Page 87 of The Duke's Promise to Her Child
“It feels strange,” Helena said. “Going to speak to a man I did not grieve.”
“You do not need to grieve him. You were never required to and you are not required to start now.” Clara’s voice was matter-of-fact in the way that was most useful. “But you have things to say that were never said. They have been sitting inside you for years. Whatever you think about graves and the usefulness of standing in front of them — it is not really about him. It is about putting those things down somewhere outside of yourself so that you are not the only one carrying them anymore.”
Helena was quiet.
“I will come with you,” Clara said. “And I think we should ask Benjamin.”
“Benjamin?”
“Emmett Graham will be at the estate. He always is. And you know what he is like — he will not make it easy, and he will be considerably less difficult with a gentleman present.” Clara was already thinking through the practicalities in the way she always did, efficiently and without fuss. “Benjamin has been wanting to meet Emmett Graham since the day you told me what he said to you at Blackthorne. He will not mind at all.”
“I do not want to make a production of it,” Helena said.
“It will not be a production. It will be three people arriving at an estate so that one of them can visit a grave. That is entirely ordinary and Emmett has no grounds to refuse it.” Clara looked at her directly. “Will you go?”
Helena looked at her hands. She thought of Frances in the park, of Mary in the sitting room, of Evelyn saying plainly that she was giving herself an excuse. She thought of all the weeks she had spent in London telling herself she was thinking things through, and how thinking things through had not moved anything at all.
“Yes,” she said. “I will go.”
Clara nodded and reached for her writing things before Helena had finished speaking.
* * *
They set off the following morning, the three of them in Lord Hampshire’s carriage with Lavinia on Helena’s lap for the first hour before she fell asleep and was transferred to Clara’s. Benjamin sat across from them and was, as Clara had predicted, entirely pleasant about the whole arrangement. He asked sensible questions about the estate and the layout of it and said very little about Emmett, though Helena had the impression he had rather a lot to say on that subject and was saving it.
Brighton was grey when they arrived, the sea wind cutting across the downs and pulling at their coats as the carriage turnedup the lane toward the Vale estate. The house came into view around the last bend. Helena had not seen it in more than a year. It looked exactly the same — well-kept, large, and wholly unwelcoming in the way it had always been, even when she had lived there. She had never once thought of it as home.
Emmett answered the door himself.
He looked at Helena first, with the same expression she had always associated with him. That combination of contempt and calculation that his brother had worn better but that Emmett had perfected in his own fashion. Then he looked at Benjamin, and she could see him reassessing.
“I have nothing to say to you,” he said to Helena.
“We have not come to speak with you,” Benjamin said. His tone was perfectly pleasant. He had the ease of a man who has never in his life needed to raise his voice to be taken seriously, and he wore it without effort. “Lady Helena has come to visit her late husband’s grave. Her daughter has come to see her father’s. These are not requests that require your permission, and I would be very sorry indeed to have to point that out to you formally.”
Emmett’s expression tightened. “This is my estate.”
“It is,” Helena said. She had been thinking about what she wanted to say on the drive down, and she said it now without heat, looking at him directly. “And the Laurendale house is on it. Which, as you may recall, was left specifically to Lavinia in Huxley’s will. I have not pursued that matter because I have hadother concerns. Whether I continue not to pursue it may depend somewhat on the next few minutes.”
Emmett looked at her. Then at Benjamin.
“She is fully within her rights,” Benjamin confirmed. “Her daughter has a legitimate claim and Her Grace has standing to act on her behalf. We would naturally prefer to resolve this without involving anyone’s solicitor. But the choice is entirely yours.”
A silence followed. The wind came in off the sea and moved through the garden behind the house. Lavinia, on Clara’s hip, pointed at something on the garden wall.
Emmett looked at Helena with the expression she knew. The one that preceded the cutting remark, the one designed to make her feel small enough to give ground. She had spent years giving ground when she saw that expression on Huxley’s face. She looked back at him and did not move.
“The cemetery,” he said at last, “is at the far end of the east garden. I assume you remember.”
“I do,” she said. “Thank you.”
He stepped back from the door. It was not gracious but it was enough.
* * *
Clara and Benjamin took Lavinia to walk along the garden wall, and Helena went alone.
The Vale family cemetery was small and enclosed, tucked behind a row of yew trees at the eastern edge of the grounds. She had been here once before, on the day of the burial, standing at the back of a crowd of people performing grief with varying degrees of conviction. She had stood in the summer’s heat the year Huxley had died and felt nothing except relief, and she had been ashamed of the relief and had told herself the shame was grief and tried to make that serve. She had not been back since.
