Marrying Winterborne

If I had the right, I would forbid you to go anywhere without me. Not out of selfishness, but because being apart from you is like trying to live without breathing.

Think on that. You’ve stolen my very breath, cariad. And now I’m left to count the days until I take it back from you, kiss by kiss.

Winterborne

Chapter 12

KNEELING IN FRONT OF a bookcase in an upstairs reading nook, Helen sorted through rows of books and set aside the ones she wanted to pack. In the three weeks since she had returned to Eversby Priory, she had accumulated a room full of possessions to take to her new home. Each item held personal meaning, such as a rosewood sewing box that had belonged to her mother, a porcelain dresser tray painted with a parade of cherubs, a children’s bath rug embroidered with Noah’s ark and its animal passengers, and a mahogany parlor chair with a triangular seat that her maternal grandmother had always occupied during visits.

Staying busy was the only way Helen could find to distract herself from the melancholy longing that had invaded her heart. Hiraeth, she thought gloomily. The familiar comforts of home had lost their appeal, and her ordinary habits had turned into drudgery. Even caring for her orchids and practicing the piano had become tedious.

How could anything seem interesting in comparison with Rhys Winterborne?

She’d had so little time alone with him, but in those few hours she had been possessed and pleasured with such intensity that now her days were dull by comparison.

Reaching the row of her mother’s orchid journals, Helen pulled them out and placed them one by one in a canvas overland trunk. The set comprised twelve inexpensive notebooks covered in plain blue cloth, with pages that had been glued to the spine rather than stitched. Their value to Helen, however, was inestimable.

Jane, Lady Trenear, had filled each one with information about orchids, including sketches of different varieties and notations about their individual temperaments and properties. Sometimes she had used the journals as a diary, weaving personal thoughts and observations throughout.

Reading the journals had helped Helen to understand her elusive mother far more than she ever had in life. Jane had stayed in London for weeks or months at a time, and left the rearing of her children to governesses and servants. Even when Jane had been at Eversby Priory, she had seemed more like a glamorous guest than a parent. Helen couldn’t remember ever having seen her mother less than perfectly attired and perfumed, with jewels at her ears, throat, and wrists, and a fresh orchid in her hair.

No one would have thought that Jane, generally admired for her beauty and wit, had a care in the world. However, in the privacy of her journals, Jane had revealed herself as an anxious, lonely woman, frustrated by her inability to produce more than one son.

I’ve been split open like a sausage, Jane had written after the twins were born, by a pair of daughters. Before I even arose from my childbed, the earl thanked me for producing “two more parasites.” Why couldn’t at least one of them have been a boy?

And in another notebook . . . Little Helen is proving to be a help with the twins. I own, I like her better than I once did, although I fear she’ll always be a pale, rabbit-faced creature.

Despite the stinging words, Helen felt sympathy for Jane, who had been increasingly unhappy in her marriage to Edmund, Lord Trenear. He’d been a disenchanted and difficult husband. His temper had veered from scorching to freezing, rarely lingering in-between.

It wasn’t until after her mother’s death that Helen had finally understood why her parents had always seemed reluctant to acknowledge her existence.

She had learned the truth while nursing her father through his last illness, brought on by a day of hunting out in the cold and damp. Edmund had gone into a rapid decline despite the doctor’s efforts to heal him. As the earl sank into a half-delirium, Helen had taken turns with Quincy, his trusted valet, to sit at his bedside. They had administered tonic and sage tea to soothe his sore throat, and applied poultices to his chest.

“The doctor will return soon,” Helen had murmured to her father, gently wiping traces of saliva from his chin after he’d suffered a coughing fit. “He was called away to see a patient in the village, but he said it wouldn’t take long.”

Opening his rheumy eyes, the earl had said in a dry, scoured voice, “I want one of my children . . . with me . . . at the end. Not you.”

Thinking that he hadn’t recognized her, she had replied gently, “It’s Helen, Papa. I’m your daughter.”

“You’re not mine . . . never were. Your mother . . . took a lover . . .” The exertion of talking had provoked more coughing. When the throat spasms had calmed, he had rested silently with his eyes closed, refusing to look at her.

“There’s no truth to it,” Quincy had told Helen later. “The poor master is raving mad from fever. And your mother, God bless her, was admired by so many men that it poisoned his lordship with jealousy. You’re every spit a Ravenel, my lady. Never doubt it.”

Helen had pretended to believe Quincy. But she had known that the earl had told her the truth. It explained why she had neither the temperament nor the looks of the Ravenels. No wonder her parents had despised her—she was a child born of sin.

During the earl’s last lucid moments, Helen had brought the twins to his bedside to say good-bye. Although she had sent for Theo, he hadn’t been able to arrive from London in time. After their father had fallen insensate, Helen hadn’t been able to find it in her heart to make the twins attend his deathwatch.

“Do we have to stay?” Cassandra had whispered, swabbing her red eyes with a handkerchief as she sat with Pandora on a little bench by the window. They had no affectionate memories of him to share, no advice or stories they could reminisce over. All they could do was sit silently and listen to his faint rattling breaths, and wait miserably for him to pass.