After seeing her guests out, Helen returned to her small drawing-room to slump, even more weary than before, into her armchair. She struggled to make sense of what had happened. How had the story of her afternoon with Martin got out? No one had seen her leave Martin’s house—his careful butler had seen to that. And, against Martin’s orders, he had sent her home in one of the Merton coaches, but an unmarked one, with no crest on the door to give her away.
Had Martin spread the tale—to hurt her? Given the fact that he had deliberately and so very publicly flayed her feelings by waltzing with Lady Rochester—of all women— under her nose, she felt reasonably sure that he was capable of anything. Knowing that her standing in society was one of the few assets she had left, had he set out to strip her of that, too? Helen bit her lip. A sickening sense of betrayal threatened to engulf her. Determined to see things clearly, she forced herself to think long and hard but, in the end, could not believe it of him. He might strike out at her in anger, as he had done at the Barhams’, but to seek to pull her down by making public what they had shared that afternoon was not the action of a gentleman. And, beneath his rakehell exterior, Martin Willesden was every inch a gentleman.
The only proof she needed of that was her memory. He had taken great pains to keep her safe, from himself as well as all others, on their unorthodox journey to London. An unscrupulous rake would have taken advantage; she blushed as she recalled their night at Cholderton—he had certainly had opportunity enough.
No—whoever had spread the tale of their afternoon together, it was not, could not be, Martin. Nevertheless, the uncertainty added yet another bruise to her already battered heart.
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After half an hour’s painful cogitation, she succeeded in convincing herself that she would have to see Martin, to discuss what they should do. He must have heard the rumours by now.
Reluctantly, Helen rose and crossed to the small escritoire which stood before the window. She sat and pulled a blank sheet of paper towards her. After mending her quill, she spent fifteen minutes staring fruitlessly into space. In the end, she shook herself in disgust. Without allowing herself any time to think further, she dashed off a note to the Earl of Merton.
The answer came back two hours later. The Earl of Merton, wrote his secretary, was presently in the country. It was not known when he would be back but her letter would be shown to him instantly on his return.
Helen stared at the plain note, reading the two sentences over and over. Ten minutes passed, then twenty. Finally, as the light started to wane, she stirred. Crumpling the note into a ball, she dropped it into the grate. Then, slowly, she went to the door and climbed the stairs to her chamber.
She lay on her bed and stared at the ceiling. She was alone. Not an unusual occurrence in her life, but it felt much worse this time. Insensibly, Martin had been with her ever since their first meeting in the woods. Now he had withdrawn, at the very moment when she most needed his strength.
What was she to do? That refrain played over and over in her head. The shadows lengthened. Outside, darkness fell. Inside her chamber, the outlook was bleak. In Martin’s absence, she could not readily face down the rumours, scotch the scandal by simply denying its truth. Together, they could have pulled it off easily enough, even though, given their present situation, the effort would have cost both of them dearly. Without Martin, she did not have the strength to hold her head high until his return. Who knew when he might come back?
What were the alternatives? Helen bit her lower lip and frowned. If she retired from town for the rest of the Season, there was every likelihood that some other scandal would blow up to eclipse hers. Hazelmere, she knew, would not support such a course, tacitly admitting as it did that there was some substance to the rumours. But she was not a green girl. She was a widow of twenty-six. The ton was inclined to turn a blind eye to such matters, as long as the affair was not paraded before their collective eyes. As theirs had been. The cheapest price to secure her future acceptance seemed to be a sojourn in the country. She had little doubt that next year she would be able to return to town and join in the Season as if nothing untoward had occurred.
So the country it would be. But where? Unseeing, Helen stared into the gathering gloom. Hazelmere’s estates were always open to her but, given that her absence from town would be against his wishes, she did not feel at ease with such a solution. There was Heliotrope Cottage, of course— her only remaining land, all five acres of it, in west Cornwall. The cottage was a tiny place, just big enough for Janet and herself. Hazelmere had always been against her staying there, on the grounds that she would be without male protection.
But Cornwall was a long way from London. Perhaps, in the isolation of the country, her broken heart would mend faster?
With a sigh, Helen sat up and swung her feet to the floor. There was no sense in thinking further—there was nowhere else to think of. Heliotrope Cottage it would have to be. She rose and crossed to the bell-pull. If Janet packed tonight, she could close the house in the morning and hire a chaise to take them down. Three days would see her far from the capital, far from the grey eyes that haunted her dreams.
Late that night, with all her plans made and her orders given, Helen sank into her bed and closed her eyes. She had decided not to tell anyone of her decision. They would only argue and, at the moment, she was not up to arguing back. No one would worry, however, for, with the knocker off the door and Janet gone, they would know she had shut up her house and gone away. Her dearest friends, those whose approval she valued, were all close enough to respect her wish for privacy. After Christmas, perhaps, she could visit Dorothea once her friend had returned to Hazelmere.
With a little sigh, Helen tried to relax, waiting for sleep to claim her, wondering irrelevantly how long it would be before slumber ceased to bring the image of grey eyes in its train.
Chapter Ten
Hammering still echoed throughout the ground floor of the Hermitage. Martin paced around the new conservatory, added at the back of the ballroom, admiring his new domain. It was all coming together much as he had planned.
The decorators would take another week to complete their work; the carpenters were expected to leave tomorrow. The sharp tang of new wood mixed with the smell of freshly mown grass. Not to be outdone by their house-bound rivals, the small army of gardeners he had hired to transform the wilderness back into landscaped grounds had taken full advantage of the fine weather. He had noticed the change immediately he had arrived. The drive had been cleared and newly gravelled, the huge wrought-iron gates that had hung for centuries at the main entrance to the estate had been cleaned and rehung. At the sight, Joshua’s grumbles, all but constant since London, had abruptly ceased.
Martin leaned both hands on the sill of an open window and breathed deeply. Everywhere he looked, the evidence of his success leaped forward to greet him. Soon, his dream would be a reality; the Hermitage would be fit to take its rightful place as a centre of fashionable living once more, a suitable home for him—and his family.
At the thought, his mood clouded.
His success on one front had not been mirrored on the other. And now he was no longer sure which was the more important. Before he had met Helen Walford, restoring the Hermitage had been his principal goal. Now, with that goal in sight, he was looking far further ahead, beyond having his house, to fulfilling what he recognised as an even more basic need. He would soon have his house—he needed a family to fill it.
And, try as he might, there was only one woman he could picture in that all-important position before his fireplace. His mind was not capable of letting go of the image of Helen Walford, the flames gilding her glorious hair, with his son balanced on her hip.
From being merely an aim, marrying Helen Walford had become an obsession. He knew himself well enough to accept that if he did not marry her he would marry no one. His dream of a family inhabiting his home would never materialise.
He was determined that it would—every bit as determined as she seemed to be to fight shy of marrying him.
She was in for a shock.
He was not giving up.
Martin smiled a twisted smile. The life of a rake, a rich, well-born rake, was hardly conducive to teaching one self-sacrifice. He had no intention of giving up his dream. But how to convince Helen to go along with it was more than he had yet worked out.
Noticing the shadows lengthening, he shook free of his reverie. He would think more on the matter later. Right now, he was due for some light entertainment.