“It’s not the bruises that concern me. It’s my modesty. I’d prefer to cover up.”
“And have everyone remark on it?” Jenny had shaken her head. “No. It’s bad enough you have no jewelry. I’ll not have people say you’ve become a dowd.”
Seated in the second tier private box that Mr. Finchley had managed to obtain for them, Helena didn’t feel very dowdy. Even so, she had no doubt that people were talking about her. In the light of the gas lamps and the glittering pendant chandelier, she’d seen many a pair of opera glasses trained on her—and on Justin, too.
“They’ll drop in at the interval,” she said. “They’ll want to meet you.”
Justin appeared unperturbed by this information. In his black evening coat and trousers, a cream silk cravat knotted at his neck, he looked perfectly at home among the throng of well-dressed gentlemen and fashionably clad ladies. He also looked remarkably handsome. “It’s what we’re here for.”
She looked at him a moment longer, a queer ache of longing twisting in her chest. When he turned and caught her gaze, she offered him a faint, rueful smile. “Do you wish you were back in Devon?”
“At the Abbey?”
“You have so much to do there. Mr. Boothroyd must be at sixes and sevens without you.”
“He’ll manage,” Justin said. “Besides, where in King’s Abbot could we have had an evening such as this?”
Helena opened the delicate paper fan she wore on a silken cord at her wrist. Its leaves were painted with an elaborately detailed scene of a grand house in the country set in a scenic landscape. Giles had purchased it for her from the celebrated fanmaker M. Duvelleroy when they’d visited the Crystal Palace so many years before.
“It’s a terrible play,” she said.
“I was speaking of the company.”
“Oh.” Helena fanned herself.
“You look beautiful this evening. Have I told you?”
He hadn’t. When she’d come down the stairs in Half Moon Street, dressed in all her finery, he’d merely looked at her. There had been a brief, unsettling glint in his eyes. Fierce and hungry. Rather like a ravening wolf. It had given her a trembling feeling in her stomach.
“Then again, you always do,” he mused. “You would think I’d become used to it by now, but it strikes me anew every time I see you.”
“You needn’t pay me pretty compliments.”
“Ah. That’s right. I’d forgotten.” His mouth curved in a dry smile. “You’d prefer I refrain from any suggestion of romance.”
“I’d prefer you not tease me and put me to the blush.”
“I’m not teasing,” he said. “But I’ll refrain from romancing you in future, if that’s what you wish.”
“That was the arrangement, wasn’t it? No romance. Only friendship.”
“And something more than friendship,” he reminded her.
Helena searched his face for some sign of what he was thinking. “Is romance the something more?”
His expression was unreadable “You tell me.”
It was dim in the theatre, the sound of the play and the audience a steady swell of noise in the background. And yet there was privacy to be found amid so many people. Indeed, at that moment, their box on the second tier felt like a world apart from it all. A gaslit sanctuary in which she could safely give voice to the innermost yearnings of her heart. “No,” she said. “The something more isn’t romance. It’s love.”
Justin stared at her, his stern visage half shadowed in the gaslight. “Love,” he repeated. His deep voice was as expressionless as his face.
Embarrassment swiftly extinguished the brief flare of hope in Helena’s breast. “Speaking in general terms,” she added. “Philosophically, not personally.”
“Ah,” he said. “I see.”
She fixed her attention back on the stage.
Justin sat beside her in grim silence. Once or twice she felt his eyes on her, but she didn’t regard it. The curtain would lower momentarily. There’d be plenty to deal with then. She needed to keep her countenance. To refrain from upsetting herself over something so foolish as a perceived rejection of her burgeoning feelings.
If anyone had a right to be upset in this relationship, it was Justin. She’d upended his entire life. First by marrying him under false pretenses, and then by thrusting him into the middle of a scandal. She had no right to ask him for anything more. Not when he’d already given so much of himself to her and her wretched cause.
After several long minutes of staring at the stage, affecting not to care about such trivial concepts as love and affection, the curtain finally lowered and the lights in the theatre went up.
The restless crowd rose to their feet, the sound of voices talking and laughing swelling to a crescendo.
Helena wafted her fan, watching as the boxes across the theatre emptied. Gentlemen left to bring their ladies refreshment, and ladies left to visit their friends. It wouldn’t be long now.
“Do you see anyone you know?” Justin asked.
She nodded. “Several people.”
A trill of nervous tension quickened her pulse.
Had they adequately prepared to meet the inquiring throng? Moments ago, she’d felt relatively confident. She and Justin planned to say that they’d met while she was on holiday in Devon. That they’d been introduced by a mutual acquaintance. It wasn’t too far from the truth. However, considering the collective curiosity of polite society, she suddenly wondered if it would be enough of an explanation.
Perhaps they should have come up with a more compelling tale for how they’d met and married? Something to explain how an earl’s daughter would find herself wed to a former soldier. A man with no family or connections to speak of.
But there was no time to formulate a new story. Before she could articulate her concerns, the first visitor made his way into their box.
Peregrine Trowbridge, Viscount Wexford was a fair-haired rake with a penchant for loud waistcoats and fast horses. Helena had been acquainted with his younger sister in the years before Giles left for India.
“Lady Helena,” he said, bowing. “I knew I recognized you from across the theatre.”
“Lord Wexford, may I present my husband, Captain Justin Thornhill.”
Justin had risen when Lord Wexford entered. He stood beside her chair, somewhat protectively, or so she imagined. “Wexford,” he said.
“Thornhill.” Lord Wexford shook Justin’s hand. “Lately of Her Majesty’s army in India, is that right? I’ve been hearing about your marriage to Lady Helena. What a march you’ve stolen on the rest of us, sir. I daresay it was Giles’s doing. He always did like to joke that he’d see his sister married to an officer before he’d consent to giving her to one of us.”
Helena’s heart contracted at the mention of her brother, but she managed to keep her face impassive. Justin’s hand came to rest lightly on her shoulder.
“Where are you residing in London?” Lord Wexford asked. “Not with Castleton, I presume, else you’d be sitting in his box across the way.”
“We’ve taken a house in Half Moon Street,” Justin said.
“Fancy that. Lady Poole, the widow of old Lord Eustace Poole, resides in Half Moon Street. I was calling on her only last week.” Lord Wexford paused to summon someone else into the box. “Letty? Come and meet Lady Helena’s new husband.”
Lady Leticia Staverley entered their theatre box in an abundance of lace skirts caught up in a spray of wax roses. “Helena, my darling!” she cried.
Helena stood to greet her, receiving Letty’s kiss on the cheek with a smile that was only partially forced. She’d known Letty in her youth, but the two of them had never been particularly close. After Giles’s disappearance, Helena had heard from her only once.
“I haven’t seen you in ages!” she said, clutching Helena’s hand. “You haven’t been at a single e
vent I’ve attended since last autumn.”
“Letty, this is Lady Helena’s new husband, Captain Justin Thornhill,” Lord Wexford said. “He served with Giles in India, don’t you know?”
Helena exchanged a fleeting glance with Justin. Neither corrected Lord Wexford’s misapprehension and, in seconds, the moment in which they might have done so passed into oblivion.
It was a strange and rather fortuitous thing, she reflected as a procession of old acquaintances entered and exited their box. Soon, everyone assumed she’d met Justin through the auspices of her brother. They believed Giles had encouraged a correspondence between the two of them. After his disappearance the previous year, and following her period of mourning, they seemed to think it only natural that she and Justin would wed.
“Your uncle must have been furious,” Lady Elmira Yardley said. She was an elderly woman, thrice widowed, and perpetually garbed in layers of black crepe and jet. Her canny gaze flitted from Justin to Helena and back again. “Is that why you’re not wearing your jewels, my dear? Has Castleton kept them from you?”
“Indeed, ma’am,” Helena said. “My uncle has behaved rather badly since my brother’s disappearance in India.”
“Has he?” Lady Elmira edged closer, her eyes glinting and her face flushed with ill-disguised anticipation. She had a notorious thirst for gossip. “In what manner, my dear?”
“In an ungentlemanly manner,” Helena replied. “As I’m sure you can imagine.”
Lady Elmira brows lowered. “Yes, yes. I know too well of what you speak. Castleton has ever been a villain. Haven’t I said so these twenty years and more?”
After she departed from the box, Helena turned to Justin to explain. “My uncle courted Lady Elmira after her first husband died. She thought he would propose, but when the moment arrived, he couldn’t be brought to the point. She’s never forgiven him for the humiliation.”
“What do you suppose she’ll tell everyone he’s done to you?” Justin asked.
Helena shrugged. “I can’t guess. Though I doubt it could be anything worse than the truth.”
They didn’t stay to finish the play. They’d already achieved their purpose. People had seen Helena and talked to her. They could attest that she both looked and sounded perfectly well. As an added bonus, Justin had somehow managed to find himself elevated to the position of best friend to Helena’s late brother. He supposed it was the only way all the toplofty lords and ladies they’d conversed with could reconcile his marriage to her.
It bothered him more than a little. He didn’t like to be made to feel as if he were lacking somehow. But after the parade of Lord So-and-Sos and Lady Whatsits, how could he feel anything else?
He was naught but the bastard son of a baronet. And not even a fashionable one. Indeed, next to glittering society figures like Lord Wexford and Lady Staverley, Sir Oswald seemed a veritable country bumpkin.
And if Sir Oswald wasn’t good enough, then Justin himself was positively unacceptable. Even owning the Abbey couldn’t make him so.
He hailed a hansom for them from one of the many idling about outside the theatre and assisted Helena in. Her skirts filled the cab in a frothy sea of lustrous blue silk and lace. When he climbed in after her, he was obliged to carefully move them out of the way lest he crush them under his legs.
As the hansom sprang into motion, rolling swiftly down the busy West End street, Helena leaned back against the seat with a weary sigh. The curving, creamy expanse of her bosom—the sight of which had rendered him speechless when she’d come down the stairs in Half Moon Street—was now concealed by an opera cloak, an expensive-looking affair of white cashmere trimmed in swansdown. She held it around herself like a warm, luxurious blanket.
“Cold?” he asked.
“Tired,” she said. “It’s been a long, exhausting day.”
“You may avail yourself of my shoulder, if you like.”
A smile touched her lips. “Do you know, I believe I shall.” She rested her head lightly on his arm. It was a bit awkward given the disparity in their heights.
“Here.” Justin shifted position, setting his arm around her and drawing her close against his chest. “This is better.”
“Mmm. Much more comfortable.”
He held her gently as the hansom cab rolled toward Half Moon Street. They didn’t speak. There was nothing to say, really.
But as each minute passed, their mutual silence seemed to gain in significance.
“Helena,” he said at last. His voice was rough as gravel. “In the theatre, you said that the something more than friendship we spoke of on the train was love.”
She stiffened a little in his arms. “I didn’t mean that you…that we—”
“Yes, I know. You were speaking in general terms. Philosophically, not personally.” He exhaled heavily. “The thing is…I’m not sure I even know what love is, philosophically or personally.”
“Haven’t you ever been in love before?”
“Not that I’m aware.”
“Never?” She sounded incredulous.
“Is it so shocking?”
“A little. You’re a man of the world. Handsome and of good character. I’d have thought ladies would have flocked to you.”
Handsome? He filed that compliment away for later. “There have been some women in my life, certainly, but I didn’t love them. And, er, I wouldn’t call them ladies.”
“Oh.”
He paused. “Have you?”
“Have I what?”
“Ever been in love?”
“No. Not in a romantic way. Though I did once have a tendre for one of my brother’s friends. Lord Hartright. He used to tease me and pull my hair. I hoped, when I grew up, he might marry me.”
Justin didn’t know quite how to reply to that. Was it ridiculous to be jealous of a boy from her childhood? Yes, he decided. Patently absurd. And yet…
“Does this budding lothario currently reside in London?” he asked with studied indifference. “Are we likely to cross paths with him?”
“Lord Hartright? Oh no, he’s long since married and retired to his estate in Northumberland. He has six children now, I believe.”
“He didn’t leave you heartbroken, then.”
Helena laughed softly. “No, indeed. He didn’t have my heart. I was never in love with him. I’ve never been in love with anyone.”
“No? You must have had an army of suitors.”
“Not quite so many as that. In truth, my father didn’t think any man was good enough for the daughter of the Earl of Castleton.”
“No doubt he was right.”
“It mattered little in the end. I soon went into mourning—first for him and then for Giles. Courtship and marriage was the last thing on my mind. As for falling in love…I have no experience at all.” She grew serious. “But I know what it is to love a person. It’s what I felt for my mother and brother.”
He turned his face into her hair. Her coiffure was an intricate arrangement of rolls and plaits, secured at the back with a filigree comb. It smelled of jasmine, sweet and faintly exotic. “Describe it to me,” he said.
“It’s a special bond. A kinship of shared memories and experience. But it’s more than that. Oh, I can’t explain it.” She struggled for the right words. “It’s…It’s when you see a person and your spirits lift. When their happiness means more to you than your own. When you’d do anything for them, sacrifice anything, even if the sacrifice would hurt you or make you unhappy.”
Justin thought of the hell Helena had been put through in the year since her brother disappeared in India. “If they loved you in return, they wouldn’t ask for such a sacrifice.”
“They wouldn’t have to ask,” she said. “You’d give it regardless.”
As she had done. As she was still doing. “Do you think your brother would be happy to know wha
t you’ve endured on his behalf?”
His question seemed to take her aback. When she answered it, her voice was threaded with emotion. “I think he would be sad. He willed me that money to secure my future. He wanted to make certain I’d always be taken care of. That I’d always be safe.”
Justin didn’t know anything about Giles Reynolds, late Earl of Castleton. He might well have been a good and decent brother. Nevertheless, Justin felt an overpowering anger toward the man. “If he wanted you to be safe, he shouldn’t have abandoned you. A man who’s just inherited an earldom has no cause to continue soldiering. He could have come home, looked after you.”
Helena raised her head from his chest. Her eyes found his in the light of the carriage lamp. “You don’t understand. He was going to come home when the rebellion was suppressed. He simply wasn’t ready yet. Giles couldn’t bear life in England. Not after my mother died. He was restless. He needed a purpose. Something active that would keep him from brooding.”
“And what about what you needed?”
“Me?”
“He left you to shoulder the burden. And then he went and got himself killed. A course of action any soldier should have known was a distinct possibility.”
Helena stared at him. Her mouth trembled. “He’s not dead, Justin.”
Oh, hell. Justin’s heart sank as he looked at her face. He couldn’t have chosen a worse thing to say if he’d tried.
Her fingers tightened on the lapel of his evening coat. “Do you think he is?”
“I don’t know,” he said, his voice gone gruff. “Probably.”
Her face crumpled. “I can’t—” She stopped and looked away from him in a visible effort to regain her composure. “I can’t accept it. I have to believe he’s coming back.”
Justin wouldn’t let her hide from him. He drew her close again, urging her to meet his eyes. “Why, sweetheart?” He scarcely registered the endearment he uttered, only vaguely aware that it was one he’d never used with any woman before.
“Because he’s all I have,” she said. “All that’s left of my family.”
Justin held her gaze. “He’s not all you have.”
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