With trembling hands covering his face, Rathford had said he believed Adam would bring her out of that existence. It had been a desperate move, made impulsively because he believed himself to be dying. He had to make certain she was cared for, and he had hoped against hope that her marriage, even under such unlikely circumstances, would bring her happiness, wake her out of the stupor of pain and guilt she’d been locked in for five long years. So he had taken a chance on a fortune hunter, on Adam. But the madness had come, taking away a future that was beginning to look promising.
But Helena hadn’t forgiven herself for firing that pistol, Rathford had theorized, even if it was to save two lives. Even in death, Althea’s hold over her daughter was too powerful. Althea’s madness had come to afflict her daughter as revenge for Rathford having tried to release her from the past.
Now, as Adam thought about it, he could laugh. Curses from beyond the grave—really. But in that library, under the force of Rathford’s horrible conviction of what he was saying, he had gotten the shivers.
But he was a rational man and he put no stock in nonsense like this. Still, he felt betrayed. Murder was, after all, something a man likes to know his wife isn’t capable of.
It was later still when he heard her playing. Without a moment’s hesitation, he ran to the nursery tower and stood outside the doorway.
She sang so beautifully. The power of her song reached out to him, closed like a tender-fingered lover around his heart and squeezed emotions from him that felt foreign. Or perhaps it was just the confusion he had felt in the aftermath of Rathford’s confession. The music was like a magnifying glass, bringing out everything that had been roiling inside of him all night, until he couldn’t bear it any longer.
He opened the door and entered. Helena looked up and stopped.
“Don’t stop, Helena,” he said, and he could hear the gruff emotion in his own voice. “Please. I need to hear you sing.”
She watched him, wary. She looked lovely. So lovely.
She wasn’t mad, for God’s sake. She wasn’t!
“Please,” he said again.
Taking in a deep, shaking breath, she bowed her head and began to play again.
He stood before her, arm resting on the curve of the instrument, leaning into it, leaning into the song to let it drench him and fill him and make him believe in her again.
She was beautiful. God, she made him ache. He watched her, not touching, but wanting to. And then he could stand it no longer and circled around the pianoforte and closed his hands around her wrist.
The song ended abruptly on a discord. She gazed at him, startled, and he pulled her to her feet and into his arms, and kissed her hard. She felt incredibly slight, no more substantial than a bird, he thought, but she kissed him back with a full measure of ardor.
No matter what she’d done, no matter what was happening now, he wanted her. It was like needing to breathe—as natural to him as drawing in air, part of him now. He had accepted it. And resisting her was like holding his breath. Fine at first, then a strain, increasing agony until at last, in control no longer, one gasps for air, filling one’s lungs in greedy gulps until the need is sated.
He felt her body, too slender, yet utterly sensual. Her bottom had the most delicious curve, which he sampled with the flattened palm of his hand, and his chest, made ultrasensitive by his present state of arousal, knew the precise size and shape of her breasts. Even the tiny pebbled tips he could feel, and he wanted to touch them, test their hardness with his fingers, and his mouth.
He yanked her back over his arm and bent to her throat. He kissed the hot flesh, then quickly undid the buttons with his free hand and ran his tongue all the way down to the rise of her breasts.
She wasn’t mad. She wasn’t.
His hand cupped a heaving mound, squeezing gently. She moaned and grasped his head, arching into his kiss as he moved to taste her. His tongue teased her, whipped her into a state of wild desire. Straightening, he carried her quickly to the side of the room, where a small pallet lay.
He didn’t stop to think. If he had, he might have wondered at the sense of doing what he was about to do in the place where she had been a child. He did know enough of his surroundings to register that this was unlikely to be her childhood bed. It was too plain, too Spartan—most likely a space for a servant to sleep upon during the governess’s time off. In any event, Helena didn’t protest.
He laid her on the bed. Face flushed, she looked up at him, breathing hard through softly parted lips. “I missed you,” she said.
The words went straight to his gut, igniting the fevered sensations that churned there. “Helena. I want to make love to you.”
“Yes,” she answered breathlessly, and pulled him down to her.
He took his time removing her clothes. He touched her everywhere, lingering to arouse her nipples, tracing light patterns with his tongue over the flat of her stomach, tasting the supple moist flesh sheltered within her woman’s folds, and teasing her there until she rocked under him with violent release.
He had himself stripped in no time, and he came over her, into her swiftly, needing to feel that heat surround him. He thrust and she welcomed him, wrapping her legs tightly around his flanks. She locked her fingers together at the base of his neck and kept her eyes on his. He braced himself over her, thrusting into her with rhythmic movements of his hips. Their eyes never left each other’s. He saw every expression of pleasure and desire, and it was the most erotic thing he had ever experienced. His climax raged through him, shooting him quickly and immediately into incredible gratification that drove him on and on and on until it crested and finally ebbed.
Spent and weak, he curled up with her, holding her as tight as he thought she could stand. She didn’t mind, he thought, for she clasped him back and fitted her head snugly in the curve of his neck.
He couldn’t stop kissing her, tender little touches of his lips to her hairline, eyebrow or the smooth unlined skin of her forehead. She sighed, and he smiled up at the ceiling, knowing she was content. In this moment, all thoughts of trouble seemed not even possible.
He wished he could have slept. His body might have been given release, but his mind was more active than ever.
Surely, surely, all this talk of madness was just so much stuff and nonsense—fears being given too much credence by overactive imaginations. He simply couldn’t believe those awful things, not when she felt this right in his arms.
After a while, he said, “Let me take you back to your room. It’s almost morning.”
They rose and dressed. He took her to her room, kissing her thoroughly on the threshold. Running a finger along her cheek, he murmured, “I’ll see you in a few hours.”
“Mmm,” she said with a sultry smile. “Good night.”
He laughed softly. “You mean good morning.”
She shrugged and slipped inside. He stood staring at the door, grinning like a fool for a while before going to his bedchamber.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Helena’s beautiful euphoria lasted exactly five hours. After luncheon one of the new parlor maids came into the drawing room where Helena was making some notes on the menu to give to Mrs. Kent.
Expecting that the maid was going to tell her that Mrs. Stiles had arrived, Helena laid down her pen and rose. The dressmaker was working on a very special gown for the occasion of the Strathmere ball next Saturday, and had promised she’d bring it over today for a final fitting.
Helena looked up at the servant. “Is Mrs. Stiles here?”
“N-no. There’s a problem, you see. Mrs. Kent has asked me to fetch you. Upstairs. She’s upstairs.” Round-eyed, the girl jabbed her finger at the ceiling. It wasn’t hard to discern her distress.
“My goodness, of course,” Helena said, picking up her skirts and rushing to the door. “Is she in my room?”
“No, miss.” The maid paled. “In your mother’s old rooms, miss.”
Helena almost stumbled. She caught herself at th
e door, grasping the frame for balance. Her mother’s rooms? No one went in there. The servants cleaned it, but otherwise it was untouched. All these years.
But someone had gone there recently. Someone Bettina had thought was her. Was that why Mrs. Kent wanted to see her there?
The first thing that greeted her was the housekeeper’s pinched face. Clasping her hands, Mrs. Kent hovered in the hallway outside the closed doors of Althea’s suite. “Oh, my lady, it’s terrible.”
“What? What has happened?”
“The rooms. They’re completely destroyed. Everything is broken, even the furniture, and shredded…oh, my…the entire room. The draperies…and the counterpane…lord, it’s a mess!” Wringing her hands, the housekeeper said, “I hope I did the right thing in calling you.”
“Of course you did. Now, let’s go in, Mrs. Kent.”
The housekeeper opened the door and stepped back. Helena went past her and into…utter chaos. The entire room was nothing but debris.
“Bettina came in to clean, just as she always does. It was just a little while ago,” Mrs. Kent explained. “She found it like this.”
Helena walked into the room a little ways, looking slowly from right to left. Nothing was recognizable. Her feet crunched over decimated objects littering the floor, a carpet of shredded clothing, broken glass, fractured wood. “Who could have done this?”
The loud hiss of an indrawn breath brought them around to the woman in the doorway. Kimberly looked furious, eyes glinting and teeth bared as she looked at the ravaged things of her former mistress. Despite her newfound independence, Helena felt a stab of the old fear at the fearsome expression on the woman’s face.
Gazing straight at Helena, Kimberly said, “What have you done?”
Off guard for a moment, Helena stammered. “What…me? I’ve not done this!”
Wailing, Kimberly grabbed two fistfuls of her own hair. “All her things—how could you?”
The wave of defensiveness that came over her was ridiculous, Helena thought. She looked to Mrs. Kent. Was it suspicion she read in those sympathetic eyes?
Adam’s voice cut in. “What’s going…oh, my God. What happened here?”
“I didn’t do it!” Helena cried. She found Adam’s gaze on her. It seemed a trifle too narrow, too pensive, as if he were actually thinking she had. “I didn’t!” she cried again.
“Leave us,” Adam commanded.
Kimberly started to say something, clearly too distressed to obey, but Adam shot her a look even she, brazen as she was, didn’t dare ignore. With a parting glare aimed at Helena, she was gone. Mrs. Kent murmured her excuses and hurried out behind her.
She was not even out of earshot when Helena cried, “You think I did this.”
“I didn’t say that,” Adam replied calmly.
“You are looking at me with accusation in your eye.”
“Helena, why would I think that? If you wanted to destroy your mother’s rooms, you’ve had five years to do it.”
Yes. That sounded reasonable. Except…except sometimes lately she wasn’t sure what was happening to her. All those misplaced objects, the oddities, the forgetfulness. The nightmares. Worst of all were the nightmares.
And Bettina had thought she had seen her in here not too long ago. Sometimes Helena found herself places and didn’t remember how she had gotten there.
“Helena.” Adam spoke gently, wading through the debris to wrap his fingers around her wrist and pull her out of the room with him. He closed the doors, then gathered her into his arms. “You’re shivering.”
Helena barely heard him. She let herself be pulled into the embrace.
“I want to ask you something,” he began. His voice was slow, measured. Helena’s fears raced faster. He pulled back to peer at her. “Have you had any times recently, like the time of the fire, where you found yourself confused, or disoriented, or maybe you woke up somewhere and didn’t know how you had gotten there—”
She spun out of his grasp, backpedaling swiftly. “You think…oh, Adam!”
He held up his hands as if to ward off her accusations. “No. I didn’t say that.”
“Yes. Oh, yes, you did.”
“Helena!” he called as she ran away from him. Down the hall she flew. She didn’t stop, even when she thought she heard him coming after her. But when she arrived at her room, she was quite alone.
It was only a matter of time before Kimberly sought out Helena.
“Go away,” Helena said, not looking up from the book she wasn’t reading.
There was so long a silence, she looked up. Kimberly was smirking.
Helena narrowed her gaze at the woman. “I said leave me alone.”
“How can I when yer mother calls to me from the grave to counsel ye?”
Those words, once chilling, only annoyed her now. Helena said through gritted teeth, “I desire none of your counsel. Now, get out of this room before I call John Footman and have you thrown out.”
Surprised at that, Kimberly seemed at a temporary loss. Then she tossed her head and said, “She knows it was ye who ruined her rooms. She’s spitting angry with ye.”
“Oh, stop it. My mother is dead. And I didn’t do that to her rooms.”
“No?” Her sly expression returned. “Perhaps ye just don’t remember. It seems ye’ve been forgetting lots of things lately.”
Helena stiffened. “I am one minute away from calling the footman.”
Kimberly went to the door, where she paused and looked at Helena over her shoulder. “One question, my lady.” She paused again for effect. “If not you, then who? It seems only ye have cause to hate her.”
“I don’t hate my mother.”
Kimberly raised her head and said loftily, “Well. She hates ye. She’ll have her vengeance yet for what ye done.”
And then she finally did leave, but Helena thought about what she had said long after. It wasn’t anything to do with the ghoulish predictions Kimberly made, or the macabre references to her mother.
It was that sometimes she felt as if she were losing her mind. She feared that Adam might be wondering a very similar thing….
When Adam and Helena arrived at the Strathmere’s ball, they were greeted exuberantly by Chloe, who exclaimed at the sight of them and rushed forward to take Helena into her arms for a quick hug.
Helena accepted the greeting with a tremulous smile. She was very nervous. The urge to turn on her heel and run out of the ducal residence was overwhelming. She hadn’t wanted to come, but Adam wouldn’t hear of a last-minute cancellation. She was frightened of the crowd, of facing down all the stares. She hated it when she knew they were all whispering about her behind their fans. However, instead of fleeing, she murmured, “Your grace.”
Chloe held Helena at arm’s length and surveyed her. “My goodness, Helena, how do you manage to look so flawlessly lovely all the time?”
“You are too kind, your grace. It is your presence that lights up this room and makes everyone turn their heads.”
“Really?” Chloe asked, breaking into a brilliant smile. Leaning forward, she hooked her arm through Helena’s and led her away from the receiving line, an appalling breach for anyone but her. “Does it show so much?”
“What?”
Chloe giggled and squeezed Helena’s arm excitedly. “I am with child again.”
Happiness flooded through Helena and she almost—almost—snatched her friend back into her arms. “I am so happy for you,” she said.
“Thank you. Please come visit me soon. Oh, Helena, I am so pleased you have allowed us to become friends.”
The effusive sincerity of this unconventional duchess touched Helena. Something broke open within her and she laughed. She suddenly was not feeling so afraid. She said, “You should go see to your other guests.” Chloe left with a final squeeze of her hand. That was when Helena saw Adam, standing a ways off, staring at her with a half smile on his lips. His eyes were dark and shiny like the sea at midnight, and he was looking at her
intently, as if he knew that she had just cracked open her protective shell a little bit wider.
Emotion caught in Helena’s throat. He looked so handsome, and just seeing him filled her with a deep sense of…rightness. His presence seemed to fill every corner of the room. He came to her and took her hand in his. There were still people staring, just as she’d dreaded, and as Adam moved with her through the throng, he nodded and greeted each gawking face so that people either turned away, embarrassed, or blinked in surprise and nodded back, a smile replacing their calculating expressions.
His mischievousness was so offhand, so casual that no one seemed at all put out. As always, his presence lent her courage. They danced a waltz together, a giddy whirlwind of movement with Adam’s arm around her, his warm palm burning through the barrier of kid that sealed hers with proper modesty. They drank—perhaps too much—and she laughed. She laughed with abandon, not the ladylike titters her mother had taught her to produce.
The men kept trying to draw Adam off into their haven of cigar smoke and political talk. Finally, Gerald managed to pull him away with enticements of meeting more of the neighborhood hound-and-hunt lovers. Adam went with open reluctance and an apologetic look over his shoulder at Helena.
She was content, however. So different than she had anticipated, the evening was turning out to be rather enjoyable. Adam, of course, made all the difference. Moving to where some chairs had been set up, she found an empty one and sat, content to be alone for a moment and watch the crowd.
The woman seated next to her turned. When her eyes focused on her new companion, they widened for a moment and the mouth that had been pursed and ready with a greeting fell open. Her hand clasped over it, as if to hide the evidence of her shock.
Feeling quite unlike herself, Helena chuckled softly and pulled the woman’s hand down with a gentle tug. “I know,” she said lightly, “it is quite unexpected to find me here.” She held out her hand. “It is clear you know me, but I have not made your acquaintance.”
The Sleeping Beauty Page 20
