“It might surprise you that I know more than you think I do,” her father said with a soft chuckle and came to stand next to her. His hand reached out to take the brooch from his daughter, examining it with a thoughtful expression.
“When I gave this to your mother, I only wished to convey to her my love,” he said and smiled as Helena glanced over to look at him. “And yes, I loved her very much. I still do. Today…today was foolishness on my part, made complicated by the fact that I have been somewhat…lonely since her passing.”
Harcourt motioned to the settee, and she nodded, sitting first and waiting in silence for him to settle himself before speaking.
“So, have you been courting Aunt Phoebe for a long time then?” she asked, feeling awkward in asking, but liking less the idea that she had so little idea what was going on between them.
Harcourt laughed long and hard. “My child, I have never, before today, thought of her in that light. But when I read her note - your note as it turned out - I wondered, for the first time in all these years, if perhaps I did not have to be alone. And I became so enthralled with the idea that I acted…well…out of character.”
Helena’s lips twitched. “You did not seem quite yourself, Father. But…” she thought of the cluttered room, and the unhappiness seemed to hang over Phoebe when she was within those four walls. “You have not given her gifts then?” she asked, staring at the glass jar she still held in her hands.
“I hardly think she would accept one from me, even if I did. No, my dear. She receives her allowance and little else from me. Maybe I have been not as generous as I ought to be. She has never asked for more though so I might have neglected her remuneration.” He smiled, though he still seemed somewhat chagrined. “Why do you ask?”
The clutter of trinkets and jewels seemed suddenly strange as so many things had. How then had she amassed many possessions? “Honestly, Father, I am not sure. I suppose I simply wondered.”
Harcourt set the brooch on the table next to him and then turned to take one of her hands in his, warming her cold fingers between his own. “My girl, it is normal to wish for gifts and trinkets from the person you love. If you are concerned about the Duke…”
Helena’s face flamed for the second time that night. “No! Not at all! I was only thinking out loud!” she exclaimed, not wishing to explain what was only a vague suspicion.
He chuckled. “You simply need to be honest with him. Do not let that brooch nor any arrangements stand between you. The Duke cares for you, Helena, as much as you care for him. You only need to trust yourselves, and more importantly, each other, and you will see what I mean.”
The Duke of York lurched to his feet then. “Now, it seems we have missed the evening meal with all of this nonsense. Shall we see what Bridget can find us for dinner?”
Helena shook her head, still looking at the glass jar. Trust herself. Trust him. Would not this entire courting process be easier if her skin were free of blemishes? What if the only barrier to her true happiness lay in something so small, that a simple lotion could erase the marks from her skin? “I am not really that hungry.”
“Are you carrying on about your looks again?” Harcourt asked, tapping the glass jar upon the lid. “I wish you would leave off that nonsense. Those creams only seem to make the rash worse.”
“Aunt Phoebe assures me that this is the solution to all of my problems. That I will never need another lotion again!”
The Duke snorted. “It sounds like utter rot to me.”
“But were I to be more like… well, other girls, would everything change?” Helena asked, lifting her eyes to meet his. “Does it not make a difference?”
“Child,” he placed a hand on her shoulder, bending to look at her, to make sure that she, in fact, was looking at him. “I loved your mother because she had a beautiful soul first and foremost. That she was attractive was impossible to miss…but to me, it was always what was inside her heart that counted more.”
“That sounds like something a father would say,” Helena complained and bit her lip, for even if it were true, her heart hadn’t been particularly attractive ever since she’d coerced a duke to court her.
Harcourt shook his head. “That is something that a man of quality knows instinctively. I doubt he ever noticed your blemishes.”
“But if I had no blemishes at all,” she said thoughtfully, turning the lid and removing it, “then it would be easier for him to love me…” A gentle hint of strawberries wafted up to greet her. “How thoughtful of Aunt Phoebe to always make sure my lotions smell like strawberries, though the scent is rather overpowering on this one, is it not?” She laughed a little as she lifted the jaw to her nose to inhale deeply. “She knows how much I lo—”
Helena faltered in her words. The scent not only filled her nose but her throat as well - she was choking, finding it hard to breathe.
“Helena? What is happening? Helena!”
But Helena could not answer her father’s frantic cries. The jar tumbled from her grasp, rolling under the settee. She clutched at her throat, coughing and choking and unable to catch her breath. Bright lights danced across her vision. She felt herself falling. Hands reached out to catch her.
From far away she thought she heard his voice. James. James had come back like he’d said he would.
Helena tried to smile but could no longer control those muscles of her body. Darkness took her as she heard him cry out her name.
Chapter 43
“You are not coming with me, and that is final!” The storm had stopped, but the temperatures were still near frigid. In no way, James was going to risk Lucy out in that cold.
Except Lucy wasn’t going to listen to him any better now that he knew she was his mother than she had as his governess. She sat, arms crossed under a multitude of blankets in the cutter, that she somehow had managed to arrange in the few moments James had taken to dress warmer for the coming trek back to the home of the Duke of York.
“We would waste less time if you were actually in the cutter with me, rather than standing out in the snow,” Lucy suggested her tone at once sweet and hard as steel.
“I thought you were dying,” James muttered as he climbed into the conveyance, all the while thinking that there was little he could do to salvage his good name as the Duke of Anywhere, save to fire his entire staff and install his mother as the Dowager Duchess and be done with it. Not that things could actually work that way.
James shuddered. Please tell me they cannot work that way…
Actually, now that the truth had come out — and it would come out after tonight, of this he was certain — maybe there was some way he could legitimize Lucy, that would remove her as a servant from his household and install her instead as a beloved family member. IF this escapade didn’t kill her first.
“How is your heart?” he asked, leaning over to adjust her blankets as the vehicle rocked in heavy ruts that lay just beneath the new-fallen snow.
“My heart would be more sound should my boy find a bride worthy of him,” she said, a hint of sharpness in her words, but her voice had lost something of the strength it had always had.
“And you think Lady Barrington is worthy?” he asked, pretending he hadn’t noticed this, and wishing he had had her carried bodily back into the house rather than allow her this excursion.
“I knew she was when I met her, and she suggested that I take that brooch home with me,” Lucy said with a cheerful smile that tugged at his heart.
Had he not been so worried about Helena, James thought that his heart would burst with joy at that very moment. The initial anger at her having kept her true relationship with him a secret all these years was far outweighed by the knowledge that he’d had a true mother all along. That the woman who had left him without so much as a backward glance had never truly accepted him as her own. He could let go of the past now.
Which oddly enough allowed him to finally let go of the anger he’d carried for far too long by that abandonment. Not
that it had been right — Amelia had adopted him as her own child but had made no effort toward him after that paper had been signed. For he’d seen the paper by now and the promise it had represented. No, Amelia had never actually claimed him as her child despite her promise to his father.
And while that coldness on her part might have hurt at the time, had he not always had his true mother right there at his side, guiding him and teaching him? Had she not always been there to give him the love that his child’s heart needed?
“All this time…” He stared at her, and she could only nod at him and smile, her eyes were bright with unshed tears.
“All this time,” she echoed. She reached for his hand.
“But Helena…” he said, and he ached anew with the worry that he’d been trying so hard to suppress. “You think she is genuinely in danger?”
“I do not know, my son…I wish I had more confidence. Maybe we are both wrong.” She bowed her head to pray.
The manor gates loomed before them in the darkness. James nudged his mother, pointing them out to her, but she’d already seen them. “Go,” she said to him before the cutter had even slid fully to a stop. “Go and find Helena. I will follow.”
James hesitated. She was too newly ill, but he saw the footmen hurrying from the house. He leapt from the sleigh and grabbed the sleeve of the first man he saw. “Where is the Lady Barrington?”
The man could only shrug. James glanced back at the sleigh and saw that his mother was already being helped from her nest of blankets, half carried despite her protests. There was nothing he could do except get in the way even if he did stay. So, it was, he leaped up the steps to the door, nearly falling into the arms of Barrington’s own man who hovered just inside.
“You there, where is Lady Barrington?” he asked before he’d even righted himself.
“I believe she is in the parlor—” Antony started, but James spared not a moment to explain but left quickly. Had it only been a few hours since he’d left home? It seemed at once forever and no time at all.
There was no time for knocking or niceties, despite the protests of the man who’d followed behind him, intent on doing his duty. James threw open the door which hit the wall behind it with such force it was a wonder it didn’t come off the hinges. But he was too late, for he saw Barrington kneeling over her prone form, her body limp.
Lady Helena Barrington did not appear to be breathing.
Chapter 44
“What happened?” James swept Helena into his arms, helping to ease her down on the sofa so that she was lying flat.
Barrington shook his head. “I do not know. We were talking. Suddenly she fell. She couldn’t breathe.”
“How long ago did this happen?” Lucy asked from the door, as she pushed into the room past the gathering servants.
“Moments ago. It all happened so fast…”
Lucy pushed between them both, “Then there is still time. Think! What was she doing before — just before it happened?” She bent to press her head to Helena’s chest. “The heart beats but the sound seems faint. We have very little time before she dies. Speak up, Your Grace, if you know anything, the time to tell it is now.”
“The jar…under the settee…she was going to put the lotion on, I think…”
James knelt and found what he was talking about. Without a lid, the smell of strawberries was very strong.
“Get that out of here! Quickly or we lose her.” Lucy raised her head as Helena convulsed, her mouth gaping, trying to draw breath where there was none.
“Is it the strawberries?” James asked hoarsely, thrusting the jar at the butler who had followed him. The man stared at the jaw and whirled, taking it from the room.
“It is. I need someone who has a steady hand with a knife. Quickly. I saw this once, years ago. But we haven’t much time. Someone skilled in butchering perhaps…”
“No!” Barrington rose up then in a fury, his hands coming down on Lucy’s shoulder, wrenching her away from the dying girl.
“Then we lose her. Would you prefer that, Your Grace?” she asked, as James’s own hand came down on top of that of the older Duke’s.
“I know of what she is speaking. I have not seen it done but have heard about it. ‘Twould be better if there was a doctor present, but we will do what we must. Your Grace, if you are willing to save your daughter, we need both a reed pen and a knife. Brandy. Quickly.”
“I have also heard of this operation…” Barrington stared at his daughter a long moment and then turned away, shouting orders to those who were crowding around the door in the hallway, trying to see into the room.
“Begging your pardon, but I can clearly see your hands are shaking,” Antony said suddenly to James. “Your Grace, my wife would perhaps be best…would the Lady who seems to know so much be so kind as to instruct her.”
The butler drew forward a white-faced woman who met James’s gaze without hesitation. “I am Bridget, Your Grace, and I love that girl as a daughter. I have a steady hand, steadier than most people. Tell me what to do.”
James remembered her, the chaperone from their interrupted tea. He looked in her eyes and nodded. “Barrington, I think it would be best were she to try it,” he said, his voice hoarse.
In moments they’d prepared for the operation. At Lucy’s direction, Helena’s head was tilted back, leaving her neck exposed. Barrington and James both held Helena steady, James praying harder than he’d ever prayed in his life as Bridget made a small incision in Helena’s neck. At Lucy’s direction, James doused the cut immediately with brandy. He swallowed hard and wished to close his eyes as the reed from the pen was inserted through the incision made, though he forced himself to watch all the same.
It took several breaths through the tube before he heard it, the soft sound of air escaping through the thin reed, that whistled as she breathed.
Helena lived. She would survive.
Only when he knew she was safe did James sit down hard on the floor next to the couch where the entire operation had been performed. Bridget stood and was immediately engulfed in the arms of her husband. The strength that had carried her through the operation left Bridget weeping now. Her sobs echoed in the quiet room.
Barrington stood over his daughter, poleaxed, as though terrified to touch her in case she might break.
“Your Grace.” It was Lucy who stood before Barrington. She wavered on her feet, the strain showing in her face. “Your Grace, you need to find Phoebe. She must be held responsible for this.”
Barrington was not a stupid man. He understood in an instant what she was saying. “Phoebe? You mean to say that jar…that this was deliberate?”
“Phoebe Barlowe has been deliberately poisoning your daughter since she was born. Furthermore, Phoebe intended for Helena to die tonight!” Lucy exclaimed.
The strain of saying all this was too much. Lucy started to fall. “Mother!” James caught her up and tenderly placed her in a chair. Behind them, Barrington shouted orders. Doors slammed. Footsteps and shouts rang through the house.
“I am well. See to her. Take care of your Helena,” Lucy said softly as she leaned back against the cushioned back of the chair. “Allow me to catch my breath.”
James nodded and returned to Helena’s side, just in time for him to be the first to see those beautiful eyes open wide.
Chapter 45
Why does my neck hurt so?
Helena opened her eyes, groggy and disoriented. The last thing she’d remembered was talking to her father. Slowly things came into focus: an incredible pair of blues eyes, a pale face above hers.
James.
She was lying down. Wherever she was, this seemed most improper, but when she tried to rise, there were gentle hands holding her in place. A woman’s voice. Two women. Arguing over her.
“She must rest.”
“She would rest far better in her own bed. I only need Antony to carry her.”
“I will carry her.”
It was the last voice t
hat arrested her attention. Not one of the women. A deep voice, one she knew in an instant.
James. It truly was James, for she could never dream him so vividly. He had to be real.
But you did dream of him once, so long ago. The night of the storm, the night that his servant was brought to you, you dreamed about him.
“Your…Grace…?” His title was so hard to say at this moment, — to use his name would not have been appropriate. But the words formed on her lips, they could not be uttered. Her voice had been silenced. She raised one hand to touch her neck and felt the bandage there.
“Shh…my darling…you must not touch the reed…let it remain until the swelling goes down completely. A few days likely. Nay, do not scratch at your skin either, though I can see your face is most painfully red.”
The Scandalous Deal of the Scarred Lady: A Historical Regency Romance Novel Page 24