"I'm trying to prepare you. There's a difference." Helena moved closer, her eyes intent. "I don't hate you, Miss Fletcher. I don't even disapprove of you; not personally. In another life, you might have been exactly the kind of woman I would admire. Strong, capable, refusing to be diminished by circumstances."
"Then why are you doing this?"
"Because the circumstances matter. Because the world we live in has rules, and those rules exist for reasons. Because I watched my sister give up the man she loved, and I've spent forty years wondering if I should have helped her run away instead of helping my father stop her."
The admission caught Lydia off guard. "You helped stop them?"
"I was young. Nineteen years old, convinced I understood the world better than I did." Helena's voice cracked slightly. "I told my father where they were meeting. I thought I was saving her from a terrible mistake. I thought…" She stopped and shook her head. "I thought duty mattered more than love. That position and propriety were more important than happiness."
"And now?"
"Now I'm not sure. I've spent forty years being sure, and in the last few weeks, watching Frederick with you, I've begun to wonder if I was wrong all along." Helena's eyes met hers. "That's why I'm here, Miss Fletcher. Not to threaten you, but to make sure you understand what you're choosing. Because my sister didn't understand. She thought giving up her love was a simple sacrifice, easily made and easily recovered from. She was wrong."
"What happened to her?"
"She married Frederick’s father, and they had a son. Tried to be the duchess everyone expected her to be." Helena's voice was bitter. "She was dead within ten years. Fever, they said, but I always thought it was more than that. I thought she simply stopped fighting. She stopped trying to survive a life that had no joy in it."
"That's…" Lydia's voice broke. "That's awful."
"It is. And I don't want it forFrederick. I don't want him to choose love, only to watch it curdle into regret. I don't want him to spend his life wondering what might have been if he'd made a different choice." Helena reached out and touched Lydia's arm; a brief, unexpected gesture. "And I don't want it for you, either."
"For me?"
"You're young. You have your whole life ahead of you. You could find someone else, someone from your own world, who wouldn't ask you to become something you're not. You could have a simple, happy life, without scandal or scrutiny or the constant weight of expectations."
"I don't want someone else. I want him."
"I know. I can see it." Helena's voice was sad. "That's what makes this so tragic. You love him, and he loves you, and in a better world, that would be enough. But we don't live in a better world. We live in this one, with all its cruelty and unfairness and rules."
She moved toward the door, her composure reassembling itself around her like armour.
"I've said what I came to say. The money is still available, if you want it; not as payment, but as a gift. A chance at a new life, free from all of this." She paused at the threshold. "But if you don't want the money, at least consider what I've told you. Consider what love really means. And ask yourself: is your happiness worth his future?"
"That's not a fair question."
"No. It's not." Helena's eyes were gentle. "But life rarely asks fair questions. It asks hard ones, and expects us to answer anyway."
She left.
The carriage clattered away down the street, leaving silence in its wake.
Lydia stood in the doorway of the forge, watching it disappear, and felt something cold settle in her chest.
Chapter 19
For a long time, she didn't move.
She stood where Helena had left her, staring at the empty street, trying to make sense of everything she'd heard.
Is your happiness worth his future?
It wasn't a fair question. Helena had admitted as much. But unfair questions still demanded answers, and Lydia didn't have one.
She thought about Frederick. About the way he'd looked at her across the table at theCrossedKeys, like she was something precious. About the way he'd faced Robert's interrogation without flinching, declaring his intentions in front of an entire room of sceptical strangers.
I want to marry her if she'll have me.
He wanted to marry her. He wanted to throw away everything his family had built, everything he'd been trained to be, everything society expected of him; all for her.
