She should feel aghast, but she could only smile at the woman staring back at her. She was alive in a way she hadn’t been for a long time, and no matter what happened with Max, she would always love him for giving her that.
A thump against the wall had her running to unlock the door as quietly as she could before bounding into her bed. She pulled the blankets up to her eyes just as the door creaked open, and she pretended to be asleep as Alice came in to add coals to the fire. If the girl thought it odd that there was ash dropped across the floor or that the room smelled of burnt rubber, she didn’t mention it.
Chapter 22
If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies we are determined to foment a rebellion.
Abigail Adams
The whole house felt as if it existed on a powder keg waiting to go off in a marvelous explosion at the slightest provocation. Helena felt it the moment she came down for breakfast. The women present talked in low whispers while the men were suspiciously absent. She spent the entire meal wondering if someone had heard them last night or if a groundskeeper had found the charred sheath outside her window and everyone knew about it and didn’t want to tell her. She was afraid to ask, so she sat in polite silence, petrified of learning the truth while nibbling on a bit of dry toast, the only food her nerves would allow her.
Toward the end she had no choice but to talk when her mother-in-law sat down next to her. “Good morning, Lady Sansbury. I hope your suite is comfortable.” It wasn’t until that moment that she realized Lady Sansbury had never given her leave to call her by the more familiar Clara, and that it should have occurred to her to mind all those years ago.
A footman rushed forward to offer the woman tea, but she waved him away. “As comfortable as always, dear. I have come to tell you that I . . .” She hesitated and took in a wavering breath.
“Lady Sansbury?” Helena placed her palm to the back of woman’s hand. “Are you all right?”
Lady Sansbury smiled and nodded. “Yes, I simply wanted to say that I am pleased that you have found a man willing—” She broke off and looked away. “Well, someone to marry who will take proper care of you.”
Helena could feel the expression of polite concern on her face freeze solid. In all these years no one had specifically mentioned her barrenness. It wasn’t until she had married that she understood the phrase monthly courses meant that they were indeed supposed to happen monthly. Hers had always been sporadic and light. She had only understood then because she had found the maids huddled around her bed one morning in the months after her marriage giggling over her impending motherhood because of the lack of bleeding on her part. Since her younger sisters had been too young at the time to ask, Helena had swallowed her embarrassment and asked her mother why the maids would believe her pregnant. Indeed, she had even hoped that maybe she was, though she had felt no different. Only then, under duress, had her mother explained all while assuring Helena that each woman was different and there should be no concern over the fact that she only had one or two menses a year.
There had been some gossip about her lack of bearing a child in the year leading up to Arthur’s illness, but no one had spoken directly to her about it. Certainly, Lady Sansbury had never even once given a glance toward her waistline. But what she had managed to stop herself from saying now said it all.
“I am pleased that you have found a man willing to overlook your failures.” Or perhaps she would have said “willing to marry you regardless of your inability to provide him children.” However the sentence ended, the meaning would be the same. Helena was a failure when it came to being a woman, according to Lady Sansbury and those of the same mind who believed a woman’s main purpose was to bring children into the world. This attitude wasn’t a surprise. She had spent the last few years convincing herself that it wasn’t true, but hearing it still stung.
“Thank you,” she forced herself to answer. Even to Helena’s ears the words sounded stilted and forced.
“I do hope you will be very happy. It is what Arthur would have wanted.”
Helena nodded, wondering how things would have been between her and her husband had he lived. Their first year had been near bliss but had taken a sharp turn toward coldness the second year as he became more desperate for her to conceive, until the final six months when his illness had taken over everything. Had he lived she could only assume that they would be as near to being polite strangers as a married couple could be. He wouldn’t have forgiven her for failing them.
“Thank you for saying so.” It was all she could muster.
Lady Sansbury smiled and squeezed her hand before rising to her feet. Helena followed her. “Lord Sansbury and I will be leaving this morning.”
“Please let me know when you are in Town again. I would be honored to show you the improvements we’ve made at the orphanage.”
The woman gave her a bland smile, still unable to move on from the loss of her son to go back to the life she had led. They both knew she would never come to the orphanage again. “Goodbye, Helena.”
Helena watched her go before leaving through the opposite door, unwilling to see anyone, as her own guilt for unintentionally misleading Max wailed through her all over again. Though could it really be unintentional when she had made love to him suspecting what he wanted from her?
“Helena! There you are.” Violet found her staring out the window in a little-used parlor off the breakfast room some minutes later. “Are you feeling well?” Violet asked as she closed the distance between them as fast as she was able since she was entering the final term of her pregnancy.
Helena really didn’t know how to answer that. In the past twelve hours, she had gone from heights she had never imagined possible to this near despair she felt now. “I’m well. How are you?”
“You look . . . flushed.” Violet cocked her head to the side as if she couldn’t quite figure out the change she saw.
Suddenly very happy that she had chosen a gown with a high collar to hide all evidence of Max’s kisses on her neck and chest, she said, “I am a bit tired. I didn’t sleep very soundly last night.”
To that Violet grinned. “Neither did I, but possibly for different reasons.” If the pretty color that appeared on her cheeks was any indication, their lack of sleep was for very similar reasons.
“Quite different, I suspect,” Helena said.
“Oh.” Violet’s face fell. “I had hoped . . .” But her voice trailed off.
“Hoped for what?” Helena faced her fully, suspicion seizing her.
“Nothing.” At Helena’s imploring expression, she sighed. “After Max went off alone last night, Christian went to look for him, and he wasn’t in his room. I had thought . . . well, hoped . . . that perhaps he was with you?”