“Why did you come?” she managed to ask, her pulse in her throat.
“Do you think I’d let you leave London without saying good-bye?”
“I didn’t expect—but I wanted—that is, I’m glad—” Flustered, she fell silent.
Sliding a hand to the center of her back, Rhys murmured, “Come with me.” He guided her toward a tall wooden barrier that had been set up partially across the platform. The wall was plastered with advertisements and notices about alterations to train services.
“My lady!” Helen heard from behind her, and she stopped to glance over her shoulder.
The family footman, Peter, stared at her distractedly as he tried to buffer the rest of the family from the onslaught of departing passengers. “My lady, the earl bade me to keep you all together.”
“I’ll look after her,” Rhys told him curtly.
“But sir—”
Kathleen, who had just noticed Rhys’s presence, interrupted the footman. “Allow them five minutes, Peter.” She sent Helen an imploring glance and held up five fingers to make certain she understood. Helen responded with a hasty nod.
Rhys pulled her to a sheltered corner created by the wooden barrier and a cast-iron support column. He turned his back to the crowd, concealing her from view.
“I had a devil of a time finding you.” His low voice undercut the din around them. “You’re at the wrong platform.”
“Cousin Devon has gone to find out where we should wait.”
An icy breeze teased a few white-blond wisps of hair loose from her coiffure and seemed to slip beneath the collar of her dress. She shivered violently, trying to huddle deeper into her cape.
“I can hear your teeth chattering,” Rhys said. “Come closer.”
With mingled dismay and longing, she saw that he was unfastening the front of his double-breasted coat. “I don’t think—there’s no need—”
Ignoring her protests, he pulled her against his body and wrapped the sides of the coat around her.
Helen closed her eyes as warmth and private darkness surrounded her, the thick wool muffling the busy clamor of their surroundings. She felt like a small woodland creature nestling in its burrow, hidden from dangers that lurked outside. He was large and strong and warm, and she couldn’t help relaxing into his embrace, her body recognizing his as a source of comfort.
“Better?” His voice was soft against her ear.
Helen nodded, her head on his chest. “Why didn’t you reply to my last letter?” she asked in a muffled voice.
The fine leather of his black-gloved fingers slid beneath her chin, nudging it upward. The mocking glint in his eyes was unmistakable. “Perhaps I didn’t like your question.”
“I was afraid—that is, I thought—”
“That I might have changed my mind? That I might not want you any longer?” His voice was edged with something that sent a prickle down the back of her neck. “Would you like proof of how I feel, cariad?”
Before she could reply, his mouth crushed over hers in a demonstration that was nothing less than scandalous. He didn’t care. He wanted her, and he intended for her to know it, feel it, taste it. Her hands inched up his shoulders and around his neck, clinging for balance as her knees gave way. The kiss went on in timeless suspension, his lips restless and searing, while his hand cradled her cheek in cool black leather. It wasn’t anger that drove him, she realized dazedly. He had come because he wanted reassurance. He was no more certain of her than she was of him.
With a rough vibration in his throat, he ended the kiss and lifted his head. His breath came in bursts of steam that scalded the wintry air. He loosened the coat from around her and stepped back, leaving her to stand on her own again.
Helen’s body quivered at the onslaught of fresh cold air.
Rhys reached into his coat, rummaging through an inner pocket. Taking Helen’s gloved hand, he pressed a small sealed envelope against her palm. Before she could ask what it was, he said, “Tell your family to go to platform eight, by way of the footbridge.”
“But when—”
“Hwyl fawr am nawr.” He took a last look at her, a lonely-demon flicker in his eyes. “‘Good-bye for now,’ that means.” After turning her in the direction of her family, he nudged her forward. Helen paused and turned to look back, his name on her lips. But he was already walking away, cutting through the crowd with purposeful strides.
HELEN TUCKED THE letter in her close-fitting sleeve and didn’t read it until much later, after Devon had bustled the family to the correct train at platform eight, and they were all seated in a first-class carriage. When the train had pulled away from Waterloo Station, beginning the two-hour journey to Hampshire, she carefully inched out the envelope.
Seeing that the twins were staring outside the window, and Kathleen was engaged in conversation with Devon, Helen broke the dark red wax seal and unfolded the letter.
Helen,
You ask if I regret our engagement.
No. I regret every minute that you’re out of my sight. I regret every step that doesn’t bring me closer to you.
My last thought each night is that you should be in my arms. There is no peace or pleasure in my empty bed, where I sleep with you only in dreams and wake to curse the dawn.
If I had the right, I would forbid you to go anywhere without me. Not out of selfishness, but because being apart from you is like trying to live without breathing.
Think on that. You’ve stolen my very breath, cariad. And now I’m left to count the days until I take it back from you, kiss by kiss.
Winterborne
Chapter 12
KNEELING IN FRONT OF a bookcase in an upstairs reading nook, Helen sorted through rows of books and set aside the ones she wanted to pack. In the three weeks since she had returned to Eversby Priory, she had accumulated a room full of possessions to take to her new home. Each item held personal meaning, such as a rosewood sewing box that had belonged to her mother, a porcelain dresser tray painted with a parade of cherubs, a children’s bath rug embroidered with Noah’s ark and its animal passengers, and a mahogany parlor chair with a triangular seat that her maternal grandmother had always occupied during visits.
Staying busy was the only way Helen could find to distract herself from the melancholy longing that had invaded her heart. Hiraeth, she thought gloomily. The familiar comforts of home had lost their appeal, and her ordinary habits had turned into drudgery. Even caring for her orchids and practicing the piano had become tedious.
How could anything seem interesting in comparison with Rhys Winterborne?
She’d had so little time alone with him, but in those few hours she had been possessed and pleasured with such intensity that now her days were dull by comparison.
Reaching the row of her mother’s orchid journals, Helen pulled them out and placed them one by one in a canvas overland trunk. The set comprised twelve inexpensive notebooks covered in plain blue cloth, with pages that had been glued to the spine rather than stitched. Their value to Helen, however, was inestimable.
Jane, Lady Trenear, had filled each one with information about orchids, including sketches of different varieties and notations about their individual temperaments and properties. Sometimes she had used the journals as a diary, weaving personal thoughts and observations throughout.
Reading the journals had helped Helen to understand her elusive mother far more than she ever had in life. Jane had stayed in London for weeks or months at a time, and left the rearing of her children to governesses and servants. Even when Jane had been at Eversby Priory, she had seemed more like a glamorous guest than a parent. Helen couldn’t remember ever having seen her mother less than perfectly attired and perfumed, with jewels at her ears, throat, and wrists, and a fresh orchid in her hair.
No one would have thought that Jane, generally admired for her beauty and wit, had a care in the world. However, in the privacy of her journals, Jane had revealed herself as an anxious, lonely woman, frustrated by her inabilit
y to produce more than one son.
I’ve been split open like a sausage, Jane had written after the twins were born, by a pair of daughters. Before I even arose from my childbed, the earl thanked me for producing “two more parasites.” Why couldn’t at least one of them have been a boy?
And in another notebook . . . Little Helen is proving to be a help with the twins. I own, I like her better than I once did, although I fear she’ll always be a pale, rabbit-faced creature.
Despite the stinging words, Helen felt sympathy for Jane, who had been increasingly unhappy in her marriage to Edmund, Lord Trenear. He’d been a disenchanted and difficult husband. His temper had veered from scorching to freezing, rarely lingering in-between.
It wasn’t until after her mother’s death that Helen had finally understood why her parents had always seemed reluctant to acknowledge her existence.
She had learned the truth while nursing her father through his last illness, brought on by a day of hunting out in the cold and damp. Edmund had gone into a rapid decline despite the doctor’s efforts to heal him. As the earl sank into a half-delirium, Helen had taken turns with Quincy, his trusted valet, to sit at his bedside. They had administered tonic and sage tea to soothe his sore throat, and applied poultices to his chest.
“The doctor will return soon,” Helen had murmured to her father, gently wiping traces of saliva from his chin after he’d suffered a coughing fit. “He was called away to see a patient in the village, but he said it wouldn’t take long.”
Opening his rheumy eyes, the earl had said in a dry, scoured voice, “I want one of my children . . . with me . . . at the end. Not you.”
Thinking that he hadn’t recognized her, she had replied gently, “It’s Helen, Papa. I’m your daughter.”
“You’re not mine . . . never were. Your mother . . . took a lover . . .” The exertion of talking had provoked more coughing. When the throat spasms had calmed, he had rested silently with his eyes closed, refusing to look at her.
“There’s no truth to it,” Quincy had told Helen later. “The poor master is raving mad from fever. And your mother, God bless her, was admired by so many men that it poisoned his lordship with jealousy. You’re every spit a Ravenel, my lady. Never doubt it.”
Helen had pretended to believe Quincy. But she had known that the earl had told her the truth. It explained why she had neither the temperament nor the looks of the Ravenels. No wonder her parents had despised her—she was a child born of sin.
During the earl’s last lucid moments, Helen had brought the twins to his bedside to say good-bye. Although she had sent for Theo, he hadn’t been able to arrive from London in time. After their father had fallen insensate, Helen hadn’t been able to find it in her heart to make the twins attend his deathwatch.
“Do we have to stay?” Cassandra had whispered, swabbing her red eyes with a handkerchief as she sat with Pandora on a little bench by the window. They had no affectionate memories of him to share, no advice or stories they could reminisce over. All they could do was sit silently and listen to his faint rattling breaths, and wait miserably for him to pass.
“He wouldn’t want us here anyway,” Pandora had said in a monotone. “He’s never cared beans for either of us.”
Taking pity on her young sisters, Helen had gone to embrace and kiss them both. “I’ll stay with him,” she had promised. “Go say a prayer for him, and find something quiet to do.”
They had left gratefully. Cassandra had paused at the threshold to steal one last glance at her father, while Pandora had walked out in a brisk stride without looking back.
Going to the bedside, Helen had looked down at the earl, a tall, lean man who appeared shrunken in the vast bed. His complexion was gray-tinged and waxen, his swollen neck obscuring the shape of his jaw. All his great will had burned down to the frailest flicker of life. Helen had reflected that the earl seemed to have faded slowly in the two years after Jane had died. Perhaps he had been grieving for her. Theirs had been a complex relationship, two people who had been bound by disappointments and resentments the way others were bound by love.
Helen had dared to take the earl’s lax hand, a collection of veins and bones contained in a loose envelope of skin. “I’m sorry Theo isn’t here,” she had said humbly. “I know I’m not the one wanted with you at the end. I’m sorry for that, too. But I can’t let you face this alone.”
As she had finished, Quincy had entered the room, his deep-set black eyes gleaming with tears that slipped down to his white-whiskered jowls. Without a word, he had gone to occupy the bench at the window, determined to wait with her.
For an hour, they had watched over the earl as each strained breath grew softer than the last. Until finally Edmund, Lord Trenear, had passed away in the company of a servant and a daughter who possessed not a drop of his blood.
After the earl’s passing, Helen had never dared to talk to Theo about her parentage. She felt certain that he must have known. It was why he had never wanted to bring her out in society, and why his attitude toward her had held echoes of his father’s contempt. Neither had Helen been able to bring herself to confide in Kathleen or the twins. Even though she hadn’t done anything wrong, she felt the shame of her illegitimate birth acutely. No matter how she tried to ignore it, the secret had lurked inside like a dose of venom waiting to be released.
It bothered Helen a great deal that she hadn’t yet told Rhys. She knew how he loved the idea of marrying a daughter of the peerage. It would be incredibly difficult to confess that she wasn’t a Ravenel. Rhys would be disappointed. He would think less of her.
Still . . . he had a right to know.
Sighing heavily, Helen packed the rest of the journals into the trunk. As she cast a cursory glance at the empty bookshelf, she noticed a little pale bundle wedged in the dusty corner. Frowning, she lowered to her elbows and reached into the bookcase to pry it loose.
A wad of writing paper.
Sitting up, she opened the crumpled mass carefully and discovered a few lines of her mother’s handwriting. The words were more widely spaced than usual, sloping downward within their sentences.
My dearest Albion,
It is foolish, I know, to appeal to your heart when I have come to doubt its existence. Why has there been no word from you? What of the promises you made? If you abandon me, you ensure that Helen will never be loved by her own mother. I watch her sob in the cradle and cannot bring myself to touch her. She must cry alone, uncomforted, just as I must now that you have forsaken me.
I won’t observe the decencies. My passion cannot be commanded by reason. Come back to me, and I swear I will send the baby away. I will tell everyone that she is sickly and must be raised by a nurse in a warm, dry climate. Edmund won’t object—he’ll be only too glad to have her removed from the household.
Nothing has to change for us, Albion, as long as we are discreet.
There was nothing more. Helen turned over the unfinished letter, but the other side was blank.
Helen found herself laying the wrinkled rectangle of paper on the floor and pressing it flat with her palm. She felt hollow, distanced from a host of feelings that she had no desire to acknowledge or examine.
Albion.
She had never wanted to know her father’s name. But she couldn’t help wondering what kind of man he had been. Was he still alive? And why had Jane never completed the letter?
“Helen!”
The unexpected cry caused her to start. Blindly she lifted her head as Cassandra raced into the room.
“The mails have been delivered,” Cassandra exclaimed, “and there’s a crate from Winterborne’s! The footman is carrying it into the receiving room downstairs. You must come directly, we want to—” She paused with a frown. “Your face is all red. What’s the matter?”
“Book dust,” Helen managed to say. “I’ve been packing away Mama’s journals, and it made me sneeze dreadfully.”
“Won’t you finish that later, please, dear Helen? We want
to open your presents right away. Some of the boxes are marked ‘perishable’ and we think there may be sweets inside.”
“I’ll come down in a few minutes,” Helen said distractedly, sliding the letter beneath a fold of her skirts.
“Shall I help you with the books?”
“Thank you, dear, but I would rather take care of it myself.”
Cassandra heaved a sigh and said wistfully, “It’s so difficult to wait.”
Helen’s gaze remained on her sister, as she noticed that Cassandra had recently lost the gangly, coltish look of childhood. She bore an astonishing resemblance to Jane, with the immaculate prettiness of her bone structure and bow-shaped lips, the sunlight-colored curls, and heavily lashed blue eyes.
Fortunately Cassandra was a softer, infinitely kinder version of their mother. And Pandora, for all her prankish high spirits, was the most sweet-natured girl imaginable. Thank God for the twins—they had always been the constant in her life, a source of love that had never faltered.
“Why don’t you start opening the boxes without me?” Helen suggested. “I’ll be down there quite soon. If anyone objects, tell them I’ve designated you as my official representative.”
Cassandra grinned with satisfaction. “If there are sweets, I’ll set some aside for you before Pandora eats them all.” She bolted from the room with unladylike vigor, screaming out as she hurried down the grand staircase, “Helen says to start without her!”
Helen smiled absently and sat for a moment, pondering the canvas trunk with its invisible weight of secrets and painful memories. Both Jane and Edmund had gone to their eternal rest, and yet it seemed they still had the power to hurt their children from the grave.
But she wouldn’t let them.
Decisively she closed the lid of the canvas trunk, silencing the whispers of the past. She picked up her mother’s unfinished letter, carried it to the hearth, and laid it over a cluster of glowing coals. The dusty paper contracted and writhed on the heat before erupting into white flame.