Page 55 of The Scandalous Deal of the Scarred Lady
“Well, what do I care,Your Grace.” She sneered the phrase. “If I am to be saddled with yon pathetic Duke for the rest of my days when it should have beenhimthat I should have married….”
She thrust a thumb in the general direction of James who stared at her with a mixture of horror and revulsion. “But I thought…”
“You thought wrong. The note was meant for you, the Honorable Duke of Durham. Not York. How such a mix-up might have occurred…”
Barrington was also staring at her by now. His face grew hard and determined. “Go…have my man saddle my stallion. He should get you through, though it will be hard going. Campbell…” He paused here and looked at him sympathetically. “Do not let the prattling of a woman keep you from your path. She is clearly overwrought.”
Campbell. And just like that, they were equals. It likely had to do with the difficulty in courting the ladies of this family, who seemed to change their minds as often as the wind changed direction regarding whether or not they wished to be courted. Or by whom, apparently. James would have laughed at the absurdity of the situation had he not been so urgent to be on his way.
“Ithank you, Barrington. If I might take my leave…” James bowed. Behind him the doors between the two rooms slammed open, sending a violent gust of cold air into the room, and revealing to him one rather frantic young lady, whose pale face belied her concern.
“You would leave, Your Grace, into a storm like this, for your servant?” Helena said, though there was no censure in her voice nor sneer, as there had been in Miss Barlowe’s. Only honest concern lay in the eyes that met his.
“I would, my Lady, for she is much more than a servant to me. Though, I think you understand that,” he said softly, looking beyond her to where Bridget stood in the shadows.
“I understand…just…the storm is severe.”
James stared into her eyes, pleading with her to understand. There were things he could not say, not out loud, and certainly not in this company, where Miss Barlowe had just declared her love for him and now was sitting sulking on the settee.
Helena met his gaze unflinchingly, strong and certain, as though she understood. He loved that about her — that she was not one to back down when a challenge arose, and that she had a quick empathy for those around her.
“Not unlike the storm that brought Lucy to your own door, I suspect,” James said softly, reminding her that, were it not for Lucy, they would not be standing there, trying to have an entire conversation with their eyes.
“Oh please,” Miss Barlowe muttered from the settee, covering her eyes with one hand as her head lolled back against the edge of the sofa. “Surely I cannot watch this. Both of you together are as tedious as trying to watch that play by Shakespeare. What is it?Romeo and Juliet? Though I might remind you that their story ends entirely in disaster. Are you so sure you would go out into the storm, Your Grace?”
“You have an odd sentiment for a lady who just expressed a desire to marry this particular Duke,” Barrington said, with a wry glance at the very person to whom he had apparently proposed to only a few minutes hence.
“May we all die here tonight. To perdition with the lot of us. The play has become a farce, and I no longer wish to have a part within it.” Miss Barlowe shook her head. “Helena, child, see me to my room. I seem to have come down with one of my sick headaches.”
Bridget made a noise behind them as if to protest, but Helena bent obediently to the task of lending an arm to her aunt, who leaned heavily upon her as she made her way to the door. She paused there though, despite her burden, and looked back at James with such a pained look in her eyes that he caught his breath.
“There were things I would have said to you,” Helena said softly. “Things I should have said to you all along. It was my note that caused all of this. I had intended for it to bring you here to speak tome.”
James blinked in surprise, aware that Barrington had likewise straightened suddenly, and shot a different sort of look altogether in Miss Barlowe’s general direction. “We will speak when I return then,” James said, with all the solemnity of this being a sacred vow.
“You are returning then?” There was a hint of shy wonder in Helena’s voice, and for a moment, James hoped that things were not so ruined between them after all, for she had fled the table so quickly. Here he had been attempting to court her for weeks now, and they were yet to finish a meal, or even a tea, together.
“I shall return.”
It would have to be enough. Miss Barlowe chose that moment to make a noise that might have been termed rude, signaling the conversation was clearly over.
Which left him to wonder what it was that Helena had wanted so badly to say that she would want to meet him in this drawing room by herself. It was a shame things had gotten so badly muddled.
Chapter 39
Never had James dared travel so far in such weather. The storm was a true blizzard, the worst of the season, if he were any judge of it, though the storm Lucy had been lost in was a near second at any rate.
James bent low over the neck of the Duke of York’s horse. Barrington had been right — the animal was superior to any he had ever ridden. But even so, the animal floundered in the drifts and nearly went down more than once. James, a fine rider in his own right, was hard pressed to not be thrown more than one. The fact that he wasn’t was more to the horse’s credit than to his.
Had he not needed every bit of concentration to keep the animal moving forward, James would have welcomed the respite to think through the developments of that night. As it was, he could only take with him the look in Helena’s eyes. Such worry, such concern could not possibly be mistaken, and could only mean one thing.
She cares about me. She must, or she would not have looked at me the way she had.
The thought alone should have been enough to keep him warm as man and horse struggled onward. But James’s fingers froze despite the warm gloves he wore. The skin left exposed by the scarf that had slipped away from his face and was lost to the wind. burned with pain. More terrifying was when everything stopped hurting at all, signaling the onset of frostbite, about the time his own gate came into view.
Little did such things matter anymore. The sight of his own home, lights burning in nearly every window, told of the expectation of his return; his servants had never doubted him for a minute. Whether Lucy was still alive, James had no way of knowing. James’s heart was in his throat, he somehow managed to dismount from the horse, stopping only to pat and praise the animal, shouting over the wind to be heard.
The stallion stood with his ears back and head down seeming thankful to be done with the wild journey. One of James’s few remaining servants dashed from the door to take the reins.
