Baldwin’s smile was soft. “She loved him from the time she was seven, I think, and he not much older.”
“What kept them apart?” she asked, then shook her head. “Gracious, I am spending this entire evening being entirely inappropriate in what I say. I apologize, Your Grace.”
He glanced at her. “Well, I don’t know what inappropriate things you said earlier that require absolution. I suppose you’d have to take that up with…I presume Tyndale.” There was something brittle in his tone as he said his friend’s name. “But I am not offended by the question and I doubt Charlotte would be, either. She and Ewan are open about such things. It isn’t as if his mutism is a secret.”
She blinked. “I see.”
“Charlotte didn’t care, of course,” Baldwin said. “But Ewan resisted for a long time and nearly lost her. Twice.”
Helena drew in a long breath. “It is good he didn’t. That they could overcome the walls between them. Some barriers are not so easy to surmount.”
Baldwin’s expression changed a fraction and he nodded, suddenly very solemn. “Indeed, they are not. But they are good for each other. Certainly, I don’t have to—to worry with her so well matched.”
Helena glanced at him. Once again she was struck by how forlorn he sounded. Oh, it was clear he was happy for his sister, but he couldn’t hide that slightly wistful quality to his voice.
She swallowed hard, her empathy for whatever was troubling him stronger than anything else in that moment. “You seem…troubled,” she said. “Would you like to—to walk with me?”
He blinked down at her. “Isn’t that my place, to ask you to walk?”
She caught her breath as the impertinence of her suggestion registered with her. “I’m sorry. If you don’t want to—” She moved to step away, but he reached out and caught her elbow.
“Will you walk with me, Miss Monroe?”
His voice was so low, almost hypnotic, and she found herself nodding. “Yes,” she whispered.
He smiled and took her arm. As they moved toward the door, he glanced over his shoulder. “Good,” he said. “They’re all so busy, they do not even notice our departure. That means no awkward looks or explanations.”
She felt her smile fall a fraction. Although she was happy for the same reasons he was, she didn’t like the idea that he felt he had to sneak away with her. But then, why wouldn’t he? She was not, after all, the kind of woman one courted.
And she had to remember that, even if touching him made her heart pound harder and her life seem a little brighter.
Chapter Eight
“Where will we walk?” Helena asked when the silence between them had stretched too long. She tried to keep a bright tone.
Baldwin continued to lead her through the winding halls. “Charlotte and Ewan have the prettiest garden in the back,” he said. “With a fountain that I’ve heard the Regent himself tried to finagle away when Ewan first inherited his title. He kept it because Charlotte once said she liked it. That was a long time before they married.”
Helena smiled as he led her out the front door and around a path to the garden. In the moonlight, everything seemed soft and almost dreamlike, from the perfectly groomed hedges to the pretty stone benches and the lanterns that hadn’t been lit since there had been no anticipation that guests would sneak away outside.
“You really have known him a long time.”
He nodded. “Yes, we have. Matthew’s family was very close to ours, and Ewan was his cousin and ultimately a ward to Matthew’s family. We used to spend all number of summers together.”
“And that is how you founded your duke club?” she asked, thinking of Charity’s statement earlier in the night.
He glanced at her. “Heard of that, have you?”
She laughed. “It is a fact that sticks out in one’s mind.”
He sighed, but it was one of pleasure rather than sadness. “It is true, our little circle of friends are all dukes. Or all will be—Kit…er, the Earl of Idlewood has not yet inherited. I believe you may have met him at my tea last week.”
She nodded. “I do remember him and his father. Very kind.”
“They are.” Baldwin’s frown drew deeper, then he seemed to shake his melancholy away. “But it wasn’t the three of us who formed it. That would be James, Simon and Graham. They just dragged us all along.”
“You’re all so close,” Helena said with a shake of her head as she thought of the men. The ones she’d seen together were almost like brothers. “I envy that.”
Baldwin expression tightened, but before she could ask him about it, he brought her through one last turn in the hedge maze and she caught her breath. There, in the middle of the garden, was a gorgeous marble fountain of a half-clothed Greek lady pouring water from a pitcher.
