A Home for Helena (The Lady P Chronicles Book 2) (22 page)

He leaned forward and lifted her chin so that they were looking directly into each other's eyes.

"That's how I love you, Helena. I want you by my side the rest of my life. Not to own you, nor to make you into some image of the perfect wife. The privilege of being with you is enough."

Tears formed in Helena's eyes. "Really, James? Truly?" Except for the years of her adolescence spent with Mrs. Lloyd, she'd always been alone. Could it be true that those years of loneliness were over? That she might have found a home at last?

"I love you, Helena." He bent his head down and kissed her. Helena kissed him back with enthusiasm, her heart singing with joy. It was here that she belonged. In James's arms. His hands made their way down to her back as he pressed her closer, and her own arms seemed to have a mind of their own as they caught around his neck.

“Well, if you aren’t going to eat, I shall. I, at least, did not over-indulge in spirits when I arrived very early this morning.”

Lady Pendleton, fully dressed in a crimson morning gown embroidered with bright yellow flowers, swept into the room and surveyed the food with interest.

Helena tried to pull away, but James would not allow it, and pulled her onto his lap.

Her Ladyship lifted the top of the teapot and frowned. “The tea needs refreshing, Peters!” she called.

Both Peterses, butler and housekeeper, answered the call. “Yes, Your Ladyship.”

Well-trained servants as they were—not to mention long-accustomed to life in the offbeat Pendleton household—they pretended not to see the improper state of the couple on the settee.

“Oh, and Peters, if you could bring back some of those strawberry tarts of Cook’s, I’d be pleased to have some.” She turned toward the pair on the sofa. “I’m quite fond of strawberries, and the season is nearly over. Perhaps they might tempt you two. You really should get something solid in your stomachs, you know.”

Helena’s hand flew to her stomach, and she thought James’s face had a greenish tinge. “No thank you. The tea is quite enough, Your Ladyship.”

Lady Pendleton shook her head. “As you wish,” she said, picking up a plate and spearing a slice of ham on the tray with her fork. “I’m famished. It was a wearying journey from Derbyshire. Four days in a carriage is getting to be more than I can manage. Remind me to have something done about the springs on that vehicle. Not to mention the dreadful springs on the beds in those coaching inns. My bones will never be the same again.”

“Ice,” Helena offered. “My mother-er-foster mother used to use a bag of chipped ice when her arthritis pained her. Ben Gay too, sometimes, but I don’t suppose you brought any back with you from your last trip.”

“Ben who?” James’s brow furrowed.

Helena explained that it was a medication for aching bones, and he shook his head. “I had to fall in love with a woman who knows all about the future. I don’t suppose you brought a list of horse racing results with you? We could amass enough wealth to rule the world.”

Helena shook her head. “Nothing like that,” she said. “But I can leave instructions to our descendants not to board a ship called
Titanic
, no matter what they saw about it being unsinkable.” “A ship,” she said in response to James’s confused look. “It hit an iceberg and sank. A hundred years from now.”

“Your descendants,” mused Lady Pendleton as she sat across from them, her plate in her lap. “Oh, pour me a cup, will you please, Peters?” she asked as the housekeeper brought in a fresh pot of tea. “One or two of the tarts, too, if you please.” Turning back to her guests, she continued. “You two smell of April and May. Have you something to tell me?”

James and Helena exchanged a glance. "Not yet," he whispered. "Later, when we're alone." The look in his eyes made her tremble.

"Don't mind me," said Lady Pendleton blithely. "You may go ahead and propose and get it out of the way if you wish. My news can wait a bit longer, if you insist upon it."

She bit into a piece of toast and stared pointedly at the portrait of her late father-in-law above the fireplace.

Helena and James stared at her. "You have news?" Helena squealed, springing off of James's lap. Then, recalling her past frustration with Lady P's lack of communication, she scowled, her hands going to her hips. "Where have you been? Why haven't you kept in touch with me all these weeks while I've been stranded in Kent waiting to hear something—anything—about my parents?"

James frowned. "Stranded in Kent, my love?"

Oh dear. "No, of course not. I didn't mean… It's just that…" She bent down and kissed him. "She should have kept me informed."

Lady P tut-tutted. "Young people are so impatient. Do you know," she said, leaning toward James, "in the future people can't wait five minutes without texting their friends on their phones about what they're doing, where they're going, what they just ate for lunch." She shook her head. "One simply can't get a single moment of peace and quiet in that time period."

"Texting?" James was mystified.

"I'll tell you later," Helena promised. "But Your Ladyship," she said, turning to Lady P, "you could have
written
me. The one letter I received from you revealed absolutely nothing! Surely you knew I was on tenterhooks waiting to hear from you. Why did you have to be so secretive?"

Lady Pendleton put down her teacup and shook her head. "I know it was difficult for you, my dear. But I had my reasons. You see, Helena," she said gently. "I knew—or was fairly certain—you were the missing Cranbourne heiress within a week of your arrival. I didn't want you to get your hopes up—"

"But why?" Helena went pale, and James rushed to her side to support her. "I had no grand illusions. For all I knew, the woman Marnie was my mother and my father could have been anyone. All I wanted was to
know."
That was not exactly true, of course. She had hoped to find a place where she belonged, no matter how improbable it seemed.

Lady P nodded. "I understand. But I felt I could do something to test the waters—prepare the way, in effect—and I thought you could do with a bit of experience living here before you had to make a decision to stay or not." She winked at James. "I confess it did occur to me that you and James might be a good match, and it might be a good thing if the two of you were both in Kent at the same time."

Helena's eyes widened. Her Ladyship was
matchmaking?
She glanced at James in surprise. "Don't blame me," he said, shrugging his shoulders. "I wasn't wife-hunting the day we met. Although I did find myself thinking about you quite often after we met."

Her eyes narrowed when she recalled his courting of another lady soon afterward, but then she decided to save that discussion for another time.

"What does that mean—testing the waters? What were
you
doing all that time? What did you find out? Tell me!"

Lady P lifted her head and nodded. "Yes, my dear. You shall hear all. But perhaps you should have a bit of buttered toast first?"

"
I
t was the locket
, you see. The young man—your father—seemed familiar to me, but I couldn't quite place him. When we were going through Debrett's that first night and I came upon the Cranbourne earldom, it occurred to me that there had been an imbroglio of some sort involving a lost child, but I couldn't quite recall the details—I was a young mother myself at the time, you know—and the Cranbournes haven't been much in society in the interim." She stopped to take a breath. "In any case, I made a few discreet inquiries, discovered that the dates matched, and pondered what to do next." She put a hand to her head. "I needed to test the waters. There
have
been quite a few imposters showing up on their doorstep over the years, you know, and it's no easy matter to explain to them that their grown-up daughter—whom they gave up for dead decades ago—has returned—and from the
future,
of all things! It makes my own head ache just to think of it."

Helena's face whitened. As eager as she was to know what Lady Pendleton had to say about her parents' reaction to her sudden appearance, things seemed to be moving too fast. What if—what if they couldn't accept such a wild story? She'd had to consider that they wouldn't—couldn't—being products of their time, but somehow, she was deathly afraid to hear it.

Lady Pendleton went on to say that she had made a point of renewing her acquaintance with Mrs. Frederick Gibson, the widow of the earl's brother, who lived in London and was all aflutter with her son's wedding preparations.

"Stephen," James whispered in Helena's ear. They were sitting side by side on a settee, listening eagerly to Lady P's story.

So she had managed to wrangle an invitation to the wedding, where she had sought out the acquaintance of the Cranbournes, casually mentioning that she was planning a trip to Derbyshire, whereupon they insisted that she stop by for a visit.

"As it turned out, we traveled together," Lady P crowed. "Mariah and I have a great deal in common, as it turns out. Well, except for the fact that she's so quiet and introverted, enjoys digging around in the earth, and can't eat strawberries, poor thing."

Helena gasped. "I'm allergic to strawberries!" Her head was spinning.

James patted her hand.

"In other words, you have
nothing
in common with Lady Cranbourne," he said dryly. "Go on. I'm afraid Helena is likely to expire of curiosity."

Lady P bit her lip. "I
am
sorry, my dear. I shall get to the point. After a few days, when I'd had the opportunity to assess the situation, I finally told them that I believed I knew the whereabouts of their long-lost daughter."

Helena bit her lip.

"I didn't mention the time-travel part right away, of course. I thought that might not get the intended result. I said that a young woman of the right age had come to me for help in finding her parents. They were quite skeptical, as I had expected. But then I mentioned that she had a locket with the name 'Helena' on it that contained miniatures of the earl and his wife."

Helena's hand went to the locket at her throat.

Lady P continued. “That definitely caught their attention. They told me the locket had disappeared the same time as the baby… and the parlor maid.”

But before she could disclose the time-travel aspect, she had to find a connection between the parlor maid and time-travel. How could a parlor maid know how to disappear into the future?

“So I asked the earl what he had learned of the maid in the ensuing weeks and years, and he said the only lead they'd found was a reference written by a Madame Herne, from Gracechurch Street in London, but when the Bow Street runners had located her, the gypsy claimed to have heard nothing from her since she departed for Derbyshire."

“That cinched it!” Lady P beamed at Helena and James. “I knew the parlor maid must have some connection with Ethelberta—Madame Herne—and that was the connection."

Helena sat up and leaned forward with interest. “Yes!” she exclaimed. “She told Madame Herne that the baby was hers and that my father wanted to kill me. So when she saw the Runners, she panicked and told the maid how to escape.”

"I must say, I’m disappointed in her. How could she have been so taken in by the barmy chit? I’ve never known her to be so imprudent.”

“Naturally, you are never imprudent yourself, Your Ladyship.”

Helena glanced at James in surprise.

“The toys,” he reminded her.

How could she have forgotten? She sighed and blew out a puff of air. “Big Hugs Elmo. The girls got the toys out while their parents were away, and well, James and Annabelle came along and opened up a huge can of worms."

James shot her a look of puzzlement, to which she shrugged. If they were to have a life together, he was going to have to become accustomed to her modernisms. She might be able to watch her speech carefully in public, but doing that 24/7 was too much to expect.

Lady P caught her breath. “Oh. My. Word.”

She winced. "I am so sorry. It
was
a foolish thing to do. But you know how it is with grandchildren—or, perhaps you don't. Yet. Mark my words, though—there's something that happens when you hold the little ones in your arms for the first time. You lose all sense of rational thought." She shook her head. "Henry and Sarah will be furious with me. I suppose the toys will end up in the fireplace.”

James started to speak, but stopped when Helena squeezed his hand. "Later. I can't wait another instant to hear the rest of the story. Please, Lady P. What happened when you told them about me?"

"Oh, they were certainly quite skeptical. The earl was furious at first. Your mother, especially, has suffered greatly over the years from the endless disappointment of one imposter after another. I daresay I would have been escorted to the door without another word had not my dear husband George been a school chum of William's from Eton. But they did eventually consent to hear me out, and when we compared notes I realized that Ethelberta Herne was involved, that was when I made the connection.

“The earl told me he'd regretted hiring the maid almost from the first. She seemed to believe herself capable of seducing any man, and refused to believe he didn't trifle with servants. He would have dismissed her, except that she had insinuated herself into his mother's good graces, and William—that is, the earl—could not bring himself to cause her pain. It seems that woman was quite the termagant! It was partly to escape the maid that he decided to go to Scotland for a fishing trip, and that’s where he met your mother, Mariah, the daughter of the Scottish earl, and they fell in love.

“They were married soon after, and then you were born. Mariah and her mother-in-law did not get on well, and the dowager countess used the maid—Marnie, I believe, was her name—to bedevil Mariah at every turn. Mariah was young and intimidated by the dowager, but she was afraid to tell William what she truly felt. The dowager insisted on Marnie becoming the nursery maid, and ever after when Mariah came to the nursery, Marnie would hint that she and the earl were involved. She didn’t believe it at first, but William was busy with the estate at the time and bit by bit Marnie’s inventions began to ring true.

“One day William overheard their conversation and burst in and dismissed Marnie on the spot. That evening, the night before she was to be driven into Matlock to take the stage back to London, she left the house, plucking the babe right out of her crib—no doubt out of spite—and it wasn’t until morning that it was discovered she had gone, and the child as well.”

“But how did she manage to get all the way to London without being intercepted?” James inquired, squeezing Helena's hand. “With all the earl’s resources, surely someone must have reported seeing a young girl with a child!”

Lady P shook her head. “Don’t forget she was a gypsy. Roaming around undetected is something she’s done all her life. Nor was she shy about using her looks to get what she wanted. Apparently, she could spin a wild tale too. I’ve no doubt she convinced many people she met that the evil earl was out to kill her baby. Frankly, it surprises me that Ethelberta Herne fell for that one, but I suppose her affection for the girl obstructed her normal sensible instincts.”

“So my father never had an affair with her?” Helena was trembling all over from excitement.

Lady P pursed her lips. “He says not. And I believe him. He insists he has always been devoted to your mother, and regrets that he did not devote as much time to his marriage as he did to the estate in those days. And your mother—well, she regrets that she did not insist on dismissing Marnie from the first. But she was only seventeen… and your grandmother was a master manipulator." She shook her head. "The dowager lived to regret it, but not for long. She suffered a stroke and died not long after the disappearance of her granddaughter.”

She tut-tutted. "One should never try to interfere in the lives of one's grown children. It almost certainly has the opposite effect of what one intended."

James started to speak and Helena elbowed him. This was no time to begin an argument over what constituted interference. She felt like she would burst if Lady P did not finish her story about the Cranbournes. Her parents. Had they agreed to meet her? What if they did not? Or what if they did meet her and ultimately reject her? Would there always be a hole in her heart, despite her bond with James and his daughter?

"So now what?" She clutched James's arm.

Lady P smiled. "They are eager to meet you, dear child. Not without a fair amount of apprehension, however. Put yourself in their shoes—meeting their grown-up daughter after an absence of nearly twenty-seven years. The daughter raised in another country and another era. I assured them that you would be a credit to them despite your modern ideas and tendency to use peculiar language."

Helena collapsed against James's shoulder, her eyes filling with tears.

"When?" Apparently James understood her inability to speak.

"Soon," Lady P replied. "Very soon."

She took a sip of tea and put her cup down. "Cold again. How I wish I had a microwave oven—and some electricity to power it, of course. It's so aggravating to wait for the pot to boil."

L
ater that day

“
A
re
you absolutely sure you don’t mind that I am Anne’s cousin?” Helena asked for at least the third time. “I never knew her, of course, but I’m sure I’m not at all like her.”

James finished pouring her a lemonade and handed it to her with a reassuring smile.

After a few hours of sleep, another dose of Tylenol thoughtfully supplied by the housekeeper, and a hot bath, Helena was feeling much more like herself. Finding Her Ladyship gone from home, she and James had moved out to the terrace to enjoy the fresh air and sunshine while they could. It rained a lot in England.

James gave a deep sigh. “Helena, my dear, it's time I told you the truth about my first marriage. You have a right to know that I wasn't a very good husband."

Helena's eyes widened. "What do you mean? It wasn't an arranged marriage, was it?" She could understand how a marriage between strangers could end up a disaster.

He shook his head. "No. It was a love match. She was the daughter of a vicar, a pretty little thing. I'd managed to turn things around at Melbourne Manor enough that I thought I could afford a wife, and the daughter of a vicar seemed to be a good choice at the time."

His jaw clenched. "One sees things in terms of black and white when one is too young to know better. I was lonely rattling around in the big house with only a couple of servants. I figured a vicar's daughter couldn't look much higher than a landed gentleman, and I assumed she felt the same way."

He rubbed his temple. "I was such a dolt. It didn't dawn on me for weeks after our marriage that she had expectations of becoming a society matron."

Helena raised her eyebrows. "You hadn't discussed it with her before the wedding?"

"Not a word. I'm certain I did not mention any such thing. Women do not ordinarily participate in marriage settlements—" he shrugged his shoulders helplessly "—and her father was relieved when I was willing to take her without a dowry. Little did I know then that she and her mother had been counting on my Melbourne relatives to sponsor us in society."

He went on to tell her about his determination to refuse handouts from either his family or hers, in spite of the willingness of her aunts to sponsor her in London.

"She was young and I thought she would adapt to the situation, and when our daughter came, she would be too busy to fret over such things, but it didn't happen."

Helena stared down at her hands when she heard the circumstances of her cousin's death. Could Anne had been mentally ill, even manic-depressive. Even in the future such things often went undiagnosed and ended in tragedy, although medication was certainly available. In this century, mental illness had a huge stigma attached to it and families went to all sorts of trouble to keep it hidden, even to the point of confining them to Bethlehem Hospital. She shivered in horror at the very thought of it.

James's eyebrows drew together and he reached for her hand. "Helena, my love, I hope you know that I will
not
be that sort of husband again. At least, I have every intention of offering you the sort of equal partnership you wish for and deserve."

He gave her a half-smile. "I shall at least do my best. I suppose it will always be in the back of my mind that if for some reason you become unhappy, you might well take it in mind to abscond to the future without me."

Helena sat up. It hadn't occurred to her that James might be concerned that she might leave him.

"Oh James! I would never—"

He put a gentle hand over her mouth. "I comprehend that you will be giving up a great deal to settle with me here in what you must consider a very primitive society. Are you certain that you can commit yourself to me and to Annabelle for the rest of your life?

Helena
had
considered that often since her arrival in 1817, although for the most part it had been in hypothetical terms. As long as she had no home or family to keep her here, this century was no more her home than the twenty-first. If she were going to continuing feeling out of place, it would be much easier to make a life for herself in the future. But with James and Annabelle here to keep her centered—regardless of the reaction of the Cranbournes—the modern world had lost its appeal.