"I do not know. You tell me." Helena leaned closer, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. "Vanessa, you are blushing. You never blush. In all the years I have known you, I can count on one hand the number of times I have seen color in your cheeks. What happened in that park?"
"Nothing happened." The denial came too quickly, too forcefully. "I fell from my horse and injured my ankle. Lord Montehood was present and offered assistance. That is the whole of it."
"Then why do you look as though you are hiding something?"
Because I am, Vanessa thought. Because he touched my ankle and I cannot stop thinking about it. Because he said things that I do not know how to interpret. Because I am beginning to hope for something I have no right to hope for, and hope is a dangerous thing.
"I am not hiding anything," she said. "I am merely tired. This enforced rest is exhausting."
Helena did not look convinced. She tilted her head, studying Vanessa with careful attention.
"You know," she said slowly, "I have always thought there was something between you and Lord Montehood."
Vanessa's heart stuttered. "What do you mean?"
"I mean the way you argue. The way you look at each other across crowded rooms. The way he always claims the supper waltz, even though he could have any partner he chose." Helena paused. "I have thought for years that there was something there. Something neither of you would acknowledge."
"You are imagining things."
"Am I? Then why did your face just go white?"
Vanessa pressed her hands to her cheeks. "It is nothing. The pain in my ankle…"
"Does not cause pallor." But Helena's voice was gentle. "I am not trying to interrogate you. I simply want you to know that if there is something…if you have feelings for him you can confide in me."
For a moment, Vanessa was tempted. The weight of her secret had been crushing her for so long, and Helena was her oldest friend. It would be such a relief to unburden herself.
But she could not. Not yet. Not when she did not even know what those feelings meant, or whether they were returned.
"There is nothing to tell," she said. "Truly."
Helena looked at her for a long moment, then sighed. "Very well. Keep your secrets, if you must. But I shall discover them eventually…I always do."
They talked of other things, Helena’s latest suitor, the upcoming Castleton ball, the scandal surrounding Lady Whitmore's youngest daughter. But Vanessa's thoughts kept drifting back to Martin, to the park, to the dinner that loomed ahead like a storm on the horizon.
"You seem distracted," Helena observed. "Are you certain nothing is troubling you?"
"I am certain."
"Is it Lord Deane? Has he been calling?"
"He sent flowers yesterday. And a note expressing his concern."
"How attentive of him." Helena's tone was carefully neutral. "He is very devoted to you."
"Yes. He is."
"And yet you do not seem pleased by his devotion."
Vanessa sighed. "I am pleased. I am grateful. He is everything a woman could want in a suitor…kind…attentive…sincere. I should be happy."
"But you are not."
"I do not know what I am." She stared at the ceiling, at the elaborate plasterwork that she had memorised over three days of enforced contemplation. "I only know that something feels... incomplete. As though I am waiting for something that may never come."
Helena was silent for a moment. When she spoke, her voice was gentle. "Perhaps you are waiting for the wrong thing. Or perhaps you are waiting for the right thing, and you simply do not realise it yet."
"What do you mean?"
