A poppy.
Jeremy exhaled roughly, shaking his head. “Romantic, conniving, genius… Bloody hell.”
Now they could get somewhere.
Chapter Twelve
The peculiar thing about hope is that something somewhere has to feed it for it to live on.
Helen didn’t have that.
She had nothing, as it happened.
She’d lost count of how many days she’d been at Leighton now. How many mornings she had woken up in the same bed after having dreams of Jeremy. How many smiles she’d had to force for her brother, sister-in-law, nieces, and nephews.
How many tears she’d hidden.
It all seemed rather pathetic and dramatic when she thought about it too much. Why should she be agonizing so much over something that had no name? She’d flirted shamelessly with a man, then she’d gone for a coach ride with him as her protector, and then, God help her, she’d fallen in love with him.
She’d fallen in love with a man, and he’d saved her life, then dropped her at her brother’s estate like a disobedient child.
Of course, she hadn’t told him she’d been foolish enough to love him, which had undoubtedly saved her a good deal of pain. If he’d known about her feelings and still dropped her off without a word, she would have been heartbroken and felt as though the world had dropped from under her feet.
Now she only felt foolish.
So, so foolish. She kicked at a tree in agitation, only for the soft material of her slippers to bend easily against the bark, causing swift and sudden pain to flare in two of her toes.
Perhaps three.
She winced and gripped at them tightly, groaning through gritted teeth, then lowered her foot to the ground slowly, exhaling.
She was a fool, and now she had the injury to prove it.
“Walking the grounds again, Helen? You’re not a walker, so it must be a serious issue.”
Helen stopped as the most familiar voice in the world teased her.
The most familiar, but not the one she wanted.
“How do you know I have walked the grounds so much, Mother?” Helen asked, not turning around. “You’ve been here, what, ten minutes?”
“Seven, to be precise,” her mother replied, not sounding any closer.
Helen groaned, folding her arms. “Why must you always do that? Why do you always have to make light of everything?”
“I’m not making light, love. It’s really been seven minutes.” She heard her mother’s footsteps then, and Helen steeled herself. “I entered the house, kissed Charles and Fanny, asked after you, and Fanny told me everything. And I came straight out to you.”
“I am perfectly all right, Mother,” Helen ground out, her eyes beginning to well up.
Her mother hummed a disbelieving noise, and then her hand was on Helen’s arm. “You never call me ‘Mother’, my lamb. You’re not all right, are you?”
Now the tears came with full force, and Helen shook her head, swallowing repeatedly. “No, Mama. Not even a little bit.”
She was suddenly turned and pulled into a tight embrace, the sort that only a mother could give. And Josephine Dalton was exceptionally good at it. Helen crumpled against her, burying her face as her mother’s hands ran down her hair and made soothing circles on her back.
Though she had cried for days, though she had thought herself beyond sobbing, everything came rushing back while in her mother’s arms, and she suddenly found herself unable to stop crying. Wounds she had thought healed opened up, still raw and burning, and through it all, she felt embarrassed beyond belief.
To feel so much for a man who might not return any of the sentiments? It was beyond anything. How could she have let herself believe so easily? How could she have been so foolish, so naïve, and so completely without sense?
To love a man so filled with secrets. A man who could become anyone or anything, behave however it suited him for the task at hand.
He could have lied to her in the coach, could have said whatever he wanted to make her believe him. That was what he did, and even if Rafe… If Rafe…
Rafe made Jeremy accompany her. Rafe was the same sort of man. He became who he had to, and yet Margaret loved him. Trusted him. Knew him.
But how could she be sure?
How could Helen?
“Come on, lamb, your brother is watching,” her mother soothed as she pulled back. “He’s a terrible snoop, and he’ll be watching from the window.”
Helen laughed a watery laugh and wiped at her eyes. “He hasn’t asked a single question, not even one. It has to be eating away at him.”
Her mother chuckled, her eyes crinkling at the corners, just as Helen’s did. “Oh, undoubtedly. Poor Charles has always been a curious lad. Polite, but curious.” She linked her arm with Helen’s and started walking with her around the garden, rubbing her arm. “Do you want to tell me what’s troubling you?”
Helen sighed, folding her arms tightly across her faded green muslin. “Not really, Mama. There’s more to it than just being attacked by highwaymen.”
Her mother made a loud scoffing sound that surprised Helen. “Oh, I know that, Helen. You were involved in a break in and robbery at Margaret’s home, and you slept through the night straightaway. You’re no simpering miss, a bit of danger isn’t going to turn you inside out and upside down like this.”
That was unexpected, and Helen looked at her mother in surprise. “How did you know I slept through the night?”
Her mother returned her look with a nearly identical one of her own. “Did you think I wouldn’t check in on you after something like that? I missed that first night only because you insisted on staying with Margaret, and I had you looked in on.”
Helen laughed once, shaking her head. “You are such a devious woman.”
Her mother smirked, keeping her strides long and even as she walked with Helen. “Surely this is not the first time you have come to that conclusion?”
No, it was not, but it seemed that every time she was reminded of it, the reality of it doubled. She was always surprised by her mother, whether it was her humor, her intuition, or some new discovery.
Helen shook her head and leaned on her mother a little, finding solace in her presence that she hadn’t known she’d been missing. Or needing.
She’d been so wrapped up in missing Jeremy, battling between believing him and not believing him, that she’d not even realized how lonely she’d been. She would have loved to have chatted with Rosalind, and rage about men and their foibles with her, only Rosalind was off on the sea with the man she only now realized she was madly in love with.
Margaret would have been a better choice, given the ties between her husband and Jeremy, and Margaret would understand being driven mad by a man with secrets. But Margaret was expecting and thus delicate, and her husband was the most overprotective man on the planet, not to mention that the road she would have to take to get there had highwaymen, as Helen could attest to.
As universally liked as Helen seemed to be, she really didn’t have many other friends.
But there was her mother.
“Come over here, lamb,” her mother said, indicating a stone bench. “Come sit and talk with me.”
Helen shook her head with a sigh. “I’ve done nothing but sit, or lie, for days, Mama. Weeks. I had a cold that would not go away, and no desire to get up as it was.”
“Hmm,” her mother murmured, strangely not sounding at all disapproving. “You’ve always enjoyed life, even when you were cranky or furious. You hate being idle. What could possibly keep you in bed with no desire to leave it, cold or no cold?”
There was a strong tone to her mother’s words, a rather knowing one, and Helen suspected she already knew the answer.
But not the details.
“You’re not going to stop until I tell you, are you?” Helen asked with a sigh.
“I am not,” her mother confirmed with a nod. “And what’s worse, I’ll put Tibby on you as well.”
&n
bsp; Helen shuddered at the suggestion but knowing better than to doubt it. There was a longstanding friendship between her mother and Lady Raeburn, undoubtedly the most terrifying woman on the planet, and one of the most lovable. When one was not finding her interfering beyond reckoning.
“I am not sure what I can tell you, Mama,” Helen admitted, looking down at the wilting rose bushes on the path. “There are secrets… Secrets I don’t understand, and they’re not mine to tell.”
“I am glad to hear it,” her mother praised, her voice fairly mellow for the topic. “I never trust a person who has no secrets. Nor do I want to know these secrets, if they are not yours. Tell me what you can, leave out what you must.”
Helen stared at her in disbelief. “You’re going to stand there and say that. You?”
For the first time, her mother looked at her severely. “Yes, I am, although I am walking, not standing. I want to know your secrets, lamb, like any mother does, but I don’t want to know anybody else’s.” Then she smiled a little, and a familiar twinkle appeared in her eyes. “Unless it happens to be particularly good gossip, and then I am all ears.”
“Oh, Mother…” Helen scoffed, rolling her eyes.
“You didn’t think Tibby was alone in her gossip-loving ways, did you?” her mother asked with a nudge. Then she sobered and adjusted her cream shawl over her calico gown. “I want you to feel as though you can talk to me about anything, Helen. Even this.”
Helen nodded slowly, and exhaled, taking quite a long time to do so. “I was escorted here by a man Marlowe brought in. You know that part, but what you don’t know is… he was a man I knew back in London.”
“No…”
“A man,” Helen continued, ignoring her mother’s gasp, “of whom I had become particularly fond. I didn’t know that he would be there, and I don’t believe Rafe knew I had feelings for this man. Nor, I think, did he suspect that this man might have had… feelings for me. Rafe wouldn’t have allowed it, you know how protective he is, and I can’t even be sure that the man did have feelings for me, though he claimed…”
Her mother covered Helen’s hands, squeezing gently. “Shush, lamb, you’re talking yourself in circles. What happened?”
Helen hiccupped a weak sob. “I fell in love with him, Mama. I got to know him on this journey, who he really is, beneath everything I thought I knew in London, and that man…” She exhaled roughly and blinked up at the grey skies, desperate to clear the wash of tears.
“Oh, lamb…” her mother almost whimpered, rubbing her arm.
She sniffed and shook her head. “I loved that man, Mama. And I thought he might have… He led me to believe… But he had secrets, so many secrets, and I don’t know…”
“Stop right there,” her mother interrupted quietly. “Stop now.”
Helen clamped down on her lips and rubbed her fingers together.
Her mother turned and waited for Helen to meet her gaze. Only when their eyes met, did she speak again. “Why, if you felt that way, do you now speak of it in the past tense?”
“Pardon?”
Her mother smiled a little. “You said you loved that man. Loved. Not love.”
“Oh, Mama,” Helen groaned, taking a step away. “Particulars?”
“Times like these,” her mother sighed, “particulars are the most important. So. Do you still love this man?”
Helen tipped her head back as though there was a beam of sunlight to warm her skin. “Yes.”
Memories she had been pushing away, had thought too painful to recall, sprang back to life. Jeremy, leaning against the corner of the coach as it rolled on, watching her with a smile as she talked. The two of them together in the driver’s seat, laughing uproariously about something or other, not caring if they were heard. The feeling of anticipation before his foot crossed her shins, and the exhilaration when it did.
That night when she’d kissed him, and they’d sat on opposite sides of the door, fingers touching beneath it.
The impossible hope she had felt when he had kissed her the next morning.
“Yes, I love him,” Helen said again, opening her eyes and staring at her mother steadily. She shrugged her shoulders, smiling sadly. “But after the attack, he barely spoke to me again. We pushed on through the night, in the pouring rain, and did not stop until we arrived here. And then he only said a handful of words to me, all politeness. And then he left.”
“Ah…” her mother said softly.
Helen glared at her, wondering how her mother could react without the same indignation burning through her at being dumped here. “What does that mean? What sort of a reaction is that?”
Her mother shrugged and started to walk again, and Helen had no choice but to follow her. “I was just wondering what bothers you more, love; the fact that he has secrets or the fact that he left you here?”
“Why does it have to be one or the other?” Helen demanded. “Both of them bother me.”
“No, love,” her mother said with a smile. “They don’t. One feeds the other. Which is it?”
A cold chill sank into the pit of Helen’s stomach, and she stared at her mother for quite a long moment.
Which was worse? Not knowing his secrets, or being left by him?
“He left me here,” Helen admitted in a small voice. “He just… left. Without a word to me about if he were coming back, about if he would write, about how he felt… As though I meant nothing and that what we had shared…”
“What exactly had you shared, Helen?” her mother asked sharply, as only a mother could.
Helen smirked at the implication. “Nothing I couldn’t tell you, Mama, but I don’t see the point. It all meant nothing to him, clearly.”
Her mother made a face of consideration, then shook her head. “I doubt that, but I could be wrong.”
“I doubt everything,” Helen muttered, shaking her head. “Everything he said, and everything he did, and my own feelings…”
“Why those?” her mother asked. “Your feelings are the truest thing, why doubt them?”
“Because he doesn’t return them!” Helen cried. “How could he return them and just leave me here? Without a word, without a kiss, without anything at all? We were so close to it, Mama, just inches away from happiness, and then that damned attack happened…”
“Where he saved your life, and everyone else’s, pushed on despite being injured, and drove straight through the night in the pouring rain just to see you safely delivered and out of harm’s way.” Her mother lifted a brow with an imperious tilt.
Helen frowned, sensing her argument had just been neatly turned upside down. “Yes, what of it? He was hired to do so. He wanted to see the task done.”
Her mother smiled at her, somehow amused despite everything. “Oh, was he hired? I thought Marlowe just brought him in. If you knew him in London, he must be some sort of gentleman, and a man like that wouldn’t be hired on for such a thing. Did he say he was being paid for it?”
“No,” Helen grumbled, “but it was an assignment.”
“But he knew it was going to be you,” her mother pressed. “Marlowe told him your identity, yes?”
She’d never thought of that, but she supposed he must have. “So it would seem.”
“And if you were fond of him, he had to at least pretend to be fond of you, and to then go with you from London to York, just because Marlowe asked it of him…” Her mother hummed again, then looked at Helen, still smirking. “Did he do anything untoward?”
“Mother!” Helen screeched, her cheeks heating. “No, for heaven’s sake! Jeremy is a gentleman in every way, and he never once attempted anything improper!”
Her mother grinned swiftly. “Ah, not opportunistic, then. So, he, being fond of you, or at least pretending, behaved with respect and honor all the way to York.”
Helen scowled at that. “Yes, he did, and you needn’t be so superior about it.”
“Oh, but I will be, lamb,” her mother replied, shaking her head. “I will. This man y
ou love didn’t drop you here to get rid of you. Don’t you see? He was charged with protecting you, and he failed.”
“Oh, don’t be ridiculous,” Helen spat, striding off in agitation. “We were attacked, it is not as though he arranged it. He was splendid, absolutely marvelous, heroic, and dashing… And all that I wanted was for him to sweep me into his arms and hold me tightly. But then he packed me into the carriage and brought me straight here.”
Her mother laughed under her breath. “But he did fail, lamb. He was to keep you safe, and he did not. How could he face you after that? He clearly felt responsible for you, as he should have, and you had nearly come to harm.”
“No!” Helen insisted. “No…”
“It’s unforgivable, really,” she went on. “He only had to do one thing, and he couldn’t manage it.”
“Mama, stop!” Helen pleaded. “He fought off at least five men, nearly single-handedly, and drove straight on through the night without sleep! In the rain, Mama!”
Her mother rolled her eyes dramatically. “Oh, what a hardy man he must be, and to not have a proper night’s sleep for one night…”
Helen folded her arms tightly, glowering at her mother. “It was enough to lay me up in bed for days with a bad cold, Mama, and I was not fatigued from fighting off highwaymen and injured from a knife wound to the arm. He could be sick, his wound could be infected, he could have been attacked again, and he’d be all alone…” Her hand suddenly flew to her throat. “What if he’s dying, Mama?”
Her mother shook her head, her brow furrowing. “That’s the fastest I have ever seen you leap to conclusions, Helen, and I was there for your adolescence. What’s driving you to all these extremes? You’re not like this.”
“I know, I know.” Helen sighed and put her hands on her hips. “It’s him.”
“Jeremy?”
Helen nodded, tears rising yet again. “I just feel… abandoned. And foolish.”
“He didn’t abandon you, lamb,” her mother assured her, coming to take her hands. “He’s hiding from you, and from the shame of it all. Men do take things so very personally, love, but they can’t always put words to it.”
By Hook or By Rook (London League, Book 4) Page 15
