Page 83 of The Duke's Promise to Her Child
“And now here you are. Standing in a stable yard having genuine feelings about a pig, because the pig belongs to the woman you are in love with, who also has a daughter you clearly adore, and you are miserable without any of them.” He shook his head slowly. “You are not a rake anymore, Gideon. I am not sure you were ever really a rake, if I am honest. But whatever you were — you are not it now.”
Gideon looked at Ruby, who had gone back to her corner and resumed her investigation of it.
“No,” he said. “I suppose I am not.”
“She did that to you.”
“She did.” He was quiet for a moment. “Or Lavinia did. Or both of them together. I am not entirely certain which came first.” He pushed away from the pen and walked a few steps, hands behind his back. “I had truly hoped — I know it sounds foolish — but I had genuinely hoped that the three of us might make a family together. A real one. Not an arrangement, not a practical convenience. An actual family.” He stopped. “I thought we weregetting there. I thought I could see it. And then everything fell apart in the space of a single afternoon.”
“Everything did not fall apart,” James said.
“It feels rather like it did.”
“What it feels like and what it is are different things.” James pushed himself off the pen and came to stand beside him. “She is not gone. She is in London being attended to by four women who between them have collectively managed to civilize myself, Rhys, Nathaniel and Lucien. I would not underestimate what that particular group is capable of.” He clapped a hand on Gideon’s shoulder. “Do not give up. That is my advice. Simple and unadorned. Do not give up on her.”
Gideon looked back at the house — at the stone face of it, the windows, the drive — and thought of Helena walking through every room of it telling him what needed replacing and what ought to stay. Her hand at the small of her back in the portrait gallery. Her face when she saw the daisy painting.
“I have no intention of giving up,” he said. “I simply do not know what the next step is.”
“Neither do I,” James said cheerfully. “But I find that if you wait long enough, the next step generally presents itself.” He nodded toward the house. “Now. I have been traveling since before dawn and I would very much like something to eat. Feed me, and then we can work out how to get your wife back.”
CHAPTER 35
HELENA
The afternoon was bright and cool, the kind of day that made Hyde Park look almost unreasonably pleasant. The trees were beginning to turn, and the paths were busy with nurses, governesses, and their charges, couples taking the air, and the occasional gentleman on horseback who seemed primarily concerned with being seen on horseback.
Frances walked beside her. Lavinia, for her part, was intent on investigating every leaf that had fallen onto the path. Their progress was accordingly slow.
“I had a letter from James,” Frances said, after a little while.
Helena kept her eyes on Lavinia. “Oh?”
“Yes. He wrote at some length.” A pause. “About Blackthorne.”
Helena said nothing. She very much wanted to ask what the letter said. She equally very much did not want to ask, because asking would mean admitting she wanted to know, and she had been trying, with limited success, to convince herself that she did not.
Frances seemed to understand this without being told. She reached into her coat and produced a folded letter. “Would you like to read it?”
“No,” Helena said. “It is a private letter between you and your husband.”
“It is. Though he did not write it with any great expectation of privacy, I think.” She held it out.
Helena looked at it. Then at Lavinia, who had crouched down to examine something on the path like a very small naturalist.
“Would you read it to me?” she said. “Just — the relevant parts.”
Frances unfolded it without ceremony.
“He says…” she skimmed for a moment “…that Gideon is in a bad way. His word was rather more colorful. He says he is moping around the estate like a miserable sod, James says. He says Gideon is miserable. That he does not quite know what has happened or what he can do about it. That he suspects it is all connected to your first husband and that he dreads to think just how badly he must have treated you to produce this kind ofreaction even to the slightest show of temper. He says he misses you.” Frances glanced up briefly. “And Lavinia. He mentions Lavinia rather a lot, actually.”
Helena watched Lavinia stand up and drop whatever she had found, then crouch immediately to retrieve it.
“James says he has advised him to come to London,” Frances continued. “To speak to you directly. But Gideon will not, because he does not wish to crowd you. He says you wanted space and he intends to give it to you, even if it is killing him.” Frances folded the letter and put it away. “Those last four words are James’s, not Gideon’s, but I think the sentiment is accurate.”
“Thank you,” Helena said.
They walked on a few steps.
