Page 89 of The Duke's Promise to Her Child
“Thank you, my lady.” He was already moving.
James followed him out. They were back in the carriage and moving before Lady Hampshire had reached the drawing room window.
“She would not have gone for Emmett,” James said, as the carriage headed south. “Clara would not take her there simply to confront him. There must be another reason.”
“I know that,” Gideon said. “But Emmett is there regardless of the reason, and he will use whatever opportunity presents itself.” He looked out of the window. “She should not be there without more support than a baronet and a good friend.”
“Benjamin is perfectly capable?—”
“Emmett tried to extort my wife on her own doorstep. On his ground he will feel considerably more confident.” Gideon shookhis head. “Whatever she has gone there to do, she should not have to manage him at the same time.”
James said nothing further. The carriage moved south through the outskirts of the city and onto the Brighton Road. The afternoon light was thin and the road was busy and Gideon watched the passing countryside without seeing much of it, turning over in his mind what could have taken her to Brighton, what she had decided in the weeks since she left that required the Vale estate to resolve.
They had been on the road perhaps twenty minutes when James leaned forward and looked out of the window.
“Is that Lord Hampshire’s carriage?”
Gideon looked. Coming toward them on the road was a carriage with the Hampshire crest clearly visible on the door panel. James’s coachman had already seen it and was slowing. The Hampshire carriage slowed in turn. James put his head out of the window and Clara’s face appeared at the opposite window, she saw him, and said something to someone inside.
Both carriages came to a stop in the middle of the road. The vehicles stacking up behind them received this development with considerable ill humor. A cart driver began making his feelings known. A gentleman on horseback went around with an expression of profound injury.
Gideon had the door open and was out before the steps were properly down. On the other side of the Hampshire carriage thedoor swung open and Helena stepped down into the road. They were twenty feet apart and then ten and then standing in the middle of the Brighton Road with traffic stacking up behind both carriages and someone somewhere shouting with considerable malcontent.
She looked at him. He looked at her.
Neither of them said anything.
Benjamin appeared from the far side of the Hampshire carriage, took in the situation with the calm of a man built for exactly this kind of moment, and raised his voice above the noise. “We cannot stay on the road. There is a posting house a quarter mile back. We will meet there.”
“Agreed,” James called, from inside the carriage.
‘No,” Helena’s voice came. “I think we should stay here. The two of us. If you wish.”
Gideon’s mouth open but his head moved in agreement.
“very well,” James called and knocked on the carriage’s door, signaling it to move once more. “But do get out of the road lest you be run over.”
Gideon blinked but did not reply. Then, he proffered his arm and to his relief, Helena took it and allowed him to walk her to the side of the road.
CHAPTER 39
HELENA
The two carriages pulled away into the distance as they stood among the roadside trees, a little apart from the carriages, and neither spoke at first.
Helena had been thinking on the road back from Brighton about what she wanted to say. It had seemed clear enough in the carriage. Now, standing here with him in front of her, all of it had rearranged itself into a silence she did not know how to enter. For of course, she’d not imagined to see him so suddenly. What was he doing here anyhow?
She did not have to wait long to hear the answer.
“I was on my way to you,” he said. “I told you I would give you space and I had every intention of keeping to that. But I could not stand the emptiness of the house any longer.” He looked at her in the direct way he had when he meant something entirely. “I love you. I needed to say it to your face and not in a letter and not through James. And I needed to tell you that I will do whatever it takes, for however long it takes, to help you recoverfrom whatever was done to you. I only need you to be willing to give us a chance. That is all I am asking. I need you to trust me and understand that I am not him.”
“I was on my way to Blackthorne,” she said.
He blinked, surprise evident on his face.
“Right now. We were on our way back from the Vale estate. I was going to come and find you to tell you everything I should have told you weeks ago.” She watched his face as he took this in. “I have spent a great deal of time in London being told by everyone who knows me that I was making a mistake. Clara. Mary. Frances. The Langley sisters. All of them said the same thing in different ways — that I was letting the past govern my present and I was going to lose something real because of it.” She paused. “I argued with all of them. Quite thoroughly. And then Frances suggested I go to Huxley’s grave and say the things that had never been said, and I went today, and as I stood there and said them, I understood that they were all right. Every one of them.”
“What do you mean?” he said.
