"How could you have kept this from me?" The brim of the bonnet shielded Helena's profile, yet Marianne could see the rigidity of the other's spine, could hear the anger trembling in her voice. "All these years, how could you have not said a word?"
"Because I…"—Marianne was mortified to hear her voice crack, to feel the heat rise behind her eyes—"I just couldn't," she said helplessly.
"Do you trust me so very little then?" Helena faced her. Spots of color blazed on the marchioness' cheeks. "All my life, I have come to you. I have confidedeverything—even when it came to my marriage. Yet you… you have kept everything to yourself! Do you think yourself so above me that I am not worthy of your trust? Not worthy of knowing that I have aniece, for heaven's sake?"
Remorse pounded at Marianne's temples. She shook her head. "No, Helena, 'tis not you. 'Twas never you. Don't you see?" Her throat clogged. "I was… ashamed."
"You might have come to me! I would have helped."
"How?" Marianne said thickly. "You were but a girl when Thomas died."
"But my father, surely he would have—"
"Your father knew about Thomas and me. We had approached him to ask permission to wed." Humiliation washed over Marianne anew at the memory of the tense interview. "The earl said it would be over his dead body before he allowed his heir to marry a country trollop."
Helena stared at her. "Papa said that?"
The Earl of Northgate had said a good deal more. None of which Marianne could bear to repeat to her friend. "You can ask your father, if you don't believe me." Dashing at her eyes, she forced herself to go on. "On the day Thomas died, he'd gone to see about a special license. I never knew if he'd been successful. But the way he'd tried to come home in the rain… how fast they said he'd been driving when he lost control of the carriage—"
Marianne was startled to hear a sob. To feel her body shake with the force of it. But she made herself continue, no longer caring about the tears trickling down her face. "Thomas never knew about the babe. I didn't know myself until weeks after his funeral—the funeral that your father forbade me to attend."
"So that is why you were not there. I—I always wondered," Helena whispered.
"How could I go to your father then? He thought me a whore; he'd never believe that the child was Thomas'," Marianne said bitterly. "And he didn't even know that I was in part responsible for Thomas' death—"
Suddenly, soft arms came around her. Words offering comfort instead of blame, hatred. And Marianne felt herself dissolving, losing herself in the terrifying tumult she'd held back all these years. The emotions swept through her, and she clung to her friend like a drowning woman to a piece of driftwood.
"Oh, Marianne," Helena said in hushed tones, "how could you blame yourself for Thomas' death? 'Twas an accident. Thomas was always a dear, reckless boy, and you know it."
Fresh tears welled in Marianne's eyes. Speaking the words aloud and hearing Helena's response let her see the truth. Yet she'd held the pain so closely and for so long that it now felt like a part of her.
Her friend sighed. "At least now I understand why you married Draven and disappeared without a word. But why did you not tell me this after Draven's death, when we reconnected in London?"
"I couldn't bear it. To speak of my shame. With Thomas… and what I had allowed Draven to d-do… to my Primrose…" Marianne's voice broke again.
When her tears subsided, the marchioness drew back to look at her, and Marianne saw the moisture spiking her friend's lashes. The hazel eyes—so like Thomas'—flickered with hurt yet also warmth. Something eased in Marianne's chest, the releasing of a breath she hadn't known she'd been holding all these years. Despite what she had done, the fire of friendship had not been extinguished. Somehow it persisted, strong and true.
"I don't deserve to have you as a friend," she said, sniffling.
"Fustian. I have relied upon you more than I can say; I only wish you might have felt free to do the same." Helena sighed. "That is water under the bridge, however. What we must focus on now is getting your daughter and my niece back."
Marianne clasped the other's hand with gratitude beyond words.
"Tell me the rest, my dear. And this time," Helena said sternly, "don't leave anything out."
37
Ambrose hissedout a breath as the physician secured the fresh bandage.
"That should do it," Farraday said in his thick brogue. "Right as rain now, aren't you, lad?"
Upon examining his patient's bicep, the physician had let out a string of curses. His Scottish accent had made most of it unintelligible, but Ambrose got the general gist of it. Farraday had insisted on cutting free the stitches—Even a wee bairn knows to let such a wound heal from inside out, he'd muttered—and irrigating the gash with a solution of salt water.
The repeated cleansings had not been pretty. Though he'd seen gruesome business in his line of work, the memory of all that blood gave Ambrose a queasy feeling; glancing at Harteford, Ambrose saw he was not the only one thus affected. The marquess stood at the window, his face pale beneath his swarthy complexion.
"Anything else you require, Kent?" the physician said, his grey brows raised.
"Thank you, Dr. Farraday," Ambrose said, "you've done quite enough."
