Tempting the Bride (21 page)

And miraculously enough, nothing seemed to have changed about either. Miss Tallwood was still bespectacled and slightly stooped, more interested in the history of
fabrics than the wearing of them. Her handsome sister Mrs. Damien had persisted in widowhood, preferring the nurture of orchids to the nurture of husbands and children.

Helena enjoyed listening to the sisters talk, though she was also aware that Fitz and David stood a little apart from the cluster, having a discreet conversation of their own.

Miss Tallwood was waxing poetic about a fifteenth-century bolt of brocade she’d recently added to her collection when Mrs. Damien cried, “Oh, look, isn’t it that nice Mr. Martin who helped you prove the provenance of your brocade?”

At the mention of that name, Helena’s heart thudded unpleasantly. Venetia, Millie, and Lexington all glanced at her—David had written to everyone, informing them that Helena had been told the truth of her past.

“You are right,” said Miss Tallwood. “It is him. And you are his publisher, are you not, Lady Hastings?”

Helena kept her voice neutral and her answer short. “Yes.”

Mrs. Damien waved at Mr. Martin. “Hullo, Mr. Martin!”

At the sound of his name, Mr. Martin glanced in their direction and immediately turned red. He looked about, as if searching for a place to hide. But Mrs. Damien would countenance no such unsociable urges and called out to him again: “Over here, Mr. Martin.”

Now he had no choice but to approach. Helena, with her face carefully set, presented him to Venetia’s husband, whom he had yet to meet. Mr. Martin stammered through the introductions. She was embarrassed for him and mortified for herself, feeling ever more incredulous that she’d
had anything to do with this man beyond a greeting and a handshake.

She stole a peek at David. He looked tense, but gave her a small lift of the chin as reassurance. The past was the past, said his gesture; no point worrying about what could not be changed.

“Are you going home, Mr. Martin?” asked Miss Tallwood, oblivious to the undercurrents.

Mr. Martin wiped his forehead with a handkerchief. “I—I am going to call on my mother.”

“I heard she’d taken ill earlier in the Season,” said Millie kindly. “But I understand she has since completely recovered.”

“Unfortunately the recovery was not as complete as we would have liked,” replied Mr. Martin, looking distraught. “And now this new bout of fever has her physicians worried.”

Helena felt an involuntary swell of sympathy for him. He still remembered everything; her coolness to him must be terribly uncomfortable, given how diligently she’d pursued him. And now his mother was so ill he worried for her life….

“I hope Mrs. Martin will make a speedy recovery,” she said. “And that you will have her company for many years to come.”

Everyone else also offered their good wishes for Mrs. Martin. Mr. Martin mumbled his gratitude, bowed, and left.

Helena exhaled in relief at his retreating back. She did not blame him for anything—it was all too evident that she must have been the one to instigate their affair and to
pressure him to agree to her demands. All the same, she was glad that, with the Season ending, she would not run into him again for months upon months.

“Look at the hour,” she said brightly. “It’s almost time for us to board, Lord Hastings. Shall we say our good-byes?”

H
astings’s heart was still beating fast when he and Helena settled themselves in his private rail coach. Out of view of those still on the platform, her gloved hand took hold of his.

With her free hand she waved at her family, Miss Tallwood, and Mrs. Damien. “I am no longer thinking of him and neither should you.”

His was a perilous happiness, but moments like this made all the bouts of fearful despair worthwhile. He joined her in the waving. “I wasn’t thinking of him, but of us.”

A steam whistle blew shrilly, indicating the train’s imminent departure. On the platform, a rail guard motioned the crowd to move back. She kept on waving. “You weren’t speaking to Fitz about us, were you?”

“Goodness, no, at least not in the manner you are implying. We were talking about Mrs. Englewood, his old sweetheart.”

“A sweetheart before he married Millie?”

He looked at her, surprised. “No one has mentioned her to you yet? Fitz had to give her up when he needed to marry an heiress.”

She shook her head. “No. Fitz and Millie always speak of their life together as if they’d been in a perfect state of
harmony and happiness since the day they first married. I would never have guessed that there was someone else.”

“There was. Mrs. Englewood came back from India during the Season—
this
Season—and she and Fitz were ready to set up their own household. He came to his senses only shortly before your accident.”

She blinked. “I can’t imagine it.”

“Neither can I quite believe it now, but that was what happened.”

The train began to move, the rumble of its wheels gaining volume and depth. They waved one last time at everyone on the platform. A knot of travelers, recently detrained and in a hurry to leave the rail station, trudged by. One woman turned her head rather sharply to look in Venetia’s direction, catching Hastings’s attention.

Mrs. Andrew Martin. Martin was somewhere in the same station, catching a train, but his wife had clearly just come back from a different journey. Hastings supposed such must be the norm for a couple leading separate lives.

And the lives of the Martins were so separate, a well-dressed man greeted Mrs. Martin’s arrival by taking both her hands in his, however briefly.

“I remember her!” Helena cried.

Startled, and with his heart in his mouth, he turned toward Helena. “You remember
Mrs. Martin
?”

She could not remember Mrs. Martin without first remembering Andrew Martin.

“No, I remember Miss Isabelle Pelham, Fitz’s sweetheart.” Her eyes were wide, her hand clasped over her throat. “Is
she
the one you called Mrs. Englewood just now?”

“She is.”

A great many emotions chased across Helena’s features: shock, sadness, wonder. “Fitz loved her so much. And they were so perfect for each other. I remember receiving his cable telling me he’d have to marry a girl he’d met only once—I thought it would destroy him.”

“It almost did,” Hastings said through suddenly numb lips.

Fitz—and Helena—had been nineteen when Fitz had inherited the earldom. Was that as far as her memory extended, or would she exclaim, any second now, about her first sight of Andrew Martin?

“Do you remember meeting Millie?” he asked, testing her memory obliquely.

She frowned, then shook her head. “No, I still don’t remember her.”

But before he could exhale in relief, she jerked slightly. Then her eyes narrowed, and she looked at him in a way he remembered all too well, turning his entire person ice cold.

“I still don’t remember her,” she repeated. “But now I remember
you
.”

H
is expression would have been laughable, had Helena possessed the least desire to laugh. But she felt only disbelief, dismay, and a deep sense of humiliation, everything made twice as atrocious by the faint but unmistakable churn of nausea.

She
remembered
him.

Not the occasion of their first meeting, but instead a solid four years of his visits: summer, Christmas, and Easter.
He loved visiting Hampton House, and the only thing she loved about those visits was his eventual departure.

She’d received Fitz’s cable concerning his impending marriage three weeks after she returned to her school in Switzerland. Before that she’d been at home for Easter holiday, and daily, sometimes hourly, Hastings—she could no longer think of him as David—had pestered her. Sometimes with merely a leer, more often a lewd flick of the tongue when no one else could see him, and the rest of the time a quickly uttered insult as he passed her in a room or a passage.
I see your hair color has not improved over time. Publishing? You are really dying to be a dried-up old maid, aren’t you? When God made you, He must have been thinking of the Netherlands—flat and unexciting.

And it was only the tip of the iceberg.

A fifteen-year-old Hastings outside the parlor window of her old house, using a mirror to reflect sunlight into her eyes. And when she’d thrown a glass of water into his face, he’d waved a white flag—except the white flag had been one of her petticoats that he’d stolen from the laundry.

A sixteen-year-old Hastings telling her that she’d never grow breasts unless she invited him to massage them.
It’s the only way to make them bigger, a man’s touch
.

And what had he said about Easton Grange?
It has a dungeon, Miss Fitzhugh—my uncle was a good old-fashioned Calvinist, and you know how such men are in the privacy of their own home. I hear there was often a girl in the dungeon, chained to the wall or fastened to a contraption that left her defenseless before a man’s baser wishes.

I’m not saying I take after my uncle. But if I did, you know what I’d love to do? Go down into that dungeon and
torment my little slave when I have a houseful of guests, your family included, thinking warm, grateful thoughts of my hospitality.

She couldn’t get enough air into her lungs. Her memories stomped over her in a never-ending stampede, Hastings, always smug, always smutty, always determined to reduce her entire existence to a bonfire of unsatisfied spinster desires inside a pair of underwhelming breasts.

Belatedly she realized her fingers still covered his. She yanked back her hand, shot to her feet, and stormed as far away from him as possible without leaping out of the speeding train.

“Helena—”

She glanced back at him. She understood, theoretically, that his expression was sincere and pained, but all she could see was the arrogant, dirty sneer she remembered so well. Her throat burned with revulsion.

She turned her face to a nearby window. “Please leave me alone. You’ve said quite enough.”

H
astings had feared that Helena’s displeasure would spill over into her meeting with Bea. He needed not have worried. Until they came to stand before the nursery door, she’d been coolly aloof. But once the door opened, she was nothing if not warm and smiling.

Bea, however, was more sensitive than most children to tension—perhaps she sensed that Helena’s friendly cheer was forced, or that her father was completely distraught. She was never fond of meeting strangers, but today she was twice as frozen. Her motion, as she curtsied to Helena, was badly uncoordinated. Hastings, afraid she’d lose her balance, had his hand held out at the ready.

“I am your stepmother.” Helena knelt down on one knee—she had a natural, easy way with children. “May I call you Bea?”

Bea nodded jerkily, as if someone had yanked on a string to move her head.

“I am a publisher of books. Do you like to read?”

Bea nodded again.

“But you don’t like to speak?”

Bea looked down and gripped Hastings’s hand.

“She is shy,” he said.

Shy and afraid, his poor child.

Helena did not acknowledge him. “I am very glad to meet you, Bea. I hope we will become good friends, as we will”—her voice faltered for a moment—“be spending a great deal of time together.”

Had she been unable to speak because the thought of marriage to him was a spike through her lungs? His own lungs burned with a futile misery.

Helena straightened. “I’ve heard it said that children should be seen and not heard. I’ve never believed it myself. It has been lovely to see you, Bea. I hope someday I will hear your voice.”

She smiled again at Bea, but it was a wan smile. It startled Hastings to realize that she was disappointed. Without quite thinking about it, he said, “Remember what Papa told you, poppet? Lady Hastings was badly injured only recently, but she has come all this way to see you. Can you wave at her? Your special wave?”

He realized his mistake as soon as he’d finished speaking. Even normal children often responded unpredictably to sudden demands made upon them. Bea, who was piously devoted to her routine and already nervous at the introduction of a stranger, would be entirely paralyzed by his unexpected request.

And she was. She sucked in her cheeks, pressed her lips together, and stared down at the tips of her small boots. Like a tortoise pulling its head and limbs into its shell when faced with danger and uncertainties, Bea, too, had withdrawn into her shell.

H
elena bit the inside of her lips. She would have been fine taking her leave of Bea without any special gesture from the child. She did not need Hastings to apply pressure to the girl—or the scene that was likely to result.

Hastings already looked defeated, as if he were about to tell Bea to pay no mind to what he’d just said and go back to what she was doing. But in the next moment, he took a deep breath and lowered himself so that his eyes were level with his daughter’s.

“I don’t mean to make things difficult for you, poppet, and I apologize if I have. But you see, it is a very special day for Papa to bring Lady Hastings home. And I am so happy and excited.”

That voice of his—he could have requested women to remove their corsets in public and some would have agreed. And his profile, that amazingly perfect profile, reminding her of an old-master painting of an archangel at prayer, wholehearted and…

Humble.

She was not accustomed to seeing him humble. Her mind could not recognize him as the same nasty boy she’d known in her adolescence, and therefore failed to superimpose the boy’s repellent sneers upon his features.

All she could see was the young father of a child who must be handled with delicacy, treating that child with great care and respect.

Bea kept rigidly still, giving no indication she’d heard her father at all. She was not an unlovely child. Her straight, fine hair was an almost icy blond. She had wide, blue eyes, a soft pink mouth, and a rather darling overbite to her teeth. But she lacked entirely the charm and vibrancy that one often encountered in pretty young girls who were much adored by their parents.