Page 21 of The Duke on Her List
“Uncle Gabriel,” Helena said over breakfast the next morning, “I woke up with a maid in my room, and she wouldn’t tell me why—only that she was there on your orders!”
Gabriel let out a sigh, recalling his conversation with Lady Agnes of the night before. Lady Agnes had been clear that the best thing to do was to tell Helena what had happened, and unfortunately, he did agree with that. It was the best way—maybe the only way—to ensure that his headstrong niece would make safe choices.
“She was there on my orders,” he agreed.
“Well, I’m not going to have that,” Helena said tartly. “I’m not a child, Uncle Gabriel, and I’m much too old to have someone in my bedroom watching me while I sleep.”
“I agree that isn’t a solution we can move forward with,” Gabriel said. “But we do have a problem, Helena, and something needsto be done about it.” He thought back to his conversation with Agnes once more. “I’d like to work together with you to try to determine the best solution.”
Helena folded her arms. “Solution to what? To the fact that you feel entitled to let the staff into my room at all hours of the night?”
“No,” Gabriel said. “The fact that you leave your bed and walk about the manor in your sleep.”
“What?” Helena barked out a laugh. “I don’t do that. Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Yes, you do,” Gabriel said. “I’m sorry, Helena. I know it might be alarming—difficult to hear, maybe. But you were walking around last night. Do you have any memory of it?”
Perhaps she saw something serious in his expression—she paled slightly and unwrapped her arms from around herself, tucking her hands into her lap.
“No,” she said quietly.
“It’s all right,” he told her. “You didn’t do anything wrong. Nothing bad happened, and we just took you back to your bed. But you must see that it isn’t very safe to have you wandering around the manor. You might have fallen down the stairs.”
She bit her lip. “I won’t do it again.”
“You can’t control it,” he said. “You were asleep. That’s why I needed to make sure someone was watching you. And if you think it’s the best solution, we can continue with that moving forward. I can move a maid’s bed into your room. But I agree with you that you’re old enough to need a private space. So my thought was to put a lock on your door.”
“You want to lock me in?” Her eyes blazed. “You can’t do that, Uncle Gabriel. No!”
“We have to do something,” he pointed out. “What would you like to do about it? You know we can’t just let you get hurt.”
She thought for a moment. “What if you locked my wing of the house?”
“What do you mean?”
“There are doors that close in my hallway,” she pointed out. “The double doors at the end that lead to the rest of the house. Lockthosedoors. If you lock them, I’ll still be confined…” She made a face at the word. “But I won’t feel quite so contained as if you locked me in myroom.”
“You would be all right with that?”
“No,” she said. “I despise the very idea of it. But you’re right. I can’t exactly go around falling down stairs. I’ll do myself a serious injury that way.” She sighed. “Are you sure this wasn’t a one-time thing?”
“Do you have reason to believe it might have been?”
She sighed. “I did have a nightmare last night.”
Gabriel’s heart twisted. “About your parents?”
Helena looked down.
“You used to have those dreams all the time, when you first came to live with me,” he said quietly. “I thought they had gone away. You haven’t spoken about them in years.”
“I don’t have them as often anymore,” she said. “But sometimes they do come back.”
“Is it the same dream you had as a child?” he asked her. “The one where you’re with them, and then out of nowhere, they’re gone?”
“That’s right,” she said softly. “The same dream. And I try to search for them, but no matter where I look, I can’t find them.”
“That’s probably what prompted you to get out of your bed,” he mused. “You were searching for your parents. Even in your dream, you were compelled to get up and look for them so strongly that it led to you walking around the manor.”
