The Scandalous Deal of the Scarred Lady: A Historical Regency Romance Novel

by Hamilton, Hanna

  Masculine hands caught at her own and she tried desperately to focus on him and make sense of his words.

  “Miss Barlowe is no longer here!”

  The announcement from the doorway stirred the entire room into action. A muttered oath from her father told him she was near. She tried desperately to call to him, and she did though she made not a sound. He flew to her side, pushing James out of the way, examining her with his eyes before placing a kiss on her forehead. “I am pleased to see you awake.”

  “Father?” This came out like a soft gasp that made him smile.

  “My child, I am placing you into the care of the Duke. Sir, see that Helena is taken to her room, will you not? I am mobilizing my men as we speak, but I am entrusting her into your care. Please make sure to keep her safe.”

  Safe? The word made little sense. Where is Aunt Phoebe? What is going on?

  There was no time to think on these things. She was in the arms of the man that…well…yes, she did love him. She knew that with every beat of her heart - had known it for a while now. It was hard to breathe when he held her so close. Or was it the bandage at her throat that felt so strange?

  “Shh…my Lady…it is temporary. Here, look, we are at your chambers.” She looked at him, but his head was turned toward a servant, and he was no longer speaking to her at all. “You there! See that anything with strawberries has been removed before I even bring her in. I want her to be entirely safe.”

  Strawberries?

  She felt his arms stiffen as he held her, as people moved past quickly, Tess…where was Tess? The girl would know what had strawberries in it, though she had no idea why it was important. She whispered James’s name, but no one heard. The next thing Helena knew she was being placed within her own bed, and James…James had already left, after giving instruction to put her to bed that she might rest.

  “I will be just outside. You have nothing to fear.”

  She was afraid, but she had no idea how to tell him that. The maid that stayed behind to help Helena into her nightdress was the one who had served Phoebe. What James did not realize was that Tess should have been there. Tess would have expected to be needed. Why was she not there?

  But James only smiled as he hovered over her before leaving, his gaze lingering for a long moment upon her face. He placed his finger against her lips to still her restless half-whispers. “Shh…all will be explained in due time. I think that rest would be for the best. Sleep, and know I will be just outside the room.”

  She watched him go, cringing away from Janet’s touch, for the maid was not kind, nor had she ever been. Why her aunt ever employed her, Helena did not know.

  In no time, Helena was tucked into bed, staring blearily at the fire across the room, her mind restless, her fingers touching her neck, wishing there was something that could distract her from the pain. She could not imagine sleeping.

  She remembered the cream, dense and so red that it had seemed a paste more than a lotion. The strong smell of strawberries. The inability to breathe. It was all connected somehow. What exactly had happened?

  Helena scratched idly at her burning face and recalled the way her throat had closed painfully, how she could not breathe. While the air moved easier now, and the neck no longer felt painfully swollen, she was still clearly not herself. She stared for a moment at her hands, seeing the new swellings, the hard, itchy bumps coming out. The hand that had held the jar was especially painful and red.

  The last cream I would ever need. Strawberries.

  Things came together then in her mind. Her skin had always seemed especially painful after meals where she had been allowed her single berry as an occasional treat. She had felt ill then too and complained more than once from the difficulty in breathing. Her aunt had chastised her for this, telling her she had clearly overeaten if she felt uncomfortable.

  But then there was the constant scent of berries upon her hands and face. Every cream had held the faintest scent of strawberry. And her skin had always been worse after applying those creams.

  The room seemed suddenly cold. Helena huddled under the blankets, not liking where her thoughts were taking her. Was this why James had been worried about strawberries in her room? And why they were looking for Phoebe?

  My aunt tried to kill me.

  No. It was impossible. Her aunt had raised her since she was a child. Surely, they were mistaken. This whole thing was a terrible coincidence.

  But her hands stung. She had been unable to breathe. She had nearly died. Helena rose from the bed, no longer able to sit still. Lying there, left her feeling very vulnerable. Where was Tess?

  Helena could not simply hide in her bed until she knew more of what was going on. There had to be something she could do to help. Besides, was she not already stronger? She was already breathing better, more naturally.

  Thinking that being dressed would leave her readier to face whatever came next, Helena took a cautious step towards the wardrobe. When her legs proved steady enough to carry her, she dashed across and wrenched the doors open, intent on finding something simple to wear that she could don easily herself.

  The door opened quickly beneath her hand. Too quickly. Something heavy was on the other side, pushing the door open for her. Helena bit back a scream. It was Tess, bound with her hands tied behind her back with a length of rope. She tumbled to the floor and lay very still.

  Please, God, let her only have fainted.

  Helena bit back a sob, clutching at the girl who had been a friend, relieved when she Tess stirred at last. She lived after all! With a soft cry, Helena tugged at the cord that bound the other girl who struggled to speak past the cloth wadded in her mouth. Something behind Helena’s head had caught her attention. Something terrifying, judging from the way Tess’s eyes widened.

  Helena turned her head and saw Phoebe stepping out from behind the curtain.

  “Aunt Phoebe.” The words could not escape her throat. Helena could only mouth them; the dull rasp that was her voice had betrayed her. One hand went to her throat as she struggled to stand, even as her aunt approached, slowly, a single hand outstretched.

  “They were too late,” Phoebe said, as she circled Helena keeping between her and the door. “Your father ordered that the strawberries be destroyed, but I stole the last of them. Janet got them for me. She always has been a faithful servant. By now she should have killed your precious Duke. I gave her the knife myself. I doubt he expected to see her with it.”

  Phoebe’s head tilted to the side as she studied her. “But I warned you that Romeo and Juliet has a rather tragic ending, did I not?”

  There were a dozen things that Helena wished to say to that, but none of them could pass her lips. She glanced back at Tess, but saw no help there, the cords around her wrists and ankles had left her immobilized. Tess’s eyes filled with tears as she struggled to sit up.

  Tess. If only I could have helped you.

  But she could not. Her eyes were on Phoebe’s outstretched hand, at the red juice that leaked between her fingers, dripping like blood into the carpet. The growing stain made her think of James, and she wondered what Janet had done.

  Helena moaned and took another step backward, but she was too near the hearth and to venture further would endanger her skirts. She edged sideways and stumbled against something hard and metal that hung there. The poker…!

  “’Tis a shame that you cannot speak. I would hear you beg for your life. Or would you apologize to me for…what exactly? You have spent your life apologizing for your affliction. Imagine it! Me, having caused those terrible skin eruptions in the first place, and you apologizing for every cream and lotion that failed to remove the blemishes. It never took much, only the tiniest bit.”

  Strawberries. How could something so innocent cause so much trouble? Helena mouthed the question. If she were going to die, she at the very least needed to know. “Why?”

  Phoebe laughed. “Why? Are you asking why? When you well know how my mother always made her poor dead
daughter her absolute favorite in everything? I thought to win her praise by taking care of her dead daughter’s child and what thanks did I have for it? She left me behind, traveling to the continent as though she had no second child. As though I were nothing at all.”

  She said this last viciously, lunging toward Helena who stumbled against the wall, between hearth and window, one hand still inching toward the poker, but still too far, with it just out of reach.

  “But then one day you ate a strawberry, and it made you so terribly ill. To think the most amazing thing would happen, that suddenly everyone cared what I was doing. For the first time, the ton expressed sympathy for me. Poor little Phoebe Barlowe, little more than a child herself, taking care of her dead sister’s sickly baby. Ah…it was glorious.”

  Phoebe’s eyes glittered in the firelight. “And all I had to do was to keep feeding your strawberries. Little ones, in tiny amounts. I did not want you to die, after all. At least not then.”

  Her aunt hated her. Despised her. How could she not have known this all along? Helena lunged, her hand closing around the poker. With a strangled cry that was little more than the mewling noise of a newborn babe, she lunged forward, her arm coming up with every bit of fear and betrayal put into the effort of knocking whatever was in Phoebe’s hand to the floor, of putting her aunt off balance. She would die otherwise.

  I just need to escape.

  She was only steps from the door; it might as well have been a mile. Helena’s steps lagged, she was still weak from her ordeal. Phoebe sidestepped her easily, wrenching the poker away from her and throwing it carelessly aside. Helena, unable to stop the forward motion, found herself pressed against the bureau, staring at the very brooch that had started everything. How it had come to be here, she did not know.

  One hand scrabbled for the pin even as she turned, flinging her hands up to ward off Phoebe who in moments had her pinned. One hand came up, the juice of the strawberry leaving red streaks down her arm and staining the sleeve of her dress.

  Phoebe’s breath was hot against her ear. “Normally you could eat one of these, or two if they were small and it would not hurt you other than to make the blemishes appear and maybe a little short of breath. But after today…do you genuinely think your flesh would allow even the touch of a strawberry upon your skin? So potent was that cream that to eat this, to swallow even one berry will likely kill you.”

  Helena threw herself backward, knocking Phoebe back and away, but there was nowhere to go. The bed lay between her and the door, Tess, still struggled on the floor behind them. Phoebe was a wild thing, fighting her, clawing at her.

  A streak of strawberry juice appeared on her upraised palm as Phoebe tried desperately to get it near her face.

  Helena froze, staring in horrified fascination. No. No…No…!

  With a strength she never knew she had, she brought her hands up and clawed at Phoebe’s face. If she could not defeat her through brute strength, she could in cunning, for she still had the brooch and the stones were sharp.

  This time it was Phoebe who screamed and reeled backward, a long scratch having appeared on her cheek.

  There came a pounding at the door. The doorknob rattled; the room was locked. It was James’s voice. He was not dead after all. Hope swelled her breast, giving new strength to her limbs. Helena recalled the fury with which she’d fought the footpad and won. She needed that strength now if she were going to survive.

  It had been a dream that had started her down this path. She would not allow it to end in a nightmare.

  Helena straightened, thinking how utterly ridiculous it was that her aunt was trying to kill her with a strawberry. It had to be the stupidest weapon in the world…which could only mean one thing. Her aunt was deep down a coward, unwilling to do direct harm to her.

  That was what she gambled on now. Helena lunged after her aunt, her hand still clenched around the pin. As a weapon, it had not proven terribly effective, but Phoebe reeled back from her all the same, her hand going to her cheek. In fact, she was so distracted she didn’t notice Tess on the floor behind her.

  The door crashed open on the other side of the room.

  Tess saw the opportunity the same time Helena did and thrust her legs out even as Phoebe stepped backward. Phoebe went down in a heap just as James rushed into the room.

  But it was not all over, for Phoebe landed near the poker. Abandoning the fruit as a weapon, she went for what was more efficient. Phoebe came up fast, too fast, and swung hard and wide, going straight for Helena’s head.

  “Helena!”

  James was suddenly there and deflected the blow with his own arm. Helena closed her eyes, not able to watch, waiting to hear the crack that would break his arm, or worse his head.

  But the only sound was Phoebe’s frustrated scream. She’d missed after all.

  A moment later there was a wild crash of glass, a rush of icy air. Helena opened her eyes and stared in horror at Phoebe poised in the window. The wind whipped at her skirts, and her hair tumbled down around her face in a wild frenzy.

  “I will not be defeated so easily. I own you! I have taken everything you love from you! The world will know your secret!” Phoebe screamed, one foot on the sill, her hands holding her there against the sudden gale.

  James started forward, his hand out as if to grab the screaming woman. “The world will know the truth. I am not afraid of it!” he shouted in reply. “Keep the baubles, the trinkets. But what I love? She is here in this room, safely away from you. You will not hurt her ever again.” He took another step toward Phoebe, one hand still outstretched. “Come away from there. Please.”

  Helena surged forward, lending her hand where she could not lend her voice, reaching for her aunt, the brooch falling forgotten onto the floor behind her. James’s arm came around her waist, holding her there against him, safe in the shelter of his arm.

  But the sight of the both of them, standing thus united with two hands simultaneously outstretched was too much for her. What did she care for offers of love and peace and sanctuary? Helena saw the mad debate in her aunt’s eyes and knew the answer for what it was long before Phoebe ever let go.

  “Aunt Phoebe!” Her whisper became a shout in her mind. James turned and buried Helena’s head against his shoulder, so she would not have to see, little realizing how her imagination would supply the image regardless. In her mind’s eye, Helena saw the fingers loosen their grip and let go. For months afterward, she would see the body go slack and fall, disappearing into the swirling snow far below.

  Chapter 46

  He had thought he had lost her.

  For two weeks, James had fought mounting impatience at the silence that came from the household of the Duke of York. And while he had respected their request that he keep a quiet distance while Helena recovered from the tragedy, he finally reached a point where he could not bear the separation any longer.

  But when he rode to the house, he found it shuttered and empty. The only evidence of the tragedy was the broken upstairs window boarded over and awaiting repairs, giving the house a desolate and maudlin air.

  It seemed a message of sorts, that they would leave like this without sending word to let him know they were going. He returned home silent and depressed.

  Time passed. The only thing that came was a package, addressed to Lucy. Within it was a fortune in trinkets and treasures. From what they could ascertain, near every pound that had been given to Phoebe over the years had been accounted for and sent back. It might not have restored his fortune, for his business partner had stolen much more from him, but it was enough to finance his own ship without any help at all.

  Only he no longer had any desire to do so.

  “Do you not think, Your Grace, that ’tis high time you visited Barrington estate and settled this matter once and for all?” Lucy asked from the chair where she sat knitting in the sun. Since her fall and their excursion into the storm, she had been quieter. She no longer drifted from job to job within the manor b
ut stayed near to him with a sort of quiet contentment that was entirely unlike the old her.

  To be fair, the servants no longer knew what to do with Lucy. Her true status as the Duke’s mother had somehow been found out, and she was no longer welcome below stairs with the servants. But she had not found any contentment in acting as the Lady of the manor and had in fact made rather a point not to pick up that role.

  “There is someone better suited to the task than me,” she’d said when James had asked her about it. “When you fetch home your bride, then you will have a Duchess within the manor. Not before.”

  But no longer was she content to watch him wander restlessly through the manor. The snow was melting, and winter had finally loosened its grip upon the countryside. With spring came new beginnings. She told him this in no uncertain terms.