Page 55 of The Duke's Promise to Her Child
The two men regarded one another for a long moment. Then Hastings nodded. “I think so.”
“Well,” Stevens said. “If Her Grace thinks it fair, how can I argue?” He extended his hand, and Hastings took it. Applause spread through the room in a warm wave.
Beside Gideon, the vicar leaned in. “Your wife has a real gift of the gab when it comes to people,” he said quietly. “She speaks their language. Knows how to reach them.”
Gideon nodded. He was watching Helena, who was now surrounded by a small crowd of people, with Mrs. Strom standing a comfortable distance away as a buffer, her expression one of considerable approval.
“I believe,” the vicar continued, “that it may be partly due to her having known less fortunate circumstances herself. She is acaptain’s daughter, after all — though I understand there was some connection to an earldom.”
“There was not, in fact,” Gideon said, quietly and with deliberate care. He had decided some days ago that it would be better for everyone if the village understood Helena’s origins correctly from the beginning. If the rumours ever found their way here — which he intended to prevent, but could not guarantee — the ground should already be prepared. “She is a captain’s daughter and nothing more. Many families have tales of grand connections — hers is no different in that respect. What I can tell you is that her father was a man I admired greatly and am personally indebted to. She became a lady through her first marriage and a Duchess through her second. That is the whole of it, and it is quite enough.”
The vicar studied him for a moment, then nodded with quiet understanding. “I am glad you care for one another,” he said. “It is good to see. Not all marriages are fortunate enough to be blessed in such a way.”
His heart clenched at the words. He looked back at Helena — who had now apparently said something that had made two elderly women laugh until they had to hold each other up — and could not deny it. He wanted to feel blessed by this marriage. He wanted to believe that love might yet find them both.
But the truth was he could not be certain. And that uncertainty cast a long shadow over the pride and quiet joy he felt watching her now.
For the last two years he had wondered whether he could ever love again after Cassandra. He had come to understand that he could. The question that remained — the harder one, the one he had not yet found an answer to — was whether Helena could ever open her heart to him. And what, exactly, it was that stood in her way.
He watched her laugh at something Mrs. Strom said, the sound carrying faintly across the room, and thought that whatever it was, he intended to find out.
CHAPTER 24
GIDEON
That evening at dinner, Helena sat across from Gideon and noticed the way he was smiling at her.
“Is something the matter?” she asked. “You seem in a suspiciously cheerful mood.”
“Suspiciously cheerful,” he replied, with a smirk. “What is suspicious about cheerful?”
“Nothing. I simply wondered what had put you in such a good mood. I thought you were working on the estate ledgers all day.”
“I was. But then I took a ride into the village and found my wife in the middle of the public house, working her way through what appeared to be a rather substantial argument. An argument she not only managed to end, but brought to a fruitful resolution.”
“Oh,” she said. “You saw me in town?” She looked down at her plate. “I suppose I ought to have asked your permission first.”
He was taken aback. Helena asking his permission? The woman he had spent the last several weeks with would never have bothered to ask his permission for anything. He had had considerable difficulty persuading her to serve him tea without dropping sugar from a great height in defiance. And now she was wondering whether she ought to have asked his permission to go into the village? It was peculiar, to say the least.
“No,” he said. “Of course not. You may do as you please. I was only curious where the sudden interest in the town came from.”
“Well,” she said, “I am a Duchess now. The village is part of our holdings. I thought I ought to get to know the people there. So I have been doing that — making myself acquainted with the farmers and the villagers. And when I heard about their arrangement for settling disputes, I wanted to see it for myself. And when I heard them arguing—” she paused “—I thought to myself: these foolish men. They are going to throw away a perfectly good neighbor relationship over a silly quarrel. So I spoke up.” She looked back at her plate. “I thought, well — let us see what this Duchess title is truly worth. As it turns out, it is worth a considerable amount.”
“Indeed it is. And I am glad you spoke up. I was thinking precisely the same from the back of the room.”
“Of course you were,” she said, with a small, sideways look that reminded him of the old Helena.
He sat back. “You know,” he said, “in London, when I told you that you ought to be less formidable — I meant that only whileyou were searching for a husband. You have one now. There is no longer any need to conceal that nature of yours.”
She looked up at him. “So now you want a formidable wife?”
“I want you to be who you are,” he replied. “I have the feeling that since we arrived here, you and I have not been as — companionable as we were in London. I would hope that might change.”
“What had you hoped, exactly?”
He knew what he had secretly hoped. He had hoped for considerably more than he had any right to. But at the very least he had hoped for this — for what they had been, before it had all become strange and formal and full of careful distance.
“I had hoped that we might be friends,” he said. “If nothing else.”
