They looked at each other and then burst out laughing.
“Have you heard from Dahlia or Peter yet?” Matteo asked softly.
“I have not,” Helena replied just as softly. “And you?”
“No word yet, but I am to meet Peter at our club tonight. Perhaps he will give me an earful then.”
“We have yet to discuss what we shall be telling our friends about our arrangement,” Helena said.
She watched him consider his answer. For her part, Helena found that she was not yet ready to tell Dahlia and Celine the truth.
“I think we should, for now, be consistent with what we have been telling everyone.” He scratched his chin. “Although I do notthink that Peter will be content with our story, he will not be surprised by our engagement.”
“What do you mean? Why would he not be surprised?”
Again, he seemed to choose his words before answering. After a few moments, he looked her in the eye and answered as plainly as he could.
“Peter had noticed that I had an interest in you, even back during our time together at Icedale Castle.”
“I beg your pardon?”
Helena thought she heard him wrong.
Matteo tapped her chin gently with his finger and smiled.
“Come now, Helena.” He said, still smiling at her. “You cannot pretend not to have noticed how I never ceased to tail you then.”
Helena was speechless. Her mind went back to that winter. Matteo ceaselessly in his teasing—although back then she had also wondered if he was mocking her. Matteo being everywhere that she was—was she not then justified in thinking that he had been following her the past few days?
“What is this? A Helena with nothing to say? Impossible!” Matteo said with a teasing grin.
A strange feeling swept over Helena. Could he be telling the truth? Matteo had an interest in her? Matteo, the seasoned rake, found her interesting.
Helena felt like she was in a dream. If it was a good dream or a bad dream, she could not quite decide.
But she would admit to knowing one thing, and it was that when Matteo Castor gave his word, he kept it.
Chapter Twelve
It was early in the evening when Matteo, Helena, and Chastity bid their friends and acquaintances goodbye. The garden party had lasted longer than everyone had expected, a proof of its success.
Helena and Chastity were thanking their host for a wonderful time when Lord Stuart and a lady approached them. Matteo, who had been waylaid by other friends, stood some distance away from them.
“Lady Helena, Lady Chastity,” Lord Stuart said cheerfully. “I am very happy to have made your acquaintance today.”
“The pleasure is all ours, my lord.” Helena started to curtsy when she recognized the lady that the gentleman was with. She felt herself falter in her curtsy, but was able to recover before anyone noticed.
“My dear Helena, how have you been?” the lady said.
“Oh, I see that you already know each other!” Lord Stuart said, delighted.
“Yes,” Helena said, forcing a smile. “We have known each other since our first season.”
Lady Margueritte Goodwin was one of the first ladies whom Helena had met when she first came out into society. But unlike Helena, she had been proposed to, engaged, and married after only a year. Needless to say, she was her batch’s most successful debutante.
But that was not the reason why Helena remembered her well. Aside from being the most successful, Margueritte was also the most mean-spirited of them. Indeed, Celine, Dahlia, and she had secretly called her Margueritte the Unsweet because of how she treated the other young ladies, themselves included. Her beauty, which had bloomed at an early age, had, of course, made her popular, giving her an arrogance that spawned her meanness.
Years later, Helena had heard that she had been widowed after merely three years of marriage. A year of mourning passed, and with no children from her first marriage, Margueritte had once again entered the marriage mart.
