felt it. I felt lighter when you were near. I felt like perhaps I did not have to be strong every single moment.”
“You don’t.” He cupped her face, wiping her tears with his thumbs. “You never have to be strong alone again. Whatever comes, whatever challenges or crises or difficulties lie ahead, we will face them together. I swear it.”
Helena closed her eyes. More tears slipped down her cheeks, but she was smiling now, that real smile, the one that transformed her entire face, the one he had been recording in his journal since their wedding day.
“Together,” she repeated. “I think I like the sound of that.”
***
They spent the rest of the morning in the library.
Not reading, neither of them had any interest in books that day. They simply talked. About the future, about their plans, about all the things they had been too afraid to discuss when walls still stood between them.
Helena wanted to bring her mother to Westmere.
The cottage Edmund had arranged was comfortable, but it was far, too far for regular visits, too far for the kind of daily connection Helena craved.
Edmund agreed immediately. There were Dower houses on the estate, smaller properties that could be made suitable.
They would find one that suited Mrs Whitmore’s needs. They would make it home.