An Exquisite Marriage (9 page)

Why are you doing this? Why don't you go away, appalled at my frankness, like you are supposed to?
“I expect you can, but I can't accept it.”

“Why not?”

She glanced about them. They spoke in the lowest possible tones, but despite this, the other patrons in the reading room were glancing toward them with suspicion and disapproval. Helene ducked her head in shame and hurried out the door, with Lord Windford following stubbornly behind her.

They reached the steps, where they were safe from casual disapproval for conversation. “Truly, Lord Windford, I do not have far to go today, and the weather is most pleasant, so I am unlikely to require your umbrella.” Her smile was faint, and she saw the regret plain in his blue eyes. “Another time, perhaps?” she suggested, although she knew it was a lie. She would be a headmistress soon, never mind her title, and he would remain a duke. She must hold fast to that stern truth and not weaken. If their previous conversation in Miss Sewell's parlor had not been enough to drive him away, she must find another tactic.

“But you still have not told me why you will not accept what poor service I can offer.”

Drat the man. Helene pinched the bridge of her nose. She seemed to be thinking that a great deal lately. Drat the . . .

Well, perhaps he, too, had earned a bout of Lady Helene's plain speaking. “It's dangerous for us to be too much together, Your Grace, and I think you know that.”

“Yes,” he said reluctantly. “I suppose I do.”

“There is already gossip linking your name and mine.” Gossip, conversation, speculation, suggestion. She'd even had to stop trying to deny it when she heard it, because that was only making things worse. “Do you really want to encourage such idle talk?”

“Better gossip about you and me, surely, than about you and Lord Crispin.”

“That was unnecessary.”

“I don't think so,” he said.

“I did not ask for an opinion.”

“You are very free with yours. You cannot forbid me to be free with mine.”

She pressed her lips together and looked away. “No, I suppose you are correct.”

“And since you assert your right to walk where you choose, you can hardly deny my right to do the same. Even to Berlin.”

“You'll get your feet wet.”

“Ah!” He held up one finger. “But as a gentleman, I'm allowed stout boots.”

She was laughing. Heaven help her, in the middle of all her troubles and worries, he could make her laugh. Drat the . . .

Helene shook herself.

“Lady Helene,” said Marcus with a deep bow. “May I escort you somewhere?”

“Yes. No. Thank you. Another time perhaps.”

“Why do I get the feeling you don't intend there to be another time?” murmured Lord Windford.

“I can't imagine.”
How could you see? How could you know? You don't know anything about me. Nothing important at any rate.

“But it is true. According to my sister, you're full of plans for your season's triumph, but standing here, you're thinking about endings, not beginnings. Why should that be?”

Helene bit her lip and glanced away. Clearly, he had been talking to Adele, rather a lot. That was at least partly her fault. She had, after all, agreed he might be useful to them, at least in the matter of Madelene's portrait.

As part of the plan for their grand ball, the three of them had decided they must have some unusual, but respectable, attractions to draw the curious matrons. The first of these was a grand guest in the form of the actor Henry Cross, who happened to be a cousin of Madelene's and, as it transpired, a friend of Miss Sewell's. The second had required a bit more careful arrangement, and financial investment. It was to be a new portrait by the fashionable artist Lord Benedict Pelham. That this was the man Madelene cherished an attraction to had of course entered into the calculation. But Lord Benedict and Lord Windford were friends, and it was Lord Windford who had been sent to find out if Lord Benedict would accept their commission.

This may have been a tactical error, because it gave Marcus an excuse to talk with Adele further about their plans, and about her. That might explain the very strange and very knowing looks she'd been getting from Adele over their planning sessions.

“You're not abandoning your project, are you?” Marcus asked her now. “Adele will be crushed if there was to be no ball.”

“No! No. It's not that. It's . . .” In the distance, she heard the bells beginning to toll the hour, and Helene sighed. “If we're to talk, perhaps you'd best escort me to Bassett's Assembly rooms? I'm to meet Adele and Madelene there.”

“Gladly.”

Side by side, they walked down the steps and turned up the street. He did not offer to take her arm or anything of the kind, which should have been a relief. But even though they did not touch, she could not help but be fully and wholly aware of his body so near to hers. Not to mention the rather smug and superior air that was at the moment rolling off of him.

“You seem to feel you handled that rather well,” Helene muttered.

“Don't you?”

“You got me to keep you company when I wanted to leave. I would not have thought you to be a managing sort.”

He smiled a little. Today, she'd worn a hat rather than a sheltering bonnet, which was a mistake. It meant she could see Marcus's face as he walked beside her, and the effect of it was not growing any less with exposure. Drat and drat and drat the man.

“My station rather compels me to be managing,” he said.

“Yes. I do understand.”

“And what were you managing with Lord Crispin? He wasn't importuning you or some such thing?”

“No, thank Heavens. Not me.” She couldn't say it; it was too shameful.

Unfortunately, Lord Windford seemed to be rather good at reading silences. “I think I remember you have a sister.”

Helene nodded. She did not trust her voice enough to speak calmly. The fact that she still wanted nothing so desperately as to gut Crispin like a fat codfish did not at all help matters.

“Ah.”

He said nothing more; he just walked along in comfortable, sympathetic silence. It might have been memory or imagination, but Helene would have sworn she could feel the warmth and the strength of him, even across the distance between them. It was, Helene knew, a mistake to equate physical steadiness with steadiness of character, but she had so much emotion roiling within her—anger and guilt and fear and sadness—that remaining silent in the face of Marcus's quiet sympathy was impossible. She had to trust someone, and she very much wanted to trust him.

“It's my fault,” she said in a low voice.

“I don't believe that.” From another man this might have been a negligible courtesy. From Lord Windford, it was an absolute. Helene felt tears prick the back of her eyes.

“My family is in distress, Lord Windford, and has been for some time. Since I've done, well, what I've done to my reputation, it has been decided that the burden of making an exquisite marriage must fall to my younger sister, and sooner rather than later.”

“That's infamous.”

“Yes. It is. I ask you not to repeat it, sir. I shouldn't even have told you.”

“I would not betray your confidence, Helene.”

“I know. I'm sorry. I just . . . no matter. We do not get to choose the lives we are born to. We just have to make the best of them.”

“But not alone.”

“You seem to manage alone rather well,” she remarked. “Adele says you routinely refuse help from any quarter.”

“Yes, well, my circumstances are different.”

“Don't we all see our own circumstances as different?”

“Yes,” he admitted. “I suppose we must.”

They walked on in silence. The world rattled and bustled and bawled all around them, but neither of them paid it any mind. They were lost in their own thoughts, or perhaps they were each wondering what the other was thinking. Helene was certainly wondering what Marcus might be thinking.

Then, she found herself wondering something else.

“May I ask why you decided to come to the library?” Because this wasn't a coincidence. He had access to university libraries and the archives of the Royal Society and every bookseller he wished to patronize him. What on earth would he be doing at a circulating library? Realization dawned, but slowly. “Did you ask Adele where I'd be?”

He was quiet for a long moment. “I did. I had . . . I was hoping to ask you a favor.”

Helene's eyebrows lifted in surprise. “What could I possibly do for you, Your Grace?”

“It's difficult to explain. It also seems a bit trivial after what you've told me.”

“We have time.” She gestured to the long stretch of the street ahead. “And I believe I would welcome the distraction.”

“Yes. Of course. Well.” Helene felt her brow furrowed. She had seen Marcus hesitant before, but this was something different. This time he was genuinely unsettled.

“There is a boy,” he began finally. “One for whom I am responsible, in a way.”

“A tenant's son, perhaps?” she prompted.

He considered. “No, but he is a relation. His father is dead, and there's no other man in the family, and, well, I agreed to pay for his education or a commission in the army, whatever the boy might want. His mother, though, said his constitution wasn't strong enough to bear the pressures of study, and he was unsuited for the church.”

Helene opened her mouth.

“I know what you will say; I should have asked the boy. I did ask, but he only mumbled at me and said there was nothing he wanted but to be allowed to live as a gentleman was entitled to. The problem is his idea of a gentleman's life is constantly getting him into one scrape or another, and they're expensive scrapes. If it's not his debts, his mother is coming to me to pay for him to go off and take the waters at various spas for his sickly constitution.”

Helene opened her mouth.

“And I know what you would say,” Marcus went on. “It sounds like the boy is intolerably bored, as we talked about the other day. And I do believe you might be right at that. Especially since yesterday I spied him on the street outside a bookseller's, arguing passionately with a group of other fellows.”

Helene opened her mouth, but Marcus was staring straight ahead at the passing traffic. “I asked myself what it could be about and in fact entered the conversation, because it looked like murder might be about to be done. It turned out they were all arguing over a poet. A poet!”

Helene opened her mouth.

“I know. I could not imagine it, either, but I knew what you would say, that passion must indicate an interest, so I took the boy around to the Cocoa Tree and bought him coffee and asked him about it. It turns out this poet is a friend, a brilliant friend, he says, and he went on, at length, about how good he was. I was knocked back on my heels. I hadn't gotten such a speech out of him since . . . since he was a stripling. I know.” He held up his hand. “And I asked did he write himself, and he said no, he just loved books, poetry of course, but all sorts. He loved the company of writers, and I knew . . .”

“Excuse me, m'lord,” said Helene diffidently.

“Yes?”

“Is there a reason I'm here for this conversation? You seem to be getting on perfectly well without me.”

Marcus chuckled. He also blushed. Astounding. She'd never actually seen a man blush. She hadn't quite realized they were capable of it. It was not fair. It made him look alarmingly sweet.

“I'm sorry,” he told her. “Please, go ahead.”

“Oh no,” she replied. “You've delineated my position admirably.”

“Well”—he took a deep breath—“I thought publishing might suit the boy. I brought it up, and I swear, it was also the first time he ever looked happy.”

“Then that is the answer.”

“The problem being I have no connection in that world. I was hoping you might ask your Miss Sewell how I could go about finding him a position, or an apprenticeship, or whatever it is one needs to make a start.”

“I would be glad to.”

“I knew you'd say that as well.”

“How wonderful I must be to be so utterly dependable.”

“You are,” he murmured. “Helene.”

She was blushing. When had this begun? Was she coming down with a fever? That must be it. Fortunately, there was no time for any further conversation. The broad white Italianate facade of Bassett's Assembly rooms was now in view on the right side of the street.

It did not take more than one glance to see that Adele and Madelene were already standing on the marble steps. Marcus noticed them as well.

“I see Miss Valmeyer and my sister have gotten here ahead of us. I shall say farewell, Lady Helene.” He took her hand and bowed over it. “You are not so alone as you might think,” he murmured. “And here's the proof.”

Helene chose not to reply to that. “I will write to you with Miss Sewell's answer,” she said.

“I will always look forward to hearing what you have to say.”

With that, Marcus turned and walked away.

Do not look after him
, Helene instructed herself.
Not even once.

She made herself lift her chin and climb the steps to join her friends.

“Close your mouth, Adele,” she said as she reached them. “It's unladylike.”

“But that was Lord Windford, wasn't it?” said Madelene.

“Yes,” Helene admitted. “He offered to escort me from the library.”

“And what was he saying to you?” inquired Adele, far too knowingly. “You looked quite rapt.”

“Did I? It was nothing at all.”

“It was a very intensive nothing at all,” put in Madelene. “Almost improperly intensive.”

“It is also none of your business,” Helene snapped.