An Exquisite Marriage

by Darcie Wilde

  “Good evening, Lady Helene,” she said.

  “Good evening, Madame d’Arnau.” Helene’s voice had a ragged edge. She swallowed to try to smooth it away. “Thank you for agreeing to see me.”

  “It is quite the surprise, I confess. Won’t you sit down?”

  “Thank you.” Helene perched on the edge of the nearest chair.

  “May I offer you something to drink?”

  “No, thank you.”

  “Well. I cannot believe you are here to ask after Broadheathe. So what is it, I wonder, that brings you to my door?”

  “I believe you may have some information I require.”

  “And here I thought you knew everything worth knowing.”

  “I have little time, Madame d’Arnau. If you wish to mock me, I would rather you completed the process now.”

  “But it will surely be a very long process.”

  “Then you had better get on with it.” Helene snapped open her watch where it hung on the chain around her neck. “I believe we may allocate a full ten minutes to your humiliation of me. You may begin when you choose.”

  This elicited a long, contemplative pause. “You have changed.”

  “I was forced to.”

  “It is a change for the better. You should thank me.”

  “Thank you,” she replied blandly. “Eight minutes.”

  Madame d’Arnau sighed. “I think your watch must be fast. However, we will let that go. It seems I do not have ten minutes’ worth of mockery for this new Lady Helene. We may proceed to your reasons for being here at all.”

  “I am here because I am seeking information about a woman named Bernadette Darington.”

  It was the hardest thing Helene had ever done to sit still while the smallest surprised smile played across Madame d’Arnau’s lovely face. It was plain Madame knew the name, and there was no doubt in Helene’s mind at all that she knew why Helene would be interested in it.

  “Why would you come to me with such an inquiry? I’ve never exhibited any kindness toward you.”

  “I do not require kindness. I require facts.”

  “I could lie to spite you.”

  “You could. But I think you will not. You are, after your fashion, honest.”

  “When it suits me to be.”

  “And I happen to know that you are no longer . . . under the protection of Broadheathe.”

  “No, that is true. I finally became too faded in his sight to be worth keeping.”

  “Therefore, he is unlikely to pressure you to lie to me for his sake.”

  Madame d’Arnau made a languid gesture, indicating she conceded the point. “Very well. I do know Bernadette. The demimonde is not so very large a world as is sometimes thought, and since society does not welcome us, many of us form our own little associations.”

  Helene said nothing.

  “Mrs. Darington, as she styles herself, lives not very far from here. I could give you her address. It is a fine house, and she keeps herself in excellent style. Her protector has been most generous.”

  “Who is her protector?”

  “There she has been less forthcoming. She does not name him, but only one man has been seen coming and going from her house.”

  Helene waited. She meant to speak, but she could not. She had no words left in her. Perhaps she would never speak again.

  Madame d’Arnau cocked her head. “Do I need to tell you the name?”

  “No,” said Helene. “I suppose not. Is . . .” Helene’s voice broke. She cleared her throat. “Is it known if the duke is the father of her children?”

  “She has said so.”

  “To you?”

  “Not to me, but she has said it to people I trust to be able to discern the truth.”

  “Thank you.” Helene got to her feet. “I will take up no more of your time. You may return to your guests.” She started for the door.

  “I’m sorry,” said Madame d’Arnau behind her. “You may not believe it, but I truly am.”

  Helene did not even bother to turn around. There was no reason for this woman to witness the humiliation of her tears a second time.

  ***

  In the end, Helene did not cry. The coachman drove the hired carriage at a sedate pace, and she endured the jostling and the bumping with a straight spine and dry eyes. In fact, she felt nothing at all. Not the cold of the evening, not the breath in her lungs, not the beating of her heart. It was as if that organ had been entirely removed from her body. Which may have been for the best. It had proven itself to be a deep inconvenience, not to mention a singularly poor advisor.

  There was a light on in the parlor of No. 48. Helene did not wonder at this. The housekeeper would make sure the house was ready for the return of her mistress. Helene paid the driver. Helene gathered her hems in her gloved hand and walked up the steps. Helene unlocked the door and let the housekeeper take her coat and bonnet.

  Helene turned and looked up and saw Marcus standing in the doorway to the green parlor.

  “I was worried, Helene,” Marcus said. “Miss Sewell told me you were ill, and then when we came here and the house was empty.” He stopped. “Dear God, Helene, what’s happened?”

  Helene stared at him, the man she loved. The man who had turned her life over and filled it with delights. He’d poured love into her wounded heart with love and took away the endless gnawing fear for herself and her siblings. He’d made her believe she could trust him with every part of herself.

  The man who fathered three bastard children and tossed them aside when they became inconvenient, who left their mother to go begging.

  Who might have already fathered another bastard. They’d taken no precautions. There’d been no reason to. They were going to be married. Why would they need to be careful?

  This was the man who stood here, concern filling the storm blue eyes that she had gazed into so many times. He reached out to her with hands that had known her body so intimately.

  “What’s happened?” he asked.

  “Get out,” she said. It seemed she still had a heart after all, because it was thundering, storming, raging. Breaking. “Get out. Get out! GET OUT! GET OUT!”

  XVII

  The first day after Helene collapsed and Miss Sewell threatened to call her manservant if Marcus did not leave the house, Marcus rode to Broadheathe’s London house to find it shut up and the man himself gone. Possibly to Paris. The butler would not give him any information, despite the banknote Marcus pressed into his palm.

  Marcus returned from that errand and locked himself in his study and wrote a dozen letters to be taken around to No. 48 by hand.

  That evening those letters were all returned, unopened.

  The second day, Marcus called Adele into his study and demanded to know what was happening to Helene. In return, Adele demanded to know what he had done to break her friend’s heart. The encounter ended with Adele locked in her room upstairs and Aunt Kearsely and Patience questioning his sanity.

  The third day, quiet little Madelene Valmeyer appeared in the front parlor and told him what she thought of his character and actions in terms he was surprised such a quiet girl could muster.

  “I’ve done nothing,” he told her. “Nothing . . .” He couldn’t finish that sentence. Because he had done something, or rather not done it.

  And he was an idiot not to have realized it.

  That evening, he drove to Bernadette’s house.

  “Why, Lord Windford!” Mrs. Darington cried in brittle delight as he entered her parlor. “To what do I owe the honor of this visit?”

  That was all it had taken. He knew what had happened. He might not know exactly how, or even exactly when, but that didn’t matter. Someone, maybe Bernadette herself, had told Helene that Bernadette’s children were his bastards, and she had believed him. And she hadn’t e
ven asked him. She’d heard the worst of him, and she’d believed it.

  The fourth day he spent entirely drunk.

  Now it was the fifth day, and he was relatively sober, and shaved, and decently dressed. He was also standing on the doorstep of No. 48, applying the brass knocker until it threatened to break off in his hand.

  Finally, the door opened to reveal a grim-faced manservant in a plain coat and breeches.

  “I’ve come to see Lady Helene,” Marcus informed the man. “And I will not leave until I have done so.”

  “It’s all right, Taggert,” called Miss Sewell’s voice from the parlor. “Let him in.”

  Taggert clearly did not like this idea, but he did stand aside to let Marcus in.

  “Come here, my lord,” said Miss Sewell.

  Marcus stared at the staircase, feeling certain that Helene must be somewhere at the top, but he turned away. He’d been fool enough and bestial enough during the past few hellish days. It was time to remember who he actually was.

  Miss Sewell was standing in the middle of the parlor. He went in, his hat, quite literally in his hand and she folded her arms to face him squarely. He had a feeling if she’d had access to a sword, she would have drawn it. “Lady Helene does not wish to see you, my lord.”

  “Please, Miss Sewell, I must speak with her. You are her friend. Talk with her. Persuade her.”

  “Why should I do that?”

  “Because I love her, Miss Sewell. And she loves me.”

  But this declaration elicited nothing stronger than a sardonic curling at the corner of her wide mouth. “Perhaps she did, but something seems to have happened.”

  “Yes, it did, and I have to explain!” He could not help but glance over his shoulder, in the vain hope that Helene might have come down the stairs to hear him. But the foyer remained empty, except for Taggert, who was vigorously polishing the brass and giving Marcus a look that could have peeled paint.

  “Lord Windford, if I thought this was simply a lover’s quarrel, I would do as you ask,” said Miss Sewell. “But this is much more serious.”

  “I know that!” he snapped. “That’s why I’m here!”

  “My lord, Helene’s heart was more than broken when she was engaged to the Marquis of Broadheathe.”

  “I know that, too.” His fists were clenching and unclenching. He was shaking. He had to get hold of himself. If he fell to acting like a brute, he’d never get past this woman, and he did want to act like a brute. He wanted to shove past her and storm up the stairs and break down whatever door separated him from Helene. “Helene told me herself.” In bed, pressed against him, when she loved him, when she trusted him.

  “Did she tell you how close she came to dying?” asked Miss Sewell coolly. “I’ve spoken to the doctor who attended her at the time. Whatever has happened between you has opened those old wounds.”

  “No,” he breathed. There was a ringing in his ears, and the room seemed to waver in front of him. “She isn’t . . . is she ill now?”

  “Not yet. But she will be. She will not leave her room. She will not eat or speak to anyone, not even Adele or Madelene.”

  “My God. This is my fault.”

  Miss Sewell made no answer.

  “I have to see her. How can I convince you?” He waited, but the only answer was more of Miss Sewell’s damnable cool silence.

  “Miss Sewell, I swear to you, upon my family name and my sacred honor, I love Helene, heart and soul I love her, and I want only her happiness. If after she hears my explanation she wants nothing more to do with me, I will leave. I’ll leave London if necessary. I’ll never bother her. I’ll ask for nothing but her happiness.” It will kill me, but I will do it. “I’m begging you, Miss Sewell. Please.”

  ***

  Her hair had come loose. One lock slanted in front of her eyes. She should brush it away, but she could not seem to summon the strength.

  She’d been here before. She remembered this feeling, as if her mind had become detached from her body to wander freely of its accord. Only then, it had roamed to an illuminated garden to hear a woman’s lecturing and a man’s lazy agreement, and it had stayed there. Now, it could not seem to settle but wandered restlessly from place to place. It was downstairs, still looking at Marcus. It was away in that new square with Madame d’Arnau and her sympathetic expression. It was in the claret parlor in Anandale House, with Mother and Father, and upstairs with her siblings.

  It was in a private, secret house with Marcus, listening to him tell her how very much he loved her.

  She should have kept silent. She knew that. For Susannah’s sake, and Annie’s, and the boys, she should have grit her teeth and smiled and done whatever was necessary. But how could she? After what Broadheathe had done to her, how could she endure the same kind of humiliation again?

  No. This was not the same humiliation. This was worse. Broadheathe had been forced on her. She had chosen Marcus of her own free will. With her own useless, idiotic, childish heart.

  And now it was over. Ruined. Because she loved him and he had lied anyway and she could not endure it. She was weak, and for all her vaunted intelligence, she was a fool. Now her sisters and her brothers would pay the price. Because there would be no marriage and no school, and nothing but debt and degradation for them all, because Helene Fitzgerald could not accept that it was the absolute right of a gentleman to take his pleasure where he chose.

  I’m sorry, Susannah. I’ll think of something. As soon as I can. I swear I will.

  Except right now she couldn’t seem to move. The lock of hair shifted in front of her eyes, and she still could not lift a hand to brush it away. All she could do was sit and stare out the window. There were voices downstairs, and she heard every word, and she still could not move.

  And now, someone was knocking at the door. She knew who it was, of course. She could not fail to recognize his voice.

  I wonder what I will do.

  He was knocking again, and calling to her. Saying her name. Pleading with her. Informing her firmly that he was not going away.

  Slowly, Helene felt her mind draw itself back down into her body. It was curious. It wanted to know what this man could possibly have to say. Curiosity killed the cat. Perhaps it would kill her. No. That would be too convenient for all concerned.

  “It’s open,” she heard herself say.

  “Helene, it’s . . .”

  “I know. These walls are very thin. It’s open.”

  The door opened. She felt the breeze of it. She heard his footsteps on the carpet. She smelled brandy and leather and open air, and Marcus.

  “My God, Helene . . .” He was moving closer. She could tell in the way her skin warmed and the shards of her heart stirred restlessly. She kept her face turned toward the window. Her body was clearly still ready to betray her with its longings. Therefore, she could not risk looking at him. She might weaken, despite everything.

  “I expected you earlier,” she said. “I’ve sat through this particular drama before, you know, and had rather thought the curtain to ring down before this.”

  “Helene, please, don’t be this way.”

  “What way should I be? Forgiving? Understanding? Pliant?”

  “You can at least hear me out!”

  There was a sparrow on the opposite roof, pecking optimistically at the gutters. Fly away, little bird. There’s nothing to find here.

  “Talk if you want to,” she said. “Then you will do me the favor of leaving me to get on with what’s left of my life.”

  “Dear God,” Marcus breathed. “What did that man do to you?”

  “What did he do?” The laugh burst out of her, sharp and painful. On the other roof, the sparrow looked up quizzically.

  “All right!” Helene cried. “You want to know the true and exact history of the Fitzgerald Jilt?” She threw up both hands. �
��Why not? I’ve told you every other secret, why not that one!” She laughed again. Joyless. Mad. But she didn’t seem to be able to stop.

  “Helene, don’t,” said Marcus. “You’ll make yourself ill.”

  “What?” She sneered. “And die of a broken heart like a heroine in a novel? Oh, that would be so very convenient for everybody. But no. I’m afraid I’m not quite adaptable enough for that.”

  “Will you at least look at me?”

  “You will take my story as I choose to give it, or you will leave now.”

  She inclined her head. Outside the window, the sparrow shook itself and fluttered away to look for more promising rooftops. What an intelligent bird.

  “How I turned down that first marriage offer is common knowledge,” she said. “We may gloss over that.”

  “Helene . . .”

  She did look at him then, and she felt herself to be hard and cold as diamond. Marcus’s mouth had been open, his hand had reached out, but when his gaze met hers, he took a step back. Good. Let him be afraid. Let her be utterly hard and pitiless toward him. It was better than breaking any further.

  “Here is what you do not know,” she said. “Here is what I believed no one would ever need to know. The night of my engagement party, I was overwhelmed by the heat and took myself onto the balcony. I was so excited. I was not in love, but I was fulfilling my duty, and I was sure that with the title and the money I was about to gain, I would do so much good, for my family and the world.

  “There was another woman on the balcony. She introduced herself as Madame d’Arnau. We talked. Nothing consequential. She suggested we walk in the gardens until I cooled down. I agreed.

  “It was when we were well out of earshot of the party that she told me . . . she told me . . .”

  He wanted to move toward her. She could tell. So chivalrous. So caring and tender and considerate. He wanted to hold her, to soothe her hurt, to tell her how he loved her, that whatever it was, it was all right. He would make it all right.

  But he did not move, because he was also so intelligent, because he’d always understood everything about her. Which was probably how he’d been able to lie to her so easily.