Chapter Nine

M ama and Frederica were waiting when they arrived home. Her elder sister was pounding on the keys of the piano as if it had offended her. She stopped playing when Samuel came into the room and rushed to her husband and son's side.

Frederica took Arthur from Samuel's arm and covered his face with kisses. ‘Mama missed you so much. Yes, she did.'

Then Arthur was passed to his grandmother and covered in even more kisses. Helen thought that the little monkey had to be the most kissed baby in the world. He brought the ball of the cane back to his mouth.

Frederica turned to her husband. ‘Where did he get the cane?'

Childishly, Samuel pointed at her.

Helen scowled at him. ‘Mark gave it to Arthur.'

Mama raised her eyebrows and cleared her throat, a pleased look on her face. ‘And who is Mark?'

Helen shrugged a shoulder. She didn't want her mother to get any matrimonial ideas about him. Mark was her friend. Her only friend in London. And she didn't want to marry him. He was an earl. He would have to live in the city to sit in Parliament and his wife would have to be a well-behaved political hostess. Everything that Helen hated.

‘The man who lives in the town house behind us.'

Her mother swallowed as if trying to keep in all the things that she wanted to say. ‘Does he have a last name?'

Helen shrugged.

Mama cast an imploring look at Samuel, who was studying his boots as if he'd never seen a pair of Hessians before. ‘His name is Mark Wallace and he is the new Earl of Inverness. I believe his elder brother died last year.'

‘An earl .'

Helen huffed. ‘A friend .'

She half expected Frederica to say that Helen didn't have any friends. Besides Jason, who'd also been fascinated by her father's animals growing up. That's how he'd become like family to all of them. She loved Jason dearly as only a childhood companion could.

Unlike Frederica, Helen hadn't made any female friends at finishing school. She always felt as though she was a different animal than the rest of them. As if she were a striped zebra and they were dotted cheetahs. Too dissimilar to belong together. And the insufferable young ladies had teased Becca because of her reading and spelling difficulties—dukes' daughters were always held to a higher standard. Helen had spent the better part of three weeks walking around the school's estate and collecting enough snakes to put in the bed of every girl there. Frederica's reaction had been to cut off the hair of the main bully, while she was sleeping. All three sisters had been asked to leave the school. Which turned out to be a blessing, for Wick mistook Louisa to be their errant governess and they fell in love and were married.

‘Tell me more about him,' Mama demanded.

Samuel exhaled slowly. ‘Poor fellow lost a leg at Waterloo. He was a captain of the Highlanders. They were in the thick of the battle and their casualties were some of the highest in the British army.'

Frederica dropped another kiss on her baby's head. ‘Mark spent some time in your hospital in Brussels, Mama. I helped nurse him.'

Her mother nodded slowly. ‘Perhaps we should have him over for dinner?'

Helen took a step back. ‘I am not a cannibal, Mama. I don't eat earls.'

Samuel snorted with laughter, but quelled it when both Mama and Frederica gave him identical looks of disdain. The resemblance between them was sometimes uncanny.

‘You know what I meant, Helen,' Mama said sternly. ‘Lord Inverness is just the sort of fellow that I wanted you to meet.'

And just the sort of peer she planned to avoid. Helen stuck out her chin, defiantly. ‘How do you know? You've never even met him, Mama.'

‘I trust your judgement.'

‘That would be a first,' Helen muttered underneath her breath.

Her mother held out a letter. ‘Here is your letter from Becca and, judging by the thickness, no doubt enclosed within it is one from Jason.'

Helen turned the envelope over to check the seal. It was still intact. Unlike her daughters, Mama didn't open other people's post. ‘Why do you say that?'

‘Becca finds it difficult to write and never sends more than a page. There's at least four in there. Happily, your father franked the letter and it didn't cost us a fortune to receive it.'

Walking up the staircase, Helen was convinced that her mother truly was prescient. Nothing happened in their family that she didn't know about. Helen opened the door to her sitting room and perched in the window seat, leaning her back against the pillows. Breaking the seal, she opened Becca's letter.

Deer Helen,

I am leerning very well. The tutor is VERY hansome.

Handsome.

I think he likes me.

Myself, Papa and all the animls miss you.

I wish I culd be there with you.

All my love, Becca

Helen pressed the letter to her chest. Dearest Becca. She really was improving. There were only a few misspelled words and her mistakes were all close enough to be recognisable. Setting down Becca's letter, she picked up Jason's. His handwriting was quite different from Becca's. His strokes were longer and larger. He held his pen longer to the paper and left more ink spots. Unfolding the letter, a lock of light hair fell on to her lap. She picked it up and held it between her fingers. He'd sent her a lock of hair. How strange human courtship rituals were. She couldn't imagine a horse holding on to a mare's old mane.

He'd also enclosed a small paper packet of seeds.

Dearest Helen,

Spring is not spring without you here. The skies do nothing but rain and not even the tulips dare show their heads. I find the weather matches my own feelings.

The Ashbury parish is much as it always is. Mrs Thatcher complains of her back aching. And Mrs Foster wants me to pray for her missing son. I think he must have been pressed by the navy, for she hasn't had a letter from him in over a year...

She scanned through the next two pages that described in detail his daily participation in the parish until she reached the final paragraph. She couldn't help but wish that he'd talked more about missing her, or shared in detail his feelings about her instead of the members of the parish.

Helen reached the last paragraph.

I hope that you do not think it is too forward of me. But I have sent you a lock of my hair. I think of you constantly and hope that you think of me. I know that you do not like London, so I have enclosed a little bit of home. May these seeds show you that flowers can grow anywhere and under any conditions.

Sincerely,

Jason

Opening the paper packet, she poured the little brown seeds into her palm. From their shape and size, she could not recognise the flower. The only way she would know what the flower was would be to plant it and see if the seed grew.

Mark shouldn't have been surprised to see Helen on her knees in his back garden. Nor should he have appreciated the curve of her backside and how it made his blood pump. This time she wasn't weeding, but planting seeds. She turned at the sound of his stuttered steps. She smiled at him as if he were the only person in the world. He could get used to such smiles. But he reminded himself that they were reserved for a cheerful curate and not a melancholic earl. Black dots covered his eyes for a moment and he had to blink them away.

‘How are you this morning, Mark?'

He liked that she always called him by his name.

‘Well enough, Helen .'

Picking up her spade, she dug a few more holes and placed seeds inside each one. ‘I didn't see you at the Richmonds' party last night. Frederica said that the Duchess of Richmond is your aunt.'

‘She is. And I was there.'

Helen lifted her glove to block the sun from her eyes. ‘But I didn't see you and I looked for you everywhere.'

Something tightened in his stomach at her words and his temperature rose. ‘I was hiding in the card room.'

She sighed, shrugging her shoulders. ‘Mama didn't let me wander there. She had my entire dance card mapped out. I even had to dance with your odious cousin Lord Watford.'

His lips twitched. Helen was certainly an honest young woman. Not that she was wrong. Watty was a pompous windbag.

‘Your cousin called females the weaker sex and I was forced to set him right on the subject.'

Mark smiled widely, easily picturing the scene. ‘Did your explanation include the reproductive habits of arachnids?'

She shook her head. ‘No, but if he says something again, I shall set him straight on spiders. Or merely drop a jar of spiders in his carriage. That always worked on my former governesses.'

He couldn't hold in his laughter. He did not think she was boasting idly. She would do what she said she would. ‘What seeds are you planting?'

Helen set down her trowel and got to her feet, shaking the dirt off the bottom of her dress. ‘I don't know. Jason sent them.'

‘The cheery curate?'

She set a gloved hand on her hip. ‘He can't help it if he is always in good humour. Nor that he smiles at everyone he sees. It is just his sunny nature.'

‘Do you ever get tired of his constant sunshine?' Mark wouldn't have dared be so blunt with any other person.

Helen gave him a wry smile. ‘Sometimes. But according to Chinese philosophy, darkness and light need each other for balance. The yin and the yang.'

‘And are you the darkness?'

She shrugged her shoulders. ‘Growing up, I was always the mischievous, sour one. I am the daughter with a sharp tongue and a bad disposition. Does that count as darkness?'

He shook his head. ‘You know nothing of destruction, death and darkness.'

Helen walked up to him, so close that their chests were nearly touching. ‘You are not the only one who has known death or despair.'

She smelled like a tree nymph and looked even more fragile up close. Willowier, as if a single gust of wind could blow her away. Her breath was sweet against his lips. It smelled sugary like fresh honey. An inch or two higher and her lips would be touching his own. His heart stilled. His breathing slowed. She took off her glove and cupped his face with her bare hand. Mark closed his eyes, savouring the feel of her skin against his own.

She lifted her face up and pressed her silken cheek against his scruffy one. ‘You are not alone. Even though it feels that way sometimes. And after the darkness there is always light. The sun rises again.'

Mark nodded, feeling his cheek move against her soft one. Then he held still, afraid that if he moved, she would let go. And he couldn't bear it if she did. Somehow, Helen knew that he needed her touch more than her words.

More than her flowers.

More than even her friendship.

Helen understood wounded animals like him.

‘Who have you lost?' he whispered in her ear.

She rubbed her face into his neck and he swallowed a moan of pleasure. For all of her scientific knowledge, she didn't seem to recognise an overly heated male. Her lips rested for a moment against his skin in what might have been a kiss. They felt feather-light and drugging, like her presence.

‘My sister Elizabeth and my brother Charles,' she said, burrowing her head into his shoulder. ‘They died of scarlet fever when I was only five years old. For years, I waited for them to come back. I thought they had only gone away for a little while. Like Papa and Mama had when they went to Africa for the better part of a year to return animals back to their habitat. I knew that they had left, but that they would come back. But Charles and Elizabeth never came back. And Lizzy was my only sibling who seemed to understand my otherness.'

Mark's already battered heart ached for Helen's loss. He grieved his only brother, but she had experienced the death of two of her siblings at such a young and delicate age. One where she had not fully understood that they were truly gone. He allowed himself to stroke her arched back and to caress her flaxen hair. It was so fine and so silky.

He kept telling himself that he was only comforting her as she had comforted him before. A touch could be healing, but based on his burning temperature, he was stoking his own flame. He wanted Helen more than was decent. More than anything in his life before. She had resurrected his heart and now it beat only for her. It thundered in his chest. She could probably feel it and hear it. Her head was tucked against his torso. He could sense her heartbeat. Her heat.

Unable to resist, he dropped a kiss into her hair and then nuzzled his nose into the sweet smell of her locks. ‘From what I have seen, all of your family loves you.'

Helen nodded, not moving her head from his body. Mark was glad of it, even though he would feel guilty later. He wanted this stolen moment. He wanted to remember this forbidden embrace for the rest of his life, for it to keep him company in the darkness. The afternoon that he had caught a fairy queen and held her as if she were his own. As if he could keep and cherish such a wild, magical thing.

‘I know they love me,' she said, her voice slightly muffled from her face being against his cravat. ‘And I love them, but it doesn't stop me from feeling as if I don't belong anywhere. I don't like cities or people or rules. I will never fit into the mould that they want me to. I will never be a proper peer's wife.'

Mark's hand moved to her neck to press her head closer to him. He, a broken man, wished to protect her from all the eyes and mouths that would find fault with her unbroken spirit. With her wild heart. ‘Your otherness, or whatever you call it, draws me to you. Helen, you are unlike any person that I have ever met before. You carry an energy, a light, that brings joy to all that are around you. Don't try to diminish your light by becoming something you're not. My brother, James, was like you. Full of light. Full of life.'

Helen moved her head so that her eyes could see his face. Mark didn't feel ashamed as a tear slid down his cheek. Before it could reach his chin, she wiped it away with one of her slender, but callused, hands. He held his breath as her skin touched his in a slow caress. Despite his brokenness, he wanted to hold her for the rest of his life.

‘Tell me about James.'

He shook his head, unsure where to start. How to reduce his brother's life into a few descriptive words. ‘In some ways it feels as though he was everything that I am not. He was always the obedient son. He did well at school and university, unlike myself. I was always in a scrape and James had to pull me out of it.

‘My father loved him more. Trained James to be everything that an earl should be. He would have followed in my father's footsteps. He would have attended Parliament in England. I cannot seem to make myself help rule the country. I feel like a counterfeit for the real heir. I could never take his place.'

‘No,' she agreed, her hands now pressed against his chest, but she made no effort to move away from him. ‘Nor can I take my sister Elizabeth's place. We are all unique and special. You cannot be James the Earl, but you can be the most amazing Mark the Earl.'

He let out a sigh against her blonde curls. ‘What sort of landlord has only one leg and cannot ride a horse? Who is broken in mind and body?'

‘Have you tried riding a horse since you lost your leg?' she asked, her breath warm against the bottom of his chin.

Mark wanted nothing more than to angle his head a little and press his lips against hers. But he could not and would not betray her. Helen held him close because she trusted him. Because she believed he was her friend. And of all the mistakes Mark had to live with, losing her belief in him would be the worst.

‘No. But I would be unbalanced on the horse.'

‘Even with your wooden leg as a counterweight?'

He hadn't thought that his false limb could help balance him. ‘I don't know.'

Turning in his arms, she put his hands around her neck. His body was burning in all the places that their bodies touched. She was book wise, but innocent of experience. She had no idea how much she was torturing him with her touch. How much he longed for her.

‘You should try to, Mark. And if that doesn't work, I am sure that you could drive a curricle or phaeton. You are only limited by your imagination and ingenuity.'

‘Then you have no limits at all.'

Helen leaned up on her tiptoes and pressed a sweet kiss against his cheek. ‘If only, my dearest friend. Young women seemed to be limited in all that we do. Society says it is to keep us safe, but I think it is to keep us stuck in a pretty bird cage, unable to fly free. It is only at home that I feel unencumbered.'

She stepped back from him and he let her.

‘I am sorry, Mark. I meant to comfort you. I should not have made this about me. You are right to mourn James. He would want you to, but he would also want you to live. To experience everything that he did not get to do in this life. The best way we can honour Elizabeth, Charles and James is to be happy. To be whole.'

Mark leaned on to his good leg. His amputated limb had started to shake under the effort of standing for so long. But it wasn't just his body. His mind had been affected by the war, too. ‘I can never be whole again.'

‘I know you will never be the same as you once were,' she whispered. ‘But it is not your lost leg that is keeping you from being whole. It is your heart. You have to let him go and you have to forgive yourself for living. For becoming someone new.'

He had known he was a shell of a man, but Helen's words cut into what was left of his heart. She took his hand and pressed a kiss into his palm before leaving him standing alone in the garden, with only the ghosts of his past to keep him company.

James.

His old friends. He had led most of the Highlander soldiers to their deaths. The charge from Bossu woods had been a slaughter. He'd seen them die one by one on French blades, while bagpipes bellowed behind them, playing a fighting song turned into a funeral dirge. Flinching, he remembered the bullet tearing through his leg and him falling to the ground. Then Pelford picked him up and called for the few remaining Highlander soldiers to retreat. If only Mark had done so sooner. Could he have saved Robert Mackenzie? William Black? Fergus Johnston?

Would he ever be able to let them go?

But without them, who would he be?