Page 6 of The Scandalous Deal of the Scarred Lady
“How dare you!” she cried as she drew the rose from the confines of the bag and held it up in heartbreaking triumph. “We brought you in from the storm, and this is how you repay us?”
“You do not understand…” Lucy’s hands came toward her, clasped in prayerful supplication. “I only meant—”
“To steal? Does your precious Duke know of your habits? What would he say if he knew you to be so light-fingered?”
“Please…please do not hurt me…” the woman stammered, cowering back against the window as though to escape through the glass itself into the very storm if necessary.
“Hurt you…?” Helena repeated the words and drew back, realizing how her unexpected guest stared at her face.
Helena’s fingers went to her cheeks, to her forehead, the glove coming away stained red with blood. Belatedly Helena remembered scratching wildly at her forehead, the tears of the skin beneath her assault. How must she look, her skin wild and mottled and stained red with blood, coming at a person as though a…a wildbeast.
Her other hand clutched at the rose, feeling the sharp edges of the pin even through her glove. “Why must you stare? Why must you look at me so?” Helena wailed, drawing the hood of the cloak up, despite the fact that the damage was well and truly done.
“I was not…I never meant…it was all a misunderstanding!”
Helena lifted the pin so that the firelight reflected off the facets of each individual ruby, setting the pin itself ablaze so that the rose was illuminated as though it had a life of its own. “This is quite the misunderstanding,” she mocked before drawing back away from the other. “For heaven’s sake, go sit down. You can barely stand.”
The woman sank into the chair by the window, the very one Helena had vacated. Her slender frame shook with sobs as she bowed her head, burying her grief in her hands. “You do not understand.”
“Thenmakeme understand,” Helena replied, throwing up her hands. “Help me to make sense of this all. For I understand not why you would steal from me if you are honestly in the employ of a man of such obvious wealth and breeding.”
“Then you know him?” Lucy asked, raising her tear-streaked face hopefully in Helena’s direction.
“I know of him,” Helena replied cautiously, for in truth she knew only the name. But then she only ever knew the names through the stories her aunt told her, tales carried from her own socials or teas.
Oddly enough, this was one such name that had stood out, perhaps by dint of the sheer number of times it had been repeated. Aunt Phoebe had a certain fascination for the Duke of Durham.
The woman sprang at her, falling to her knees in front of Helena and clutching at Helena’s cloak with fingers that shook. “Pray, do not tell him what I have done. I had…a need. A situation that called for some…funding. I saw the pin and thought perhaps that such a small thing might not be missed. It was foolishness on my part. I have never…”
“You have never, perhaps, but you did all the same here tonight,” Helena said, trying to pry the woman’s hands from her clothing before she lost the cloak again, revealing her shameful appearance for a second time that night. Once was enough. “What thing is so desperate in need of money that you would risk so much for the sake of a single pin?”
The woman moaned, drawing away, curling within herself, her face twisted in grief so deep that Helena’s heart beat hard within her breast. What could cause such overwhelming grief, such desperation that would cause a woman to take such an unlikely chance?
The storm. She came out in the storm because she needed money. Not to rob. To talk to someone else on this street about a loan perhaps. Only she was turned away, hence her attitude when faced with the storm. Storms cannot possibly matter when faced with so much turmoil within.
Helena drew back, unsure what to do. Someone of a finer heart than hers likely would have forgiven her already and set about to see what could be done to remedy this woman’s situation. Did she have some relative in trouble? Some terrible debt to pay?
I am not so fine as all that. Perhaps this is a flaw within my own character that I am still angry. But this was my mother’s brooch. And while I kept her safe from the storm, she repaid me thus. Is it not right that I be more than a little put out by the entire affair?
Helena felt the anger rekindle within her breast. “Do you not have an answer for me, then?” she asked, her tone mocking. “Or does it take too much time to concoct a lie suitable for the occasion?”
“No. No lie. Only the truth.” Lucille rose unsteadily to her feet, seeming to pull herself up by sheer will. “I am many things, but I am not a liar,” she said, raising her chin somewhat. “But I cannot share with you my reasoning without a promise from you in return.”
“A promise?” Helena asked, drawing back a little in shock. “Whatever can I promise you? If you are worried about the constable…”
Lucy shook her head. “No. If you had wished to cause that kind of scandal, you would have called for someone to summon the constabulary the moment you realized what I had done. This is another sort of promise altogether.”
Helena lifted a hand to her cheek, brushing her fingertips over a spot that had been troubling her for some time. It was so very difficult to not scratch, especially as she had noticed that the rash that plagued her was so much worse when she was distressed, as she was now.
“Tell me,” she said carefully, aware that she was dealing with someone who had already proven herself clever on more than one occasion. “What makes you think you can trust my promise?”
At this Lucy smiled a little. “It is plain to see that you are a lady who prides honor over all else by the very means by which you had me brought here, and my every need attended to.”
This was perhaps true enough, though Helena was not one to be won over easily by mere flattery. “What is this promise then?”
“That you tell no one what I am about to tell you.”
A confidence then. Helena sank down onto a chair, careful that her face remained hidden, though it seemed foolish now that she had been seen already once. Besides, the cloak was very hot. With a sigh, she pushed the hood back from her sweaty face, ignoring the quick intake of breath from her guest. “Tell me then and I will decide whether ’tis worthy of the promise.”
