Chapter Eighteen

H elen held out her hands to Jason, remembering at the last moment that hugging him in a lit theatre box would lead to a scandal. The ton had altogether too many rules. He encompassed her hands into his larger, callused ones. They felt warm, familiar and safe. He was a part of her special world at Hampford Castle and Ashbury village. The one without rules and restrictions. He was entangled in every childhood memory. Running along with Becca and Frederica in the fields. Swimming in the river. And playing all the leading male parts in Frederica's home theatricals.

Jason released her hands to shake hands with Samuel.

‘How are you, old friend?' Samuel asked.

Jason smiled. His mouth was made for smiles. ‘Never better than I am now.'

He shook hands with Frederica, too, although bowing over her glove would have been more appropriate for a young gentleman. But in his defence, almost all his childhood punishments had resulted from following one of Frederica's diabolical plans.

Even Mama gave him a small smile. ‘Jason, how well you look.'

He grinned back at her. ‘I have never been to London before, Your Grace. It is more wonderful than I imagined.'

Her mother raised one eyebrow—she was really good at that. ‘You prefer the city to the country?'

Jason continued grinning, unknowingly stepping directly into Mama's trap. ‘I confess I do at this moment. The hustle and the bustle. The people and the places. One could live here for a hundred years and not have seen everything.'

‘Have you thought of taking a parish in town?' her mother asked. ‘I know the Bishop of London and I could put in a good word for you. He is always looking for bright young men to fill appointments here. But I am afraid that there is a great deal of poverty near the docks. Even more so than in a country village. You might find it disturbing, or disheartening.'

He grabbed her mother's hand and shook it vigorously. ‘I should be ever so grateful if you did, Your Grace. And I have witnessed a small view of the suffering here, but isn't that what a vicar is supposed to do? Lift up the hands that hang weary? Spend his life serving the poor and the outcasts like our Saviour did?'

Helen didn't breathe again until Jason released her mother's hand. Unlike some men who picked the church as their profession, Jason truly meant what he said. He loved people. All people. He was as blind to their sins and flaws as Helen was to poisonous snakes. Jason would make a wonderful vicar in the city. He would willingly serve a streetsweeper as thoroughly as he would serve a duke. But Helen was marrying him to live near Hampford. She had no interest in residing with him in London.

She did not get another word with him before he left with Lord Dutton. They all took their seats for the remainder of the play. Helen did not lean on her mother's shoulder this time. She sat up, as straight as a giraffe's neck. She tried to keep her mind on the play, but she couldn't.

Leaning over, she whispered in her mother's ear, ‘You did that on purpose, because I don't want to live in London.'

Mama didn't look at all chagrined. ‘I have known Jason since he was in short coats. He has the sweetest temperament in the world and I believe he will do a great deal of good in his life. He's the sort of young man that gives one faith in the clergy.'

‘He could do just as much good in a country parish.'

‘Jason's father is still a young man. He would not be able to take his father's parish for many years and he deserves a better place than that of a curate, don't you think?'

Gritting her teeth, Helen exhaled. ‘Of course he does... You and Papa could help him get a living anywhere in England, but you specifically chose a large city far away from Ashbury to spite me.'

‘Or to suit him,' Mama said, patting Helen's hand.

She jerked her hand away from her mother and folded her arms. Keeping her eyes on the stage, she didn't look at her mother for the rest of the night. Not even on the carriage ride home. Climbing into her bed, she admitted to herself that Jason would probably prefer a city. The more people the better. The greater the poverty, the more he could help. The more sorrow, the more he could mourn with them. The more sin, the more he could try to save them. Failing that, he would love the sinner.

Covering her head with the bedspread, Helen knew that she couldn't live in London all year long even to be with Jason. The two months for the Season felt too long. She was not made for bricks and buildings, but for rocks and lakes. She would feel like one of Papa's animals that were too domesticated to be reintroduced to the wild, so they had to be kept in an enclosure. Caged in on all sides by rules and propriety.

Mark sat up in bed when he heard scratching at his window. He was about to call his servants when he realised that it was most likely Helen. Only a fool of a thief would go into the master's rooms. Although most bedrooms were on the upper floors, not the ground floor. He heard two feet hit the wooden planking. Realising that he was not wearing his artificial leg, Mark pulled the coverlet higher over his chest. Not that any cover could hide the fact that there was only one leg bump on the bed. He dropped the blanket and fumbled to light a candle. Despite all his resolutions, he longed to see her beautiful face.

He held the candle up and saw her light blue eyes and long hair billowing over her shoulders. She was wearing a diaphanous nightgown with a robe over the top of it. Such thin garments left very little to the imagination and his mind needed no encouragement to think of her that way. Mark hadn't worn a nightshirt before losing his leg. He was profoundly grateful to be wearing one now or Helen's lesson in male anatomy would be complete.

‘I'm so sorry to wake you up, Mark. I am so sorry for everything. I ruin whatever I touch. Including our friendship. I just didn't think before I went for that walk in the park. Can you please forgive me?'

Exhaling slowly, Mark nodded his head. ‘I will forgive you, if you promise not to send any more potted plants. If you do, there will be no room to walk in my house.'

She smiled and touched the leaf of a plant that reached all the way to her shoulder. ‘Isn't it nice to be surrounded by living things?'

‘I am already surrounded by living things. My mother, aunt and cousin have arrived from Scotland.'

‘How lovely. When are you going to introduce them to me?'

He gulped. As much as he was drawn to her, it would be better if they no longer met. ‘I don't know if that is a good idea.'

He watched as she moved to the chair by his bed. She climbed on to the end of it and wrapped her arms around her knees.

His temperature rose to the same heat as his fever. Mark tried to calm his racing pulse and beating heart. Helen thought they were friends. She clearly didn't have many male friends or she would have known better than to sit near their beds. He supposed it was her innocence. She didn't know the terrible things that human beings could do to one another. The pain and terror of war. Blood and bodies. Smoke and sorrow. He prayed that she never would.

Helen's eyes swallowed him whole. She rocked back and forth in the chair, still holding her knees tight to her chest. He saw a twig caught in her hair, probably from climbing over the fence to his garden.

‘I promise to behave myself—I really can, if I try hard. I know that I don't always behave like a proper lady, but I will be on my best behaviour. Both Samuel and Frederica said that you didn't want to see me again. I think they were trying to let me down gently—to explain that you hadn't gone into your back garden or met with me because you didn't wish to. But please, Mark, give me another chance to be your friend and meet your family. I won't muck it up. I promise. No snakes. No social solecisms. No pettish remarks. I will be a perfectly well-behaved young lady.'

Mark's lips twitched. He doubted Helen would or even could be a perfectly well-behaved debutante. She was right. There was an otherness, a feral sense about her. She was a wild thing that belonged in lakes and forests. Revelling in the forests. There was a wildness about the land of Scotland that he thought she would love. But she would never come to his castle. She planned to marry her curate.

‘My mother is very... Scottish,' he said slowly, trying to figure out how to politely say that his mother hated everything English. Especially the people. Her family had lost their home and lands for supporting the Jacobite cause against the English Crown.

‘Excellent,' Helen said, smiling at him. ‘My sister-in-law Nancy grew up in Scotland and speaks Gaelic. I could introduce them. I bet they would get along like jam and scones.'

Rubbing his eyes, Mark shook his head. ‘My mother brought her niece. My cousin, Niamh, and my aunt. She is hoping to promote a match between us. Both my mother and my aunt would view our friendship as an impediment to the courtship.'

The smile fell from her face and, heaven help him, she scooted the chair closer to him. Mark couldn't decide if he was in paradise or purgatory. She was close enough to touch but impossible to hold on to.

‘Are you courting your cousin?'

He couldn't resist leaning forward and pulling the twig from her hair. He watched as her eyes closed and she took a sharp inhale at his touch. ‘I am not courting anyone. I don't plan to marry.'

‘Good. Because my father says that cousins should never wed. It causes interbreeding and results in physical deformities in the children. Papa says that's why the royal family is such a disaster: because too many first cousins married each other and produced offspring.'

There was nothing humorous about the situation Mark found himself in, but he couldn't help but smile at her explanation of inheritance. Nor how quickly Helen had not liked the idea of him courting another woman.

‘Friendship between a man and a woman is difficult,' he said, sighing. ‘Society will always assume that there is more going on and I am sure that your curate would not like the fact that you kissed me.'

She took one of his hands in both of hers. ‘But I was just making you warm the only way I could think of. The way an animal would. It was the logical thing to do.'

‘We are not animals, Helen.'

Her fingers squeezed his hand tightly. ‘I know. Or I might have eaten you after I kissed you.'

A laugh tore out of his throat. She would have made a very good female spider in another life.

She smiled at him. In the candlelight, he could see tears floating in her eyes. ‘Were my kisses really that terrible? Is that why you've been avoiding me?'

‘They were devastating.'

Helen sniffed.

His hand moved to her face and he gently wiped away a tear. ‘I cannot be your friend, Helen.'

‘Why not?'

Unable to stop himself, Mark leaned forward and brushed a kiss against her forehead. ‘The problem is that I like you too much and I am too broken from the war. You should go, Helen.'

How much he wanted her to stay. Even if that meant being eaten after she had her way with him.

Nodding, she stood up and released his hand. Tears streaming down her face, she climbed back over the window sill and closed it behind her. Mark looked at the twig next to the lit candle. The flame still gave out light, but the room felt darker without Helen's presence in it. His life would feel the same way after she was gone.