Helena saw her father chewing on the inside of his lip. It was a sign he was thinking. His rheumy eyes focused on her for a moment, then shifted back to the man. “It doesn’t seem that the gel wants to see you.”
“I…I noticed that, my lord.”
“Women can be hard, Mannion. You know about women?”
Helena was stunned. This was not the curt dismissal she had anticipated. There was even a glimmer of amusement on the old man’s lined face.
Mr. Adam Mannion, Esquire relaxed. “Not enough, I’m afraid.” What a clever response.
“Ah, who does?” Lord Rathford paused again, taking his time to consider the man before him. “Why don’t you come into my study, since you’ve traveled all this way and Helena won’t receive you? I’m of a mind to wet my throat a bit. You might be in need of a nip yourself.”
Helen gasped. “Father!”
Mr. Mannion, Esquire, stopped and turned to peer at her over his shoulder as he followed Lord Rathford. His dark eyes nearly twinkled and the thick slashes above them lifted tauntingly. He said, “I’m afraid you’ll have to await your turn, my lady.”
And then he joined her father as they entered a paneled door off to the right, the one that led into her father’s masculine retreat, the library.
She looked at Kimberly. The Irish servant’s eyes were narrowed as she stared at the closed door. Helena grew frightened at that look. She was afraid of Kimberly.
To her utter dread, the servant turned that thoughtful gaze on Helena.
“Come upstairs,” Kimberly ordered.
Chapter Two
“Sit down,” Rathford ordered gruffly.
If Adam was bewildered by the man’s abrupt change of mood, he knew he had better not show it. Selecting a chair, he slouched slightly and crossed his ankle on his knee. Propping his elbows on the armrests, he weaved his fingers together over his chest.
This room was only a bit more cheery than the cold hospitality offered in the shadow-shrouded hall. There was light, at least. Lots of books, gray as ghosts with thick layers of dust on them, lined every shelf. The furniture was comfortable, though, constructed of studded leather that softly absorbed the body’s weight.
Rathford filled a tumbler with whiskey. “Are you of a mind for whiskey or port?”
“Whiskey will be fine.” Adam looked around him. “Thank you for giving me your time and your hospitality. It’s comfortable in here.”
Rathford scowled at him and drawled sarcastically, “I am so glad you like it.”
Adam took the jab without retort.
“I could ask you what you want with Helena, but you’d probably tell me a heap of manure.” Handing him the whiskey, Rathford took a seat by the window and looked out at the ravaged garden. “So let me tell you what you want with Helena. You want her fortune.”
Adam, who had been taking his first sip of the whiskey, nearly choked. Rathford smiled, never taking his gaze off the window. “She knows it, too. Do you think you’re the first? Well, you ain’t, boy. And you can forget trying to charm her. She’ll have nothing to do with you.”
Adam didn’t reply at first. Running his forefinger across his top lip thoughtfully, he asked, “Then why not just send me away?”
“Because I may have some use for you, you arrogant pup.”
The bitterness of the old man’s response gave Adam pause. “What is it you want?”
Rathford started to laugh. Glancing at Adam, he raised his glass. “Why, the same goddamned thing as you do.”
Adam puzzled over that one, but refused to rise to the bait and ask the old curmudgeon what he meant.
“I see you know when to shut up and listen,” Rathford said after a while. “I like that. It’s something, at least. A man hopes to have some respect for the man his daughter marries.” Rathford glared at him. “You came here to marry her, didn’t you?”
There was no sense in prevaricating. “Y-yes,” he managed to reply.
“You need money?”
Adam tossed back a hearty gulp of the whiskey. “Yes.”
“What is it? Demanding mistress? Gambling debts? Too much drinking?”
“The fickle blessings of Lady Luck have deserted me at this time,” Adam said carefully. “My skill at the tables has proved inadequate without it.”
“Cards? Horses? Or are you not particular?”
Adam shrugged. “Mostly cards. I’m usually good enough to live off my winnings, but lately I’ve run into a bit of trouble.”
“How deep?”
“Four thousand.”
“Good God. Well, it would have to be a goodly sum to hie you all the way up here.” Rathford drew in a deep breath and expelled it, as if bracing himself for a particularly difficult duty. “You can have five thousand to cover your debts. I can give it to you today. Another fifteen hundred each quarter with which to amuse yourself. You might be able to use that if your ‘bit of trouble’ continues.”
A hot flood of excitement spread through Adam like a stain on linen. “I could use it even so.”
“And in return…” Rathford faltered. The whiskey hadn’t dulled his senses enough that a dull gleam of pain wasn’t detectable in his eyes. “In return, I shall require something of you.”
“Yes, my lord. I understand.”
“You want to marry my daughter. I will allow it. But for your part, you will promise me three things.” He finished the whiskey. His sadness grew, it seemed, evident in the slump of his shoulders, the weary bow of his head.
Adam studied the man gazing dolefully into his empty glass. The whiskey he had just downed in a startlingly short amount of time was surely not his first today. Nor was his binge an unfamiliar activity. One could always tell by the bulbous nose, the tiny red spider veins tracing over the face, when a man was too fond of drink.
But there was a cunning here as well. And something else, something more…urgent. With his chin resting on his thumb and his forefinger caressing his top lip, Adam waited.
“The first,” Rathford began, “is that you must not abandon Helena here. You will swear to visit at least twice a year, before and after the illustrious season, if you wish, so that your enjoyment of high society is not interrupted. You will stay for two months each visit.”
Adam frowned. He hadn’t counted on so frequent a journey up to these cold climes. He hadn’t necessarily intended to return at all.
“You will not leave her all alone—” Rathford broke off, his voice choking a bit. “You will come. The second promise is to be that you will do what you must as a husband to provide my daughter with a child. As many children as she desires. During these visits, you and she will be man and wife in all senses of the term.”
What it cost him to say this was evident in the rapid blinking of his eyes, in the way his jaw worked. His jowls began to tremble, so that his next words warbled more noticeably. “The final promise is that you will always treat her with kindness. Never speak to her in anger, never raise a hand. I will have you not only cut off without a ha’penny to comfort you, but thrown in the darkest of cells in a place where no one will find you. And I’m not talking through legal means, boy. I will—” His voice finally gave way.
This, at least, Adam had no compunctions about. “My lord, I assure you your daughter will be met with kindness. Never will I do a thing to harm her, body or spirit. I am not a cruel or unkind man.”
“Money changes men,” Rathford said prophetically. Bowing his head, he nodded, however, accepting Adam’s vow. “And the rest?”
Shifting in his chair, Adam admitted, “I do not care for so frequent journeying. But I will do it. Twice a year, just as you request. I suppose.” His lack of enthusiasm he didn’t bother to hide. “As for the other…I will provide my duty as husband as long as the girl is well. Her thinness may prevent—”
“No!” Rathford slashed a hand through the air. “No qualifications on it. You will…bed…her. You will give her children.”
Adam would have furthered the argum
ent that the girl’s health might make pregnancy a danger, but the man’s countenance forbade it. Rathford’s eyes blazed; his quivering lips were nearly palsied. “I promise,” Adam said.
Rathford froze for a moment, then like a wax doll held too close to a fire, he melted back into his chair. “Very well. The bargain is done, pup. You shall have Helena as wife, and the bloody money, too.”
In the quiet of her bedchamber, Helena craned her neck to view the pattern of cards laid out before her. “What do you see?” she asked.
“Silence.” Kimberly bowed her head. “Don’t ye be feelin’ it? Yer mother, she’s here.”
Helena froze. The mention of her mother brought an instant chill.
Kimberly opened her eyes and studied the three cards already laid out in front of Helena. “Choose another.”
Helena obeyed, her icy fingers trembling as they selected from the deck. She placed the card where Kimberly indicated.
The servant frowned. “Darkness. Very bad.” She closed her eyes as she concentrated on communing with the long-dead Althea Rathford. “She is very angry. Do ye not feel her anger?”
Helena had always been terrified of her mother, but Althea’s rage when alive was nothing as terrible as the thought of her venom coming from beyond the grave.
Kimberly held her hands over the cards, palms down. Her body stiffened and her head fell back. She was in communion with the other world. She moaned, then said, “Retribution.”
Helena’s breath accelerated, coming in rapid pants, her heart ready to tear out of her chest. Long, elegant fingers clung to the table.
Kimberly went limp. Helena waited with the dull echo of her heartbeat pounding in her ears.
Opening her eyes, Kimberly drilled Helena with her gaze. “This man is yer destiny.”
“No! It can’t be.”
“Yer mother has called him here from across leagues of space.”
“Does she wish to punish me? Is that why you said, ‘Retribution’? Does she hate me?”
“A mother can never hate her child.” Kimberly scooped the cards up, her crafty eyes staring into Helena’s anxious ones. “She has great love for ye, just as she always did.”
That was hardly reassuring. Helena had known all too well the yoke of her mother’s love. She wrung her hands anxiously. “But he is a commoner. And…” She remembered his eyes. Dark, unfathomable and unforgiving. “And he seems so harsh.”
Kimberly didn’t argue further. Pressing her lips together—a sign that she had said all she was going to—she rose to place the cards back in their cupboard. Rising on shaky legs, Helena retreated to the other end of the room. She slid onto the window seat, her little corner where she always went to think.
Helena put no stock in Kimberly’s predictions. She wasn’t a believer. Not exactly. But guilt was a powerful thing. And the servant was clever, if nothing else. Kimberly’s knowledge of the spirit world might or might not be accurate, but she certainly knew her way around the human soul.
How could Helena be expected to marry that arrogant peacock, a virtual stranger who was obviously seeking nothing but a nice fat purse? He did not hold any caring for her—how could he be her destiny?
Helena wrapped her arms around her chest and closed her eyes. She heard Kimberly leave.
Retribution.
It was time to pay for what she had done.
When she received a message from her father to change her dress, brush her hair and come to the conservatory, Helena was shocked. She had held out hope that her father had wished to annoy the man—this Adam Mannion—by playing along with his “suit” for a while. She couldn’t believe that he would actually be interested in speaking to the man genuinely about the prospect of marriage.
But there was Kimberly’s prophesy. And now this summons.
Going to the pier glass by her dressing table, she stared at her reflection as her numb brain assimilated the incredible events of this afternoon.
She had bathed as soon as she had come into her room, fetching the water herself and making do with a hip bath. Long soaks in the tub were a luxury of the past. Her hair was freshly washed, still damp, her face scrubbed clean.
Leaning forward, she concentrated on the stranger whose image she faced. Her hair, a wheat color, had once gleamed with rich luster, falling in a cascade of perfect curls. Each one had seemed to be made of pale ecru satin. Now it hung rather dry and dull, with only the tepid undulations of its natural wave to give it any style. Her skin was still good, but pale. No longer did the blush of roses flame in her cheeks. Her lips looked bloodless.
She was no longer a beauty. Which was how she liked it. She had never wanted to look in the mirror and see that other Helena, her mother’s Helena, again. And yet this drab creature seemed a stranger. Perhaps a reflection of the true Helena she had never bothered to know.
For the first time since she’d pushed herself away from the strictures of beauty and grace that had been drilled into her as a child, she wanted something of her old self back. The thought of going to the conservatory and…and seeing him again was too daunting without it. Her mother had taught her how to use her looks to command attention, admiration. Power. She needed something of that skill now.
She took up her brush and began to pull it through her hair. Years of neglect weren’t going to be cured in one sitting, but the slight sheen that came into the tresses gave her confidence. Pinning it up as best she could, she surveyed the effect. Not bad, she decided. Biting her lips and pinching her cheeks, she went to the wardrobe to inspect its contents.
The dresses were all heavy with dust, dull and limp with age, and in some places, moth-eaten. Even had they been in excellent condition, they were outdated. A yellow muslin wasn’t too bad, she thought, pulling it out and brushing it off. The lace was still good and the stomacher in front boasted beautiful gold embroidery on ivory satin.
She flung it out before her, raising a cloud of dust. Then again and again. Each time it was as if she was shedding more than dirt. She was shedding the years. Her heart quickened. Destiny or not, she was going to give Mr. Adam Mannion a thing or two to reckon with. Namely, that she wasn’t a treasure-laden galleon ripe for a pirate’s plucking.
Her spirits lifted as she rushed about the rest of her toilette.
Chapter Three
The conservatory was magnificent. Adam looked around him, bouncing on his heels.
He wondered what his father would have thought to see him here, poised to marry an heiress. Not yet, he cautioned, checking the dangerous direction of his thoughts. The belle had yet to be won.
Lord Rathford, who had been nursing a drink while slumped in an old wicker settee, stood up when the sharp click of heeled slippers tapped upon the floor tiles. Adam looked over, mastering the sublime excitement that had stolen over him, and donned a sober mask.
The sight of Helena caused his jaw to drop. It gaped open for a moment before he recalled that it should be shut. He did so with such haste his teeth clicked together.
She was…incredibly different. Her hair was brushed and fixed into a neat twist. The simple style flattered her, revealing a face that was well-proportioned and delicate boned, with a pale complexion that needed no powder to enhance it. Her eyes were as vivid as a southern sea, her brow fair and arched, her mouth nicely pinked and prettily formed into a broad curve in the shape of a longbow laid on its side.
Her thinness, however, was disconcerting. In the soft fabric of the dress she now wore, he could see that the bones of her shoulders were acutely pronounced. The stomacher, meant to flatten a woman’s chest and push her breasts upward, nearly sagged. The garment hung on her, even at the pinched waist, which was already shockingly narrow. Yet even in this faded finery, she made a palpable impact on the room as she entered, head held high, eyes straight ahead.
“Father,” she said, pointedly ignoring Adam.
He grinned. She might have transformed her outward self, but she was still determined to bedevil him.
Rathford held out his arms to her. Adam’s complacency vanished when he saw the older man’s hands shaking visibly. Adam turned his head away.
Why all the melodrama? he thought testily. Christ, he wasn’t a beast. And if they thought he was, why not throw him out and have done with it?
She breezed past him, into her father’s embrace. Embarrassed at the intimate way they had their heads together, murmuring to one another, he looked out the dirty, multi-paned windows.
“No!” he heard her say.
Rathford said something back. She protested; he overrode her.
Adam checked his nails. They could use a trim, he supposed. He sighed, waiting. Raising his eyes to the ceiling, he began to count the cobwebs.
A sharp cry and the rustle of skirts told him she had retreated from her father. Adam spied her sulking by some potted plant carcasses in the corner. She glared at him.
Turning to Rathford, Adam found the man red-faced. Biting his lips to hold back whatever emotions churned behind that ruddy facade, he gave Adam a curt nod and made for the door.
Adam supposed Rathford had told her the happy news. The rest was up to him.
Gritting his teeth, he approached Helena carefully, much as he would a skittish horse. Although he was certain she would not be delighted by the analogy, the situations were similar in that they both called for a gentle voice, a firm hand.
He was unprepared for the blaze of her eyes when she whirled on him. “My father says I am to wed you.”
He halted in his tracks. It wasn’t so much her anger—that he might have anticipated—but the stark blaze of fear he saw that stopped him. Holding up his hands in a gesture of peace, he said carefully, “I am certain the idea will be more agreeable to you when we know each other better.”
“Why? Do you improve upon acquaintance?”
He bit back his temper. “I simply believe we got off to a bad start.”
“When precisely was that? When you chased me into the shadows or when you pushed the door in and nearly knocked me down?”
He answered, “I believe it was when you called me a jackanapes.”
The Sleeping Beauty Page 2
