The Stepsister's Triumph

by Darcie Wilde

  It didn’t work. Lady Helene held her ground, and she did it without showing any sign of nervousness, never mind flirtation or coquetry. There was simply a determination not to be moved. The only indication she gave that she was the least uneasy was a hitch in her breath as he moved too close for propriety, close enough, in fact, that he smelled her scent of clean skin and vanilla. It was unexpectedly appealing, as was her delicate face and wide, curving, highly-colored mouth. It was a mouth made for smiling. But Lady Helene did not smile much at all. Why was that?

  “You will leave.” She replied, meeting his gaze with the same steadiness she’d possessed since she’d walked into the room. “You’re trying to intimidate me, but you are not a cad.”

  “You’re quick to judge.”

  “Only when I’m right.”

  Marcus not only smiled at this, he laughed. He couldn’t help it. This, at last, made her blink and wiped away enough of that placid expression that he could see some genuine surprise. Probably she was more used to irritating people than amusing them. She certainly worked at it.

  Marcus sighed. “Unfortunately, you are right. I do, however, find it interesting that someone who so openly prides herself on her reputation for rebellion cares when she’s seen coming and going.”

  “My pride is not the sticking point here,” she answered. “You, your grace, do not want me causing talk and disturbance at your aunt’s party, something we both know I’m quite capable of.”

  Considering that the tales of how Lady Helene broke off her engagement included hurling unprintable abuse, as well as a sapphire necklace worth thousands of pounds in her would-be groom’s face, he was ready to believe it. He glanced at the door. He really should just order her out. The whole situation was ridiculous and he was beginning to get the feeling it was not entirely safe, not for her, but for him. In addition, that damned rustling was starting up again. Before Rutherford arrived, Marcus needed to check the windows, or chase out whoever had hidden back behind the curtains for their tête-à-tête. Possibly both.

  The problem was, if he did order Lady Helene away, she’d probably just refuse to go. He could propel her, or summon a servant, or do any number of things, all of which would be far more embarrassing for her than for him.

  And she knew that, which was why she knew he wouldn’t do it. He was her host, and it was the duty of a host to ensure the guests in his house were comfortable.

  She was lifting an eyebrow at him. She was also folding her hands at him, indicating her perfect willingness to continue to wait.

  “You will do me the favor of finding your book quickly, Lady Helene,” he said in as dry and bland a tone as he could manage. “I have business to conduct here.”

  “I will do my best. Please go now.”

  Marcus bowed. “Your servant, Lady Helene.”

  As he turned, he thought he heard a rustle, and a hint of a whisper. It was impossible. It must be the school boy in him, because for a moment he could have sworn he heard Lady Helene breathe, “If only.”

  * * *

  As Lady Helene watched Lord Windford stride from the room, she tried very hard to remember two things. The first was that she really ought to breathe. The second was that she had come into this room with a distinct purpose in mind.

  As soon as the door closed, Helene hurried over and slipped the latch. She sincerely hoped the color in her cheeks would fade quickly as she turned around and faced the set of velvet curtains drawn over the library’s bowed window.

  “It’s all right,” she said. “You can come out now.”

  The immediate answer to this was a vague rustling behind the heavy velvet draperies.

  “Oh, honestly.” Helene rolled her eyes. “You needn’t be afraid, Lady Adele.”

  Helene had not yet formally met Lady Adele, but as she had been walking up the corridor, Lady Adele had come running out of the parlor, her workbasket clutched in her hands and the sound of unpleasant, jeering laughter following her. They had abruptly collided, and Adele’s workbasket had spilled across the floor. Helene had seen the girl’s eyes shining with tears.

  “What on . . .” Helene began. But Adele didn’t wait. She had simply run past Helene and ducked into the library.

  Helene, uncertain what else she should do, had begun gathering up the threads and bits of work that had spilled from the fallen basket.

  “Well, well,” said a voice form the parlor. Helene looked up to see Lady Patience Endicott smiling down at her. “How very appropriate, Lady Helene. After all, I understand you’re here as a paid companion. You should be doing the maid’s work.”

  Helene straightened. She lifted her chin and she met Patience’s eyes.

  “At least I have something useful to do.”

  She turned her back, and marched down the hall. She’d come into the library with the intent of discovering and consoling Lady Adele, and, of course, returning her basket.

  But she’d found something quite different in the form of Lord Windford. The very handsome, and unexpectedly intriguing Lord Windford.

  Now was decidedly not the time to think about that.

  “I’ve got rid of your brother and the door’s locked,” Helene said to the curtains. “Do come out.”

  She heard another rustle, and, very softly, what had to be a whisper. A man’s whisper.

  Helene felt her eyebrows arch.

  The curtains parted the barest fraction of an inch and Lady Adele slipped out. Her cheeks blazed bright scarlet. If Helene had harbored any doubt about hearing a man’s voice, that doubt was wiped away. Adele looked both dazed, and ashamed.

  She held out the workbasket Adele had dropped in the hallway earlier. “What on earth were you doing back there?”

  “Hiding from my sister,” Adele replied.

  “As well as from your brother? Not that I blame you.”

  Lady Adele was a strongly curved girl when fashion dictated that a proper girl must be slim. She did possess a pleasant face and the family’s famously blue eyes. But from what Helene had been able to observe, Adele was not only teased mercilessly by her sister Patience, who was the acknowledged beauty of the family, she was constantly hectored and bullied by her managing aunt, who seemed determined to destroy what self-confidence the girl had left by dressing her in the most unattractive gowns available.

  The injustice of it burned and Helene felt her jaw tighten.

  “Well, come on.” Helene started for the door.

  “What?” Lady Adele exclaimed. “Why?”

  “Because if we’re seen leaving together no one will think I was doing anything untoward in here with your brother. Or that you were . . . whatever it was you were doing behind that curtain.” Helene frowned. “It was your idea to be back there wasn’t it?”

  If that gentleman back there, whoever he might be, had been importuning this girl who was clearly on the edge of what she could stand, he was going to find himself pitched out of the window into the snow. She had recently read a new paper on the physics of leverage and it had contained several theories she’d be happy to test on such a person.

  But Adele answered softly, but decidedly. “Yes. It was my idea.”

  Helene nodded. “That’s all that matters then. We should go. Your brother indicated most firmly he would be back soon.”

  Adele’s gaze started to stray back toward the curtain. Helene turned away and unlocked the door. Lady Adele would have to make up her own mind, probably about more things than one.

  “Thank you, Lady Helene,” Adele said behind her.

  Helene shrugged.

  “I’ll see you tonight?”

  Helene lifted her chin. “You may look by the wall. You will always find me at home there.”

  * * *

  Windford found himself standing in the corridor, staring at the library door for much longer than was necessary. He was, in
fact, still engaged in this uncharacteristic occupation when Lord Rutherford came striding up with his rolling sailor’s gait.

  “Hullo, Windford, something the matter?”

  “Rutherford,” Marcus nodded to the other man. “I’m trying to decide.”

  “Let me know when you’ve made up your mind. In the meantime, shall we go in? What I’ve got to say is for your ears only.”

  Marcus shook his head. “I think we’d be better off in my study. There seems to be an unusual amount of traffic in the library tonight.”

  He didn’t wait for Rutherford to answer, he just turned his back on the library door and walked away, and tried very hard not to hear how it was his sister Adele’s voice speaking to Lady Helene.

  * * *

  The house at Windford Park had originally been built during the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and every duke since then seemed to feel his duty included making additions or improvements. The results were decidedly mixed, and rambling. The family told stories—not entirely jokingly—of ghosts of former guests who’d simply gotten lost roaming the corridors.

  Marcus’s study was on the main floor of the east wing. The window overlooked the broad drive with its winter-bare beech trees lining either side. The fire was going so the room was warm, and, probably safe from random females with unusual attitudes.

  “Something has happened,” said Rutherford. He was a tall man with a commanding presence. Time had turned his hair gray and given him a comfortable paunch around his middle, but Marcus still wouldn’t have wanted to take the man on in any kind of fight, verbal or physical. “You’ve got the oddest look on your face, Windford, like you can’t decide whether you should be amused or furious.”

  “Do I?” Marcus gestured Rutherford to one of the two leather chairs in front of the fire while he poured out whiskey for them both. “Well. I had a little brush with one of our guests.” He handed Rutherford a glass and took his own seat. “In fact, I’m beginning to suspect she quite deliberately chased me out of my own library. Do you know Viscount Anandale at all?”

  “Oof. I should say. Man’s a menace. I didn’t think he was here.”

  “He’s not, at least if he is, he hasn’t menaced me. Some of his womenfolk are, apparently. I’ve just met Lady Helene.”

  “Now that’s an encounter I would have paid to see. They say she’s got the sharpest tongue among the ton, except possibly for you.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. I’m not around enough for people to say such things.”

  “You’d be surprised.” Rutherford took a sip of whiskey. “You’re commonly regarded as both infamous and unyielding.”

  “That’s what she said. And rather promptly too.”

  Rutherford raised his glass. “Round one to Lady Helene then.”

  “I don’t concede,” muttered Marcus.

  “You should. I haven’t heard you talk so much about a woman you weren’t related to in years.”

  “You did not come here to talk about Helene Fitzgerald.”

  “No, more’s the pity. I’ve come to ask you to come work for me.”

  Marcus did not answer. He did take a long swallow of whiskey. He’d had a feeling this was what Rutherford had wanted to talk with him about. Rutherford had been a ship’s commander once, but now he worked in the naval office, and no one knew exactly what it was he did. It was widely thought it had to do with deciphering coded messages intercepted during the wars, but that was as far as anyone would guess.

  “I don’t know what you’d need me for,” said Marcus. “We’re at peace now.” He eyed his friend over the tumbler’s rim. “Aren’t we?”

  “We are, but what kind of peace is it going to be?” Rutherford pointed one finger at him. “That’s the question. With Napoleon gone for good, the Continent is going to be shaken up, from Russia down to Rome. And there are all the Germans smack in the middle rubbing their hands and redrawing their maps. We have to know what they’re thinking. Then there’s the new king in France. Frankly, I think we’ve backed the wrong horse there. The plots are already swirling. Everybody wants a king, but they want him to be their king. Except for the Republicans, of course. Or the Bonapartists. And Tallyrand’s still bobbing about everywhere. God only knows which way he’ll jump. You see, Windford?”

  “Clearly, except for what it has to do with me.”

  “I read that paper you wrote for the Royal Society.”

  “I’m flattered.”

  Rutherford chuckled. “Don’t be. I didn’t understand a word of it. But I talked to some men who did. They said it was a masterpiece on the detection and prediction of patterns in seemingly random sets of numbers.”

  “I will send them a thank-you note.”

  “Damn it, Windford, I’m serious.” Rutherford set his glass down. “We need brains like yours in the naval office.”

  Marcus just shook his head. “I have too much to do right here.”

  “I won’t have one of the best mathematical minds of our generation wasted as a country squire when we need him at work on the Prussian’s codes.”

  “Wasted?” Marcus laughed harshly. “I’ve got three hundred tenants and servants depending on me to keep my family in check. You can tell that to your Prussians and your French and whoever else is out there. I’m needed here.”

  “All right, all right. I can’t argue with a man’s duty to his estate. But if you change your mind, the offer stands.”

  Marcus thanked his friend and showed him to the door. Then he turned to the windows and stood staring out as he finished his whiskey. He thought about Rutherford and he thought about all the duties and complexities of an estate and businesses and new factories and family. Especially family, and all that his dead father left behind with no one else to manage.

  And he thought about Rutherford again. Then, unaccountably, he found he was thinking of Lady Helene, and for the first time since he’d closed the study door, Marcus smiled.

  * * *

  “Oh, Helene, there you are!” cried Madelene Valmeyer as Helene walked into the room they shared. “I was afraid you’d be late for dressing!”

  “But as you see, here I am.”

  Madelene Valmeyer was a petite and beautiful girl. She and Helene had become friends at the end of the previous season, when they’d met at a lady’s bookshop. Helene had been arguing with a clerk over her order for a particular volume of poetry, and Madelene was, as it turned out, hiding between the shelves to avoid her stepbrother.

  Madelene was the shyest person Helene had ever met. What in another girl would be called “becoming modesty,” in Madelene amounted almost to an illness. It took a great deal of coaxing and persuading to get her to venture out into any kind of company at all. Much of their friendship had formed in a series of letters written after that initial bookshop meeting. When Madelene had confessed her terror at being dragged to the Windford Ball by her stepmother and siblings, Helene had offered to come and act as her companion. To everyone’s surprise, Madelene’s stepmother, Lady Reginald, had actually agreed to the arrangement. Privately, Helene thought this was because Lady Reginald didn’t want to have to be bothered with actually looking after her stepdaughter.

  If it hadn’t been for Madelene, Helene would never have considered coming to the country house party. It was not only the difficulty about chaperonage, although that was real. Helene’s mother, Lady Anandale, did not venture out into society, and since Helene had publicly broken her engagement, none of her female relatives was willing to be seen sponsoring her. But there was too much to oversee at home. Helene had two sisters and three younger brothers who needed her help and care. Not to mention a household that required constant contrivance to keep running.

  Yes, she had two living parents, but her parents . . .

  Helene bit her lip. She should not think about home right now. It was not going to help anything.

 
“I’ve laid your dress out, Lady Helene.” The maid’s quiet voice cut through her thoughts. “If you’ll just allow me to finish with Miss Valmeyer, I will be able to assist you.”

  Helene gave her agreement, and drifted over to the bed, where her own dress waited. It was a simple gray satin, and she’d chosen it quite deliberately because it was severe and plain. Helene had no eye for style and she knew it. The last thing she wanted to hear were the snickers from people who had nothing better to do than gossip over the bluestocking’s attempt to fit the fashions.

  But now, she found herself wishing she’d brought something just a little more, well, festive. Surely a ribbon or two, or some beading would not have been out of place. Even she could have managed that much.

  “What kept you so long downstairs, Helene?” Madelene asked from behind her.

  The image of Lord Windford’s handsome face flashed in front of Helene’s vision.

  “I was doing a favor for a friend,” she told Madelene. “Lady Adele Endicott.”

  “Oh. You’ve met Lady Adele? How is she?”

  Helene considered this. “She seems very pleasant. Much different from her sister, Patience. Perhaps we will meet her at the ball.”

  “Oh, well, I . . . I’m sure that will be very nice,” Madelene murmured.

  Helene went at once to her friend. She was seated in front of the dressing table while the maid arranged her red-gold ringlets into a fashionable pile and pinned them into place.

  “Madelene,” Helene took her friend’s hand and met her gaze in the mirror. “I know you’re worried, but you don’t need to be. I promise. We will take our places by the wall, and we will stay long enough to be polite. If you need to get away sooner, all you have to do is tell me and I’ll take you out. All right?”

  Madelene nodded and squeezed Helene’s hand. “Thank you so much for being here, Helene. I don’t know how I would get through this without you.”