Not that he’d been thinking of much else lately.
He’d tossed and turned all night, knowing that in only a few more days he would have Helena Reynolds in his house and in his bed and wondering why in God’s name she’d chosen to marry him of all men.
He still wondered.
He’d thought he would feel easier after seeing her today, but since their encounter at the inn, a whole new set of doubts had begun to prey upon his mind.
She was hiding something. That much had been plain from the moment of their first meeting. What it was, he couldn’t tell. But something had compelled her to answer that blasted advertisement. Something—or someone—had frightened her. Had made her desperate enough to marry a stranger. And not just a stranger. A bastard ex-soldier of no birth and moderate fortune. A man with burn scars and a reputation marred by scandal and vicious innuendo.
He wanted to demand she tell him, but who was he to expect Helena to confess all of her dark secrets when he had so many of his own? To do so would be unfair. Hypocritical.
And what did it matter anyway? Theirs was not a love match. And it certainly wasn’t a mingling of the souls or any other such drivel. It was a business arrangement. A marriage of convenience. He needed a wife and she needed someone to keep her safe.
But safe from what?
Or from whom?
It had occurred to him as she spouted that nonsense about being clumsy and accident prone that she might already be married. It would certainly explain a great deal. Indeed, the possibility seemed so likely that, for one fleeting moment, the reality of it had squeezed at his heart and his lungs, making it rather difficult to breathe.
And then he’d reminded himself that he trusted Finchley’s judgment implicitly. And that Finchley, for all his meddling, would never have sent him a woman who was still bound to her husband—no matter how brutish that husband may be.
No. Helena Reynolds wasn’t married. Nor had she ever been. He could tell that much from her kiss. He’d wager his last penny that it had been her first. Her lips had trembled and softened beneath his, her breath uneven and her eyes squeezed shut. She was that inexperienced.
She was also lush and sweet and fairly brimming with untapped passion. He could easily have kept kissing her. And he would have done, too, had he not been recalled to his senses by the activity in the yard. Good God. If they’d been seen…
Well. It was less than ideal, certainly. He had no desire to cause her embarrassment. And he certainly didn’t relish the villagers spreading more tales about his being a conscienceless monster. But he couldn’t regret kissing her. It was the finest thing he’d experienced in a very long while. Finer still because there was the promise of more to come.
Tomorrow, Helena would be his wife. And no matter her secrets, he wouldn’t be sorry she was the one who’d answered his advertisement.
Neville returned a moment later with a bucket of warm bran mash. The water sloshed over the rim as he placed it in Hiran’s loose box. “Justin?”
“Yes?”
“Are you going to marry that lady?”
Justin shot his old friend a distracted glance. He’d long since ceased to be surprised at Neville’s ability to discern the substance of his thoughts. “I am. Tomorrow morning.”
“At the church?”
“At the registrar’s office in Abbot’s Holcombe. You’re welcome to come if you like.”
Neville vehemently shook his head.
His refusal wasn’t a surprise. He hated coach journeys. And he hadn’t set foot in Abbot’s Holcombe in years. “Suit yourself,” Justin said.
Neville retrieved his pitchfork and resumed turning over the straw. “Where will she live?”
“Here at the Abbey.” Justin ran a brush over Hiran’s flank.
The sound of the rain, falling hard and fast on the roof tiles, nearly drowned out Neville’s quiet reply. “Where will I live?”
A needle of guilt pricked at Justin’s conscience. When it came to Neville, it was a feeling that was as familiar as breathing. “Here at the Abbey,” he repeated. “Nothing’s going to change.”
“But Miss Reynolds—”
“You have a home with me for as long as you want one. It makes no difference if I marry.” He paused, adding, “Or who I marry.”
Neville leaned his pitchfork against the side of the loose box and let himself out into the aisle. “Do you like her?”
Justin was taken off guard by the question.
Like her? He was attracted to her, certainly. He felt protective of her as well. Any halfway decent gentleman would. But like her?
He thought of their conversation on the beach. Their discussion of Charles Dickens and the Great Exhibition. He remembered the way she’d smiled at him in commiseration over the watery tea Neville had served. And the way she’d responded to the revelation that he’d been a parish orphan in Abbot’s Holcombe.
“Is that why we loathe the place?” she’d asked.
His chest infused with warmth at the memory. It was equal parts unnerving and…quite wonderful.
“Yes,” he said. “I do like her. Very much.” He cast aside his brushes and went to untie Hiran’s halter. “What about you, Neville?” he asked as he led him to his loose box. “What do you think of Miss Reynolds?”
Neville followed after him. “She’s prettier than Miss Bray.”
Justin frowned. “Miss Bray?” That was a name he hadn’t heard in a long while. He released Hiran and withdrew from the box, shutting the door behind him. Hiran immediately thrust his nose into his bucket of mash. “What makes you think of her?”
Neville shrugged.
“You admired her once, I believe.”
Neville dropped his gaze and shrugged again.
“It was a lifetime ago,” Justin said. They had been orphan boys. Shabby and ignorant. He supposed all of them had fancied Cecilia Bray at one time or another. She was of an age with them and had been reckoned a burgeoning beauty in those days. She’d also been thoroughly unpleasant, never missing a chance to tell them how common they were and how it was no wonder their parents had abandoned them.
Justin had had to bear the brunt of it. When he’d been apprenticed to her father, she’d taken great pleasure in subjecting him to her acid tongue. By the time he left to join the army, he’d long forgotten what it was about her he’d ever imagined to be pleasing.
Mr. Bray had died ten years ago. Justin heard about it in a letter from Finchley. As for Cecilia, Justin supposed she was still living somewhere in Abbot’s Holcombe, along with her mother and younger sisters. No doubt she was married by now with half a dozen children. He neither knew nor cared. He wished he could say the same for Neville.
Helena drew her knees up to her chest and wrapped her cashmere shawl tighter around her shoulders. Her flannel nightgown was long-sleeved and covered her from her chin to her toes, but it did absolutely nothing to keep her warm. The King’s Arms was no modern London hotel. Her room was damp and drafty, with a fire that produced more smoke than heat.
She glanced over at Bess. The young maidservant was huddled on her cot by the door, looking frozen through and utterly miserable.
“I wish you’d come up and share the bed,” Helena said. “You’ll catch your death on the floor.”
“Oh no, miss. Mrs. Blevins says I’m to stay right here.”
“Surely the inn can’t be that unsafe.”
“Indeed, miss. A gentleman in his cups had a mind to try the doors once. He scared an old lady something fierce.”
“Hmm.” Helena was skeptical. If a wandering drunkard decided to force his way into her bedchamber, she didn’t see how Bess’s presence in front of the door would prevent him. The young maidservant couldn’t weigh much more than seven stone. “At least let us build up the fire, then. There’s no reason you must freeze to death in service to my safety.”
She turned up the oil lamp at her bedside, illuminating the room in a soft yellow glow. When Bess made no move to get up, Helena did so herself. The wooden slats of the floor were ice cold beneath her bare feet. They creaked in protest as she padded across the room to the fireplace. She picked up a poker and jabbed at the struggling flames in the grate.
“Aren’t you afraid, miss?”
“Of what?”
“Going to live at the Abbey. What with all them monks and things.”
Helena was tempted to smile. She had many things to fear, but spectral monks were not among them, thank goodness. There was enough to trouble her in this world without contemplating the vagaries of the spirit realm. “I don’t believe in ghosts.”
“Why not?”
“I simply don’t.” She bent to put another log on the fire. “They’re not real. You can’t see them or touch them.”
Bess turned over in her cot to watch as the flames sprung to life. “I’ve never seen one,” she said. “But my friend Martha…”
Helena rose and returned to her bed. She climbed in, settling herself beneath the blankets. “What about your friend?”
“Martha walks out with Bill, the fishmonger’s son. And he told her—” Bess broke off. “But Mrs. Blevins says I’m not to gossip.”
Helena reached to turn down the lamp. “That’s a shame. How else am I to learn about the village?”
“Do you truly want to know, miss?”
“Of course.”
Her words were all the permission Bess needed to disregard Mrs. Blevins’s warning. “Well, miss.” She continued her tale in a hushed voice. “Bill was down in the cove off the beach at Abbot’s Holcombe and—what do you think happened? He looks up and sees the ghost of Sir Oswald himself walking the Abbey cliffs!”
“Oh? I wasn’t aware Sir Oswald had died.”
“Years and years ago,” Bess said. “When Mr. Thornhill returned from India, like.”
A frisson of uneasiness tickled at Helena’s spine. She knew Justin had taken the Abbey from Sir Oswald in a somewhat unscrupulous manner, but he hadn’t mentioned anything about the man’s death. “I see.” She was silent for a long moment. “How did he die?
“He fell off the cliff, miss. The very ones where Bill seen his ghost. Everyone says as how…” Bess trailed off. “But Mr. Hargreaves says it was an accident. And he knew Sir Oswald and all.”
Helena licked lips that were suddenly dry. She was almost afraid to ask. “Who is Mr. Hargreaves?”
“The magistrate, miss. From the inquest.”
The inquest? Helena couldn’t credit it. If there had been such a scandal, surely she’d have heard about it before now. If not from Justin himself, then at least from Mr. Finchley.
Her stomach, already in knots at the thought of her impending nuptials, proceeded to knot itself even tighter.
Could it be she’d simply traded one untenable situation—one violent and dangerous man—for another? Was life with Justin Thornhill going to be no safer than the life she was leaving behind?
She refused to believe it.
Since her arrival in Devon, Justin had shown himself to be a gentleman in dozens of ways. And not only where she was concerned. He was kind to his servants and his dogs. He took care of Neville. And though he had, admittedly, been vulgar at their first meeting, no man of a crass and violent disposition could ever have touched her face with so much tenderness as he had on the beach yesterday. Or kissed her so softly, so gently, as he had earlier today in the private parlor.
But how could a woman ever know for certain? It was impossible. At some point, she must simply put her faith and her trust in a man. The prospect frightened Helena more than any ghost ever could.
“Will you go back?” Bess asked.
“What?”
“To London, miss. If you do, I can come with you. You’ll need a maid on the journey. And I’ve always wanted to see London and to work in a grand house.”
“How do you know I have a grand house?”
“Just by looking at you.” Bess flopped onto her back. “Your gowns. I never seen such fine fabric. And your hands. So white and soft. My aunt Agnes trained for a lady’s maid in Bath. She taught me how to lift an oil stain out of silk. If you take me with you to London, I can look after your clothes. I’m a fast learner, miss.”
Helena buried her face in the scratchy fabric of her pillow. Tears had sprung to her eyes several times during her flight from Grosvenor Square to Devon, but tonight, for the first time, she truly felt like weeping. “Thank you, Bess,” she said. “But I’m not going back to London. Not ever.”
They were married the following morning at the district registrar’s office in Abbot’s Holcombe. Helena wore a plain gray silk day dress with a dark cloth paletot trimmed in braid. It was a long way from the white ruffled wedding gowns she’d often admired in the pages of the Englishwomen’s Domestic Magazine, but it was not wholly unhandsome. Or so Bess had said when first she beheld her descending the stairs at the King’s Arms earlier that morning.
“You look like a queen, miss,” she’d declared.
Helena didn’t see how she could. She’d hardly managed to sleep a wink the previous night. She was exhausted and emotional and scared out of her wits. She very much feared something would happen at the last moment to prevent her marriage to Justin. Indeed, she expected it.
As she stood beside him at the registrar’s office, she couldn’t seem to stop trembling. Justin himself was outwardly calm, even if he did seem unnaturally still and grave. He’d dressed for the occasion in a somber black suit. The burns on his neck were hidden by the high collar of his white linen shirt and a severe black cravat. She could see the glimmer of a pocket watch chain at the front of his waistcoat.
She listened to his deep voice as he disavowed any impediment to their marriage. At the registrar’s prompting, she did the same. And then Justin was taking her left hand in his. She looked up at him with a start as he slid a plain gold band onto her finger. She was so dreadfully nervous she didn’t realize the registrar had pronounced them man and wife until Justin raised her hand to his lips and pressed a kiss to her wedding band.
Helena felt the same mortifying rush of emotion she’d felt when he’d given her the piece of broken sea glass two days before. There was no reason for him to kiss her hand in such a gallant manner. Theirs was not a romantic union. Yet, he held her knuckles against his lips for a long moment, his eyes fixed steadily on hers.
Suddenly, she wanted nothing more than to tell him how tired she was and how much she’d been afraid. He was her husband now. Mr. Finchley had said he would protect her. That nothing would ever harm her if Justin Thornhill gave her his name.
But it wasn’t the time. Not here. And certainly not in front of Bess and Mr. Boothroyd.
She swallowed back her feelings of relief and, as Justin lowered her hand, she managed a weak smile. “Well,” she said.
His mouth hitched in a fleeting half smile of his own. “That’s done, then.”
“Officially.”
He squeezed her hand. “There’s no turning back now, Mrs. Thornhill.”
Mrs. Thornhill.
Helena’s stomach clenched. This was never what she’d wanted. Like every other young woman of her acquaintance, she’d dreamed of meeting a handsome gentleman who would assiduously court her and win her affections. She’d believed she would marry for love or not at all.
Mr. Boothroyd cleared his throat. “It’s not quite official, sir.” He cast a pointed look at the large leather-bound book lying open on the high counter. “You’ve yet to sign the register.”
Her smile faded. She wished Mr. Boothroyd hadn’t been necessary as a witness. His dour presence had only served to worsen her anxiety during the brief ceremony. Even now, as they moved to the register, she could feel him behind her, judging her every step.
/> The superintendent registrar handed her a quill pen. He was a white-haired gentleman with a truly impressive set of side-whiskers. “Mind you write your married name now,” he said. “There’s many a female who forgets.”
“I won’t forget.” She dipped the pen into the inkwell and signed her new name for the first time with an unsteady hand.
Helena Elaine Thornhill.
“Though it still doesn’t feel quite real,” she murmured as she passed the quill to Justin.
He signed his own name in the register with far more decisiveness. “You’ll soon grow accustomed to it.”
“You’ll have forty or more years to do so,” the superintendent registrar said. “God willing.”
Forty or more years? Helena glanced at Justin, expecting to find some expression of apprehension on his face. But Justin didn’t seem at all alarmed at the prospect of spending such a length of time with her.
He exchanged a few words with the superintendent registrar while Mr. Boothroyd and Bess stepped forward to sign their names in the register, attesting to their role as witnesses.
And then they all waited—some with more impatience than others—as a clerk painstakingly copied out their marriage lines onto a sheet of paper.
When he’d finished, the superintendent registrar directed them each to affix their signatures and then, with an air of solemnity, he presented the paper to Helena.
“Your proof of marriage, madam. Keep it safe.”
Helena took the certificate, awash with a profound sense of reverence—and relief. It seemed such an unexceptional document. And yet its existence could mean the difference between respectability and ruination.
Or, in her case, life and death.
She folded it carefully into her reticule. “I shall.”
Justin touched her lightly on the small of the back. “Will you give me a moment to speak with Boothroyd?”
“Of course.” She waited near the counter, watching as he crossed the room to address his steward. He said something to Mr. Boothroyd. Something which made the older man purse his lips in irritation. Moments later, Mr. Boothroyd departed the registrar’s office with Bess in tow.
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