Page 2 of Falling For The Dowager

For a moment, Helena considered her options. Confronting her husband’s family, begging for compensation from a fruitless and sad union, and in the process continuing the humiliation of her mother-in-law parading her husband’s unfaithfulness and her infertility before all the beau monde. They might have whispered about it before, but now it would be entirely her responsibility, and once Rowlandson and his fellow satirists got hold of the story…

“What would you suggest?” Helena asked as her brother’s carriage slowed to a stop in front of Walter’s Belgravia mansion. It bore the unmistakable signs of needing a fresh lick of paint and perhaps a woman’s touch, but Walter was a confirmed bachelor, and Helena was simply comfortable to be close to a familiar setting. The simple Grecian exterior was fashionable with its Palladian columns up to the roof, but the Toussaint London home took on proper proportions once one was inside and past the formal front, to the cosy house that Helena had loved in her youth.

“I don’t believe that letter for a moment, far too coincidental,” Walter said as the pair of them walked up the front steps and past the butler, Yates, before leading into the rear of the mansion, where there was an ever so shaded, quiet library, so known to them as siblings.

Despite it being years since their father’s death, the dear room still smelt of their father. The lingering scent of Fribourg & Treyer’s snuff, blended with a touch of woodsmoke from the fire, and of course, the dense all-surrounding presence of their father’s books. Walter had made one addition to the room, and Helena was pleased to see, as she collapsed into the cushy, well-padded armchair, that there was a ready supply of cake all prepared. Fortnum & Mason’s Walnut Iced cake would be a welcome addition to such a day.

“I suppose you wish for me to send for that woman, Mrs. Lawe, to see if it is true. If she really is pregnant.”

In her brother’s mind, it would make sense to ascertain the reliability of the woman. To see her swelling belly and question her about her upcoming baby. The idea inched through Helena as raw as a red rash. She might have accepted she would never bear a child, but the idea of seeing another round with the fruit from her husband’s seed was suddenly repellent.

“I wish to leave.”

Walter, who had thrown himself at his ease onto the rug beside her chair as he sipped his port and picked at his slice of cake, looked up furious. “You cannot mean to allow such a slight, such a matter to be…”

Reaching out and touching his shoulder, Helena silenced him with a soft shake of her head. “I have had enough of the Kingstons. At least for the time being. I simply wish to withdraw from the scrutiny of it all. Not to have to witness the scandal sheets or Eustace coming into his title. Or Mrs. Lawe and her child…” Helena’s voice wobbled for a second on the final word, but she made herself smile into Walter’s upturned face.

A beat passed before Walter frowned in an almost boyish manner, as if he were frustrated by her hesitancy. “Then what do you mean to do?”

The world stretched out empty and strange as she studied the freckles over her brother’s nose. For all her life, she had been instructed, told, ordered this way and that until any idea that she might have a say in what she could do was a foreign concept. Now it was dented and bruised, depleted by many of the ton’s standards, but it was at least hers.

“I don’t know as yet,” Helena said, “but if you will let me intrude on your hospitality a little longer, I will formulate a plan.”

To both siblings’ surprise, there came a resounding knock on the door, and an inquisitive blonde head stuck around the door. Bespectacled but fashionably dressed, Mrs. Vincent looked between the siblings and hurried into the library.

Edwina Vincent had been Helena’s dearest friend for the last ten years, ever since Helena had helped the young woman set up a finishing school when the matron had been unexpectedly widowed. It was to Edwina that Helena had written when she’d found out about the upcoming will reading and begged her friend to come to Town. A premonition had told her it would be wise to have her beloved friend close by. It was unfortunate neither Edwina nor Walter could stand each other despite being in each other’s orbit for years.

“Whatever happened?” Edwina rushed forward, not caring a jot for the normal societal standards for which her finishing school was famed for. She practically pushed Walter aside and took Helena’s hand.

Walter made a huffing noise and moved over to the tea tray, which Yates had provided, and set about making an additional cup of tea as Helena relayed the details of the morning’s happenings.

At appropriate moments, Edwina made the needed shocked and appalled noises, and her sympathetic expression was precisely of the sort which conveyed comfort without ever veering into the condescending. Edwina was the person to whom Helena had confided her desperate sadness over her continued infertility.

“Of course you cannot remain in Town,” Edwina said as she sank into the position where Walter had been sitting in moments ago. “Nothing could be a harder challenge for you. It would be vile. Perhaps a trip abroad to the continent?”

“With what funds?” Walter asked. “And what chaperone?”

“Surely, you are rich enough to support your sister?” Edwina snapped.

Walter opened his mouth to defend himself, and Helena could all too easily imagine the pair of them descending into yet another one of their famed arguments. It was most strange how they were perfectly amicable apart but not when together.

“Please.” Helena held up her hands, cutting off whatever her younger brother was about to say. “Our father did leave me a small annuity, which should be sufficient to support myself, regardless of what the lawyers agree about Benedict’s legacy or personal funds.”

“Father should have been more generous, given the shoddy widow’s portion he agreed to. I will supplement that with whatever you might need,” her brother said loyally.

“And you can count on me,” Edwina added. “After all, without your sponsorship, Vincent’s Finishing School would not exist.”

Walter made a sort of scoffing noise, his disbelief at Edwina’s school evident in the roll of his eyes, and Helena sank back into the armchair as the two of them started to bicker. She let the whirlwind of voices swirl around her as she tried to work out her next steps. The idea of moving from hotel to hotel in some hot overseas resort was not one that held much appeal. Forever awaiting kindly news from one of the two people present that she might come home, or antagonistic reporting from some newspaper that her husband’s bastard had been born. No, what she wanted was a fresh start, something that might belong to her, that she could throw herself into entirely.

“Do we have any relatives in Cornwall?” she asked, cutting into the heated argument.

Two pairs of blue eyes turned to her and frowned in bewildered confusion, as if she had sprouted an additional head.

“Why Cornwall?”

“I want somewhere remote,” Helena said, giving voice to the dream that was rapidly taking shape in her mind’s eye. “A place where it won’t matter about my husband or father’s title, where I can read, and walk, and simply enjoy the solitude.” It was only part of her idyll, but those three things would be more of a comfort than the whirlwind of high society had been for the last twenty years.

“You sound as if you might become a recluse,” Walter said dismissively.