What a Lady Craves (26 page)

At least she might have been comfortably settled, out from under the family’s financial burdens. Why had she not taken that means of escape?

She glanced toward the window where a beam of sunlight shone into the room and warmed his back, far more clement than anything the Indian sky had thrown at him. “Perhaps none of my suitors felt I was quite so interesting with my dowry taken away.”

“According to Henrietta, you were engaged.”

“Oh, good heavens.” She gestured skyward, an appeal to said heavens. “I cried off an engagement, and our aunt turned it into a horrendous scandal. You know how she likes to exaggerate everything.”

“Are you certain that’s all there is to it?”

“Yes.” She didn’t even blink. He knew that expression. Whatever sins she was hiding, he’d get no more information out of her. He made a mental note to question their mother at an opportune moment. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I believe it’s time I gave our aunt a proper set-down.”

He might have laughed. Only the weight of everything that had happened since Harry’s
death stopped him. “I can see you still like to live dangerously, but do you really want to take that chance?”

“I’ll take it under consideration.” She shifted on the balls of her feet, her body leaning slightly forward, like a bull about to charge—if bulls could be small and female. “In any case, I’m not through with you. About your daughters.”

“What is this? You haven’t been here an hour and already you’re nagging me about all manner of things.”

“I’ve eight years to make up for. I don’t intend to stop any time soon. Your girls are just darling, but you really have to start treating them equally.”

“Oh, not you, too.” He drummed his fingers against one thigh. “I see Miss Upperton lost no time in discussing my shortcomings with you.”

“Henrietta might have mentioned it, but good heavens, I could see for myself the moment you came in. You scooped the younger one right up, and you never even acknowledged the other.”

“Was Helena there? I didn’t see her.” How poor an excuse was that? He knew very well Henrietta would not let one of the girls out of her sight. Francesca had simply charged in as she always did and taken her share of his attention.

“Of course she was there. And no one would have missed her look of hurt.”

“Hurt? Helena has always been quieter. She keeps to herself. Takes after her mother in that regard. Francesca, on the other hand, demands attention. And I’ve learned it’s better to give it to her, or she only gets worse.”

“Sounds to me as if you’ve spoiled her rotten, and to the detriment of the other. At least you’ve hired a proper governess in Henrietta. Although I must admit, I’d never imagined her looking after young charges.”

“She is not my employee,” he rushed to explain. Perhaps too quickly. “She’s our aunt’s paid companion. She’s merely filling in while I’m staying here, and at our aunt’s insistence, at that.”

“You might want to find out what our aunt is paying her and double it. I haven’t had the chance to observe her for very long, but based on what I’ve seen, she’s worth her weight, that one.” Cecelia’s look was far too perceptive.

She was needling him. She had to be. She couldn’t know he wanted Henrietta for a far more permanent position. “As if I’d consider hiring her. She’s my former intended, for God’s sake.”

“Glad to see you haven’t forgotten.” She wiggled her fingers at him and flounced out of the room.

Skirts flapping, Henrietta marched down the corridor, looking right and left, but nothing met her eye beyond the fading wallpaper and the occasional portrait of an Epperley ancestor.

That girl. Where had Helena run off to? One moment she’d been sticking close to Henrietta, while Francesca monopolized their grandmama’s attention; the next thing Henrietta knew, the child was gone. Hardly surprising with everyone in the room once more fussing over her younger sister. And Francesca, true to form, had lapped up every last drop of adulation like Albemarle with her daily saucer of cream.

Slipping away from the family gathering might have passed for rude, but Francesca was in safe hands. Helena, on the other hand, was nowhere in sight, and since Alexander insisted his daughters remain under tight surveillance, it was best to find her, and soon.

Henrietta stopped short. Was that a sniff she’d just heard? It must have been, for the wet rustle of another snuffle met her ears. What on earth?

“Helena?” Her question echoed along the corridor. She couldn’t help recalling the last times she’d faced down an odd noise, but nothing set the hairs at the back of her neck on end now. And it was broad daylight.

“It was only a cat,” she reminded herself. “And Alexander.” Alexander who, she was certain, had contemplated coming into her bedchamber last night. Heaven help her, she just might have welcomed him.

Another sniff was her only reply, but the sound seemed to be coming from an alcove farther along the passage. Henrietta crept closer. Sweeping a drapery aside, she spied Helena seated on a bench, hugging her knees. The traces of tears stained her cheeks, and her lower lip quivered.

“My goodness, what’s happened?” Henrietta crossed her fingers that the problem would be easily solved, although she immediately knew such would not be the case. Not with Francesca stealing all the attention yet again. Not when meeting several new relatives might have served as a fresh start. If only Cecelia hadn’t seen fit to drag Alexander from the sitting room. The doting of a young, vivacious aunt might have sufficed for a while.

Helena shook her head and hid her face in her skirts.

“What is it?” Henrietta took another step forward, and reached out to brush a few dark strands from Helena’s forehead. “Perhaps if you told me.”

“You can’t do anything,” Helena lashed out. “No one can.”

“But it often helps to talk about it, and in the talking we might find we can do something, after all.” Henrietta strove to keep her voice low and soothing.

“I don’t like it here,” Helena muttered. “I want to go back to India.”

“Ah.” Damn it all, why did it have to be something so impossible? “I’m afraid you’re right, there isn’t much we can do about that, but what if we found something to like about England?”

“There isn’t anything to like.” Helena’s lower lip poked out, obstinate as any expression on her sister’s face when said sister didn’t get her way. Where looks were concerned, Francesca and Helena hardly resembled each other, except for odd moments such as this. Right now, with Francesca nowhere in sight, the pair looked like the siblings they were.

“I’m sure if we tried hard enough we might find something. Perhaps if you told me what you liked so much about India, we could find something here to replace it.”

Eyes wide, Helena looked up. A tear trembled on the edge of her lower eyelid. “Mummy’s in India, and she can never come back.”

Henrietta’s heart turned over. Poor child, losing a parent so young, especially when she had difficulties relating to her living relatives. “That is true.” No sense in denying the obvious. “And I’m very sorry we can’t do anything to change that.”

Good Lord, what to say? Helena was watching her closely, shoulders stiff, all but steeling herself against Henrietta’s next words. And why would that be? Unless the missionaries she’d traveled to England with had fed her some sort of pap about the girls’ mother being with the angels and looking down on her children from heaven. Henrietta had been fortunate never to experience the loss of a parent at a tender age, but she didn’t think those sorts of empty words would have placated her, either. They certainly wouldn’t appease her now.

To gain time, she pushed her way behind the drapery and nudged Helena until the girl made room for her to sit. “I could tell you it will get better, but I’m not sure you want to hear that.”

“Mrs. Turner said I ought to accept what God has planned.”

“And who is Mrs. Turner?” Although she suspected she knew, since the Almighty had entered the conversation.

“Papa made us travel on the ship with them. I didn’t like that, either.”

“I think, in the end, it was better that you were with them, just this one time, don’t you?”

Helena shrugged. “I don’t like God. He took my mummy away from me.”

Henrietta sucked in a breath. Thank goodness the child was confiding in her. Anybody else—no doubt Mrs. Turner—would have berated her for voicing such blasphemy. “I don’t believe taking her away was part of anyone’s plan. That would be quite unfair, wouldn’t it?”

And here she was going on about fairness when she damned well knew life was completely impartial when it came to doling out problems. But whatever Alexander had put her through wasn’t the point now. She had to cheer up Helena.

“I don’t suppose so,” the child agreed, “but then, why don’t I have my mummy?”

“Well …” Henrietta began, to gain time. She’d no idea what might have occurred in India, and she’d hardly put the question to the girls’ father. “All sorts of things happen in life, and sometimes we can’t do anything about them. I wouldn’t say they’re meant to be. Sometimes people have accidents, and sometimes other people are just bad.”

Helena nodded, but her expression remained serious.

“And knowing what happened doesn’t change anything, unfortunately. You still want your mummy, don’t you?”

She nodded again. “Do you still have your mummy?”

“I do, but my papa is gone. I wasn’t as young as you are, but I was still very sad when he died.”

“But you’re not sad anymore?”

“Not really.” Henrietta moved an arm to the back of the seat, not quite hugging her charge, but giving the girl a chance to snuggle up if she wanted to. Poor thing, she was in such need of physical comfort and too proud to ask for it. “Naturally, when I think about it, I am. At times, I see something I know my papa would have liked, and it makes me wistful, thinking how he’s not here to see it himself. But I don’t think about him all the time now. And that’s the important part. You’re sad about it now, but the feeling won’t always sting so sharply.”

Helena nodded again, but Henrietta wasn’t certain she’d managed to convince the girl. She still sat rigidly, her arms draped about her knees, hugging herself as best she could but refusing to demand comfort from an outside source.

“Why … why don’t you tell me about your mummy?” The last thing Henrietta wanted to learn was anything concerning a woman who was essentially her romantic rival. No, not even a rival. The woman had appeared out of nowhere and bested Henrietta when she didn’t even realize she was competing for Alexander. And worse, the woman’s daughter would no doubt idealize her mother the way only a five-year-old could.

Helena considered her, her eyes betraying a depth far beyond her years. A depth born of
sorrow at too young an age. “Why do you want to know?”

“I just thought it might help to talk about her. To remember her during happier times. You never lose that, you know. You’ll always have a portrait of her right here.” Henrietta pressed her fingertips to the child’s breastbone. “That’s yours and no one can ever take it away from you.”

“Not even Francesca?”

“No, of course not. Francesca has her own, and it’s very likely not quite the same as yours.” Where this well of wisdom was springing from, Henrietta had no idea. But thank goodness for it. They may well touch on a subject that was painful for her, but Henrietta’s pain was nothing next to losing a parent at such a tender age. “Yours is unique.”

“Does that mean Papa has one, too?”

Oh, dear. Henrietta thrust aside the knife-stroke that accompanied the question. In all these years, it should have dulled, but somehow the blade cut straight to her heart, keen and stinging. “I suppose he does, yes.”

“And it’s not like anyone else’s.”

“Naturally, it wouldn’t be.” It was the last thing she ought to consider, but some perverse part of her wondered what Alexander’s portrait of Marianne looked like. “Why don’t you tell me about yours?”

Somehow Helena had shifted on the bench and snuggled a bit closer to Henrietta. The child’s arm pressed against her side, and Henrietta lifted her hand and slipped it to Helena’s shoulder. Not quite hugging, but close enough. And if wary Helena wanted to bestow a modicum of trust on Henrietta, she must not question.

“Mama was the most beautiful lady.” Helena sighed. “She was just like a princess in a fairy tale.”

Oh, yes, Henrietta definitely did not want to hear this, not when Alexander might harbor a similar image of his wife.

“I imagine she looked something like you.” Idly, she brushed a strand of dark hair from the girl’s face. “Black hair, brown eyes, white-skinned. Perhaps someday you’ll grow up to be just as beautiful and when you look at yourself in the mirror, you’ll see her looking back at you.”

Helena pulled away, a frown puckering her brow. “Mama’s eyes weren’t brown. They were blue.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. I reckoned you must look like her, since you don’t look much like your papa.”

“I
do
have her hair. That’s what Nipa always said.”

“Then you have something of your mummy’s that no one else has, don’t you?”

“Not even Francesca.”

Henrietta pressed her lips together. She needed to find a way to bring the sisters closer, rather than dividing them. “Did you ever, I wonder, think of remembering your mummy with Francesca? I’m sure she gets sad sometimes, too.”

Helena bolted upright, her fists clenched and trembling. “Francesca didn’t love mummy the way I do.
No
one does.”

And with that, she whipped the drapery aside and tore off down the corridor, the patter of her footfalls echoing in the silence.

Henrietta hurried after the girl, but Helena’s short legs managed to outstrip her, pounding off toward the back stairs and the upper reaches of the house. If Helena headed for the nursery, at least she’d be safe enough there. Not wishing to take the narrow and winding set of servants’ stairs at a run, Henrietta slowed her pace, but before she reached the first flight, the door to Lord Epperley’s study opened, and Cecelia emerged.

“There you are,” she said, her tone triumphant, as if she’d just discovered a fabulous treasure.