Page 76 of The Captive
“I was here,” the countess said, setting a dirty white root aside and using her gloved fingers to pry at another. “She’d brought herself nearly to exhaustion fretting over Evan. Easterbrook was very concerned for her.”
“She nursed Evan herself?”
While Christian battled an ache in his fingers, Gilly tugged the root from the choke hold of its neighbors. “She hadn’t the patience, but she fretted nonetheless, looked in on him constantly, spent a great deal of time trying to write to you and ask you to come home.”
“I would have come.” He would have, had he not already been taken captive. Odd, how life could time tragedies for the most exquisite complement of sorrow.
“You would have,” the countess said, setting the second root aside. “Even Greendale didn’t grouse when I told him I was going to her. She didn’t know what to do, didn’t know how to cope.”
“Life hadn’t asked much of Helene to that point,” he said, seeing for the first time that Helene had been closer to childhood than adulthood when he’d married her. Not a woman with a great deal of personal fortitude, certainly not prepared to be a duchess.
And it wasn’t her fault, any more than captivity had been his.
“Helene excelled at being pampered and indulged, a disservice often inflicted on a young woman with abundant beauty.” The countess bent over the flower bed to get a better angle with her hand spade. “But when Evan didn’t rally, Helene blamed herself. In her mind, if she hadn’t sent you away, God would not have punished her by taking her child.”
“Remarkable, isn’t it, how we manufacture guilt to fit most any occasion? Everybody dies.”
She peered up at him over her shoulder. “You blame yourself.” She sat up and took off her gloves. “Oh, Christian…”
He stared straight ahead, seeing the dank, dark walls of the dungeon where he’d been held all those months.
“Girard explained my situation as a choice.” His own voice sounded far away, detached. “I could spare the lives of countless men by keeping my silence, but he promised assassins would see to the death of my wife and my heir did I keep my peace. He could describe the English countryside as if he’d ridden it himself, as if…” Christian frowned down at the tool in his hand. What was he supposed to do with it?
“And if you had told him what he wanted to know?”
“My men would die, and many others with them. Thousands.”
She made a sound of muted horror and wrapped an arm around his waist.
“My family was innocent,” he said. “I did not kill them. Girard’s threats were merely an obscene coincidence, and he stopped making them early in my captivity—they were simply one taunt among his arsenal of torments. I know that, but I should have been here. If I’d been here, Evan would not have taken a chill, or fallen ill, and Helene would not have done what she did.”
He recited his conclusion woodenly. He’d fashioned it in his mind weeks ago, when Easterbrook had first explained that both the duchess and the heir had died, and in Christian’s mind, themeaculpahad sounded smooth, like a catechism. Spoken aloud on a pretty summer day, the words had no sense, but were still somehow compelling.
“Helene was liberal in her use of laudanum,” Gilly said. “You know this. Think back, Your Grace. She threatened to use it on her wedding night.”
He regarded the unearthed irises in a growing pile on the countess’s blanket. Helenehadused a little of the poppy on their wedding night, and been a relaxed bride as a result. He’d wondered why all nervous brides didn’t use the same trick.
“But if I had been here, I would have watched over the boy,” he said, and this was the demon that plagued him the worst. An adult woman could be trusted to look after her own interests, her own health, not so a toddling infant.
“You said yourself you were banished from the nursery.” Gilly rubbed the center of his back, where a cold tightness dwelled regardless of the pretty day. “The weather was not bitter, or even particularly damp. Evan was a healthy child, and his illness started with a simple sniffle.”
“Was he bled?”
“Helene said you disapproved of the practice, so no.”
That was something. Helene had respected his wishes and spared the child at least that horror. “And he was gone in a week?”
“One week, and Helene was wild in her grief, or perhaps her guilt, then she got word you’d been reported missing.”
“Only missing, not dead?” This mattered, though to a grieving mother, the distinction had likely been lost.
“Only missing. Marcus had leave to tell her in person, and he assured her every effort was being made to find you.”
“Then why in the bloody hell would she be so careless with her sleeping draughts? Why cast her life away like that?”
“You aren’t indifferent.”
She said it so solemnly, he had to turn his head and risk looking at her.
