Mme de Vauteuil ushered him in hastily and showed him into a sitting room. He watched as she picked up what looked like a ragged pillow in the midst of being repaired out of a chair and invited him to sit in its place. Casting the pillow (at which she seemed to be laughing) next to her, she sat on the settee across from him.
She was most charming, with her French accent and her deep blue eyes, he thought. Perhaps this would not be so difficult. She seemed to trust him well enough so far.
And then the girl entered the room, carrying a full tray. She wore a plain dress, horribly cut and of rough fabric; her dark hair was pulled back into a tight chignon, low over the ears. Such an unflattering style.
Her eyes, a dark brown rimmed in heavy black lashes, caught his own. She was... there was not a single word that came to his mind to describe her. Plain. She had a pleasant enough face, pleasant brown eyes. She was pleasant-looking. But at his second glance, he realized his mistake. She was beautiful. Breathtaking.
It was as if her beauty were hiding in plain sight. She obviously did little enough to showcase her looks, and her beauty was unassuming. But there was no way to hide the fineness of her bones, the depths of her eyes, skin like porcelain. She was like a magnet. He found he could not look away. And every moment that he looked at her, he discovered she was more beautiful than the last.
A housemaid, he told himself. Or no, perhaps a village miss who visited to practice her French. All he could think was that she was too lovely to be hidden in such a place as this, and that she would look so much more beautiful in a pretty yellow dress and her hair worn high to show her neck.
Gradually, he realized that Mme de Vauteuil was speaking, and the girl was looking down at the tea tray now with a closed expression on her face. An instant before she looked away, he thought he'd seen something like fear in her expression. He forced himself to listen to his hostess.
"You must meet Lord Summerdale, a friend of my dear Richard."
He stepped closer as she made the introductions, assuming that this was, in fact, not the maid. He was ridiculously close to nervousness as he prepared to take the girl's hand. She looked away from him. Shy, he thought. Shy and enchanting.
"And this is Hélène Dehaven, my lord," said the Frenchwoman placidly.
The shock came belatedly, after his brain had time to sift through the heavy accent on her name. He had a hard time hiding the surprise that flashed across his face, not the least because Helen Dehaven looked full at him with a contempt he had never seen directed at himself from a stranger. For reasons he could not hope to know, her look was full of distaste and, he fancied, resentment.
He was sure they had never met before. Even if she knew him to be acquainted with her brother, it would not account for such a force of feeling. She would surely have snatched her fingers back as he briefly bowed over her hand, if she could have managed to do it with any grace. Instead, she was coldly formal.
"A pleasure to make your acquaintance, my lord." She said my lord almost as though it were a scathing epithet. Even through the lack of warmth in her tone, the first thing he acknowledged was that her voice was, like everything else about her, exceptionally pleasant.
"Enchanted," he said. A moment ago, he would have meant it. Now, if he were to be honest, he found her baffling. It seemed she despised him, and to find that confusing attitude alongside her agreeable appearance was jarring.
They all sat as Helen Dehaven silently served tea. He noticed as Mme de Vauteuil chattered on about Jack, the village smith, and his newly married nephew's roof, that the chilliness in the room was not entirely Lady Helen's doing. Marie-Anne de Vauteuil seemed to have retrenched from her earlier friendliness. He began to feel like an intruder, which was a familiar enough feeling. There was an invisible line in the sand, and he was clearly on the opposite side from his lovely hostesses.
Lady Helen did not speak at all. She seemed content to let Mme de Vauteuil and him carry on the meaningless conversation. After explaining that Jack was two villages away and would most likely be unavailable well into the evening, Marie-Anne turned to Helen Dehaven.
"Will Daniel Black perhaps be able to help a stranded gentleman, Hélène?"
Lady Helen scrupulously avoided his eyes and spoke directly to her friend. "He could not help except to offer his cart for hire." There was not a trace of any emotion in her voice.
Stephen cleared his throat and tried not to stare at her. He knew he was searching for signs of her personality, and he knew just as well that she would show none. It was telling enough that they were both obviously on friendly terms with the common inhabitants of the village. But then, she could hardly afford to be choosy about the company she kept.
"I beg you both not to tax yourselves with solving my predicament. I can only thank you for your kindness."
He realized how he had stupidly created the perfect opening for his own departure. He hadn't meant it to sound as if he intended to leave at that moment. A stupid mistake, one from which he must immediately recover if he was to establish any kind of rapport with Helen Dehaven. He felt clumsy in the face of their vague animosity.
He addressed Lady Helen directly. "If you could direct me to Mr. Black?"
Fortunately, both women seemed at a bit of a loss. From Mme de Vauteuil's confused explanation, it seemed Daniel Black was difficult to find. Down the road and past the pub, on the opposite side of the village, down a dirt track, but not the track that led straight, it curved to the right and was half-hidden by a tree older than anyone currently living. His head reeled with the thought of finding the man. It was perfect. He proceeded to misunderstand every turn of the path until it was abundantly clear he would never get out of the village without their direct and immediate help.
Taking a deep breath, Helen Dehaven spoke. "He lives not far from where I am going after visiting with Madame de Vauteuil." Her tone was reluctant, as if he had tortured her for the information. "I shall be happy to show you the way, my lord." She sounded anything but happy about it.
He found himself taking his leave of Marie-Anne de Vauteuil at her front door, with Helen Dehaven standing next to him and tying her bonnet. After the difficulties he'd had in finding the woman, it seemed incredible that she should be preparing to accompany him on a ramble through the village. He wanted above all else to understand her apparent hostility toward him. But that was not why he had sought her out.
"I am so sorry to see you go, Lord Summerdale. We did not have much opportunity to speak of Richard, and I do enjoy to meet his friends," Mme de Vauteuil murmured. She was not exactly insincere, but she left no doubt that she in no way wished to suggest he was welcome to stay longer.
The villagers had described her as "real Society," and so he must attempt an appeal to her social graces. Fortunately, she seemed not to have lost them along with her virtue.
"I would be most pleased to visit with you again sometime, madame. Under less inconvenient circumstances, one hopes. I hope I may call on you again?"
He watched her face turn into a stone wall as she seemed to grope for an appropriate response. Almost imperceptibly, she glanced toward Lady Helen before answering.
"Of course, monsieur, it will be a pleasure to have you call again, but surely you will not be here in Bartle often?" She made it sound as if he proposed to visit her in the Sahara.
"My manor is not far, and I plan to stay for some months in the area. I'm sure I will not be able to resist your company again, madame. As I said, I wish to assure myself of your welfare, for the sake of Mr. Shipley's memory." There was no need to inform her that he and Richard Shipley had met exactly once, and that he was much better acquainted with the man's horrible family. "I shall be passing this way again next week," he stated with finality.
Before she could find an excuse to be unavailable to visitors next week, he turned toward Lady Helen expectantly. In the late summer light, her hair shone.
"Au revoir, Marie-Anne. Ne te préoccupe pas."
Do not worry. For
Mme de Vauteuil did look slightly worried for her. The two of them were protective of each other, anyone could see. She took leave of her friend with a kiss to the cheek. He offered his arm to her as she turned to the path. She failed to notice it, purposely. There was no mistaking her coldness.
As he led the horse into the road, he watched her walk ahead of him. She carried herself stiffly, as though marching toward an important task. There was no suggestion of leisure in her step. The dress she wore emphasized nothing in her figure. Of average height and medium build, she was really physically unremarkable; even her face was unassuming at first glance. Walking ahead of him, she was just a drab sketch of a country woman. He had a growing suspicion that she took great pains to appear so, with her dress and her hairstyle that would horrify the London ladies.
Any other man would not have looked at her twice.
"You live here in the village, Lady Helen?"
Her pace slowed and she turned her head in his direction to answer. "Not far from here." That was all.
He remembered the laughter he had heard before he had entered the house earlier. "You have been friends with Madame de Vauteuil for long?"
"Since she moved here." She was obviously disinclined to converse. He could feel her impatience, and was glad to let the horse walk slowly. It was difficult enough to find topics to discuss with someone whose dishonor followed her everywhere, a fact which he could not let himself forget. But she made it worse with her reticence. He never thought he'd long for the chatter of a typical woman.
"And were you acquainted at all with Mr. Shipley?" he asked casually.
She paused before answering. "No." She suddenly gave him a sharp look. "Were you?" she demanded.
If it was as long a walk to Daniel Black's cart as he'd been hoping, they seemed destined to come to the point of it eventually. He felt a certain respect for the girl for taking the offensive with her rude question.
"You believe I lied?" She did not look away from him, and a part of him almost felt like cheering her on. The other part of him was appalled at her brass. "I suppose I should be insulted. I did know Shipley, slightly. But it is his father the baronet who is better known to me."
It was as if he'd given her a focus for the anger she'd been holding back since his appearance. Her jaw tightened. "And so you've come here to spy on her? Does the family demand a report of her behavior, to be assured that she does not sully their beloved son's name?"
She was vehement and cold at the same time, with a voice that could wither the trees. When he did not answer immediately, her look changed. No less outraged, her expression shifted to one of contempt.
"Or perhaps you wish to try your hand at blackening her name further?"
Her words enraged him in a distant way. It was quite a novel thing, to be so thoroughly insulted without provocation. He let her see exactly what he thought of her eagerness to challenge his propriety, returning her look of disgust in full. It galled him that she would presume to judge him, as if he had given her any reason to think he would act as dishonorably as she once had.
"I have no such intentions." His voice was terse. "In fact, it has been my intention to make your acquaintance, madame, though I am sure I now regret it."
The hardness of her face dissolved a little, a sudden look of fear coming over her features. Her eyes seemed to take him in all at once, as though the reason for his presence would be written on his shirtfront or tucked under the fold of his cravat. He was botching it badly, he knew. Her brother had been accurate in his assessment of her perceptiveness. She had known on first sight of him that he hid his intentions, and in his anger he had confirmed her worst suspicions.
"I have not sought you out to insult you, or to offer you offense of any kind, Lady Helen. On the contrary," he said with a conscious softening of his tone, "I have come on behalf of your brother."
She looked a bit lost at his change in tone and when he mentioned her brother, it was as if everything within her stilled. She stopped in the road, frozen in place and staring at nothing.
"My brother?" she asked. Her voice was harsh. "What does my brother–"
She stopped herself abruptly, and gave a convulsive swallow. For someone on the verge of tears, she controlled herself very well. When she finally looked at up at him, her face was composed and definite, her tone certain.
"My brother does not wish to know of me." And she began walking along again, her chin level, neither proud nor ashamed, as she fixed her eyes on the road ahead.
It was plain to see that she would not be easy to convince. They walked in silence together. He did not often find it so difficult to hide his thoughts about another person. It was because of her past, of course, and because she had angered him. He surreptitiously looked at her profile and tried to reconcile what he knew of her with what he saw next to him.
If he had not known of her past dishonor, he would be inclined to think she looked an admirable young woman. But he did know of it, and knew there was little to admire in it. She had been betrothed to Lord Henley and, though Stephen himself had been abroad during the season of that infamous courtship, even he had heard how shamelessly she had comported herself. Tongues had begun to wag even before her return from a visit to Henley's estate in Ireland, where she had been seen by more than one guest in an unmistakably compromising position.
It would have been a trifling thing, that she had given her virtue to her betrothed before they were wed, but her true sin was that she had then refused to marry Henley. Even knowing it would drag her family, her friends, and Henley down with her, she had simply refused. Six years later her brother, who had been in India as it all happened, remained angry and baffled. According to him, she had simply written that she would not marry Henley, and would remove to the country house she had inherited from her grandmother. And when her brother at last came home to England and demanded a satisfactory explanation, he had not got one.
Wild stories, her brother said vaguely, meant to excuse her crying off. They evidently fell out, and she no longer wished to marry him.
It was hard to imagine why she would act so foolishly. In one misguided act, she had utterly ruined herself. In the aftermath, she had alienated her brother, her only remaining family. As far as Stephen could tell, Lord Whitemarsh truly was unsure what to believe, insisting that Lady Helen had told him wild, incomprehensible tales of her visit to Ireland. Now her brother felt he must learn the truth of it, discreetly. Which was how Stephen found himself here.
Uncertain how best to proceed, he allowed the silence to stretch between them until he judged himself able to continue in a more tolerant vein. He needed to learn her own account of why she had refused Henley before passing his judgment on to her brother, and to do that he must avoid scenes like this.
They were approaching a turn in the path, where she led him around an admittedly ancient tree. The way was narrow and she walked ahead quickly into the shade as though anxious to get to the open light on the opposite side.
"I am sorry if it pains you to hear of your brother, Lady Helen. He hoped that there may, one day, be a reconciliation between the two of you." He remembered the look on Whitemarsh's face as he spoke of his errant sister. There was love there, and a kind of loyalty. She should be reminded of it.
He had spoken softly, but she startled at the first sign of his voice and hurried ahead. Too late, he realized they were alone, in a secluded spot. Without a chaperone, she did as any well-bred lady would do by seeking a more public place to converse with a man. She waited for him in the sunlight.
Keeping her eyes on the horse he led behind him, she steadily asked, "Since the day I left London, he has never implied that he wished even to know me. Yet now he seeks a reconciliation?"
He chose his words carefully. "I believe he wishes to know if it is possible you might welcome his affections. And also," here he gambled that she still cared for her only remaining family, "whether such a reconciliation is warranted."
They went a long time down the
path before she answered.
"So he sends you to try to discover my worthiness?"
When he did not answer this rather uncomfortably insightful comment, she continued. There was no mistaking the chill in her voice.
"I suppose you are meant to be the objective observer. Will you tell me what accounts for this sudden desire to conditionally forgive me?"
"For my part, I am here because I wish to be here." That much was true. "Your brother has been urged by his new bride to make a peace with you. I must tell you she is an excellent woman, whose only wish is your brother's happiness. But he hesitates. He is not yet convinced of the wisdom of it. I came of my own desire to be of service to him."
"So he did not precisely send you to me?"
He did not wish to lie, so he did not answer.
They had reached a small cottage surrounded by fields. She turned to him, waiting for his reply. A boy running toward them from the house saved him.
"Miss Helen! Have you brought the lace? Mum will be so happy and I've saved my penny for the thread and all, and if you can–" He stopped the breathless chatter to register the stranger and the horse. His eyes opened wide and then narrowed at Stephen. "Who's this, then?"
How had Helen Dehaven ever become so friendly with villagers who obviously treated all outsiders to such suspicion and mistrust? The boy looked back and forth between them as if waiting for a kidnapping to take place before his very eyes. Lady Helen laid a hand on his shoulder.
"I am very sorry, Danny, but my attempt at lace was dreadful," she said in a softer tone than Stephen had yet heard from her. She actually smiled. "We shall have to ask Maggie if she has something that will do. And this," she said with a gesture toward Stephen, "is Lord Summerdale. He has come to see your father."
The boy was still looking at him uncertainly. Stephen felt as if he'd suddenly sprouted cloven hooves.
"I'll run and get him, then?" the boy asked Lady Helen. She nodded and gave him a gentle push toward the house, watching him leave.
A Fallen Lady Page 2