For the last six months, she had simply dug in her heels and saidno.
Before that, she had run away. Five times.
But her parents’ great wealth and influence had restored her every time. Today they had restored her to what appeared to be the point of no return. To London. To the townhome mansion of her betrothed.
Betrothed, Helena thought, rolling the word around in her head with a doomed inner voice. She took up the apple in her lap and frowned at it.
Consignedwould be more accurate, she thought, taking a bite.
Bought and paid for.
Sold.
“Do strive for a pleasant expression, Helena,” sighed her mother. “You’ve no choice but to marrythe duke, you’ve known this all along.” The countess said this in her most placid voice, the voice of someone who’d been patiently stating inevitability for five years.
“Perhaps I have no choice who I marry, but surely my expressions are my own,” said Helena.
“Your life is very fortunate, darling,” the countess continued, “ample reason to smile. But the fortune comes at a cost. In order to enjoy the homes and gowns and holidays and esteem, you must accept the responsibility. Weallhave a responsibility.”
“You and Papa enjoy the wealth and position,” Helena said idly. “I simply want to be left alone in Castle Wood. With my apple trees and the crofters. And I don’t want to be married to a prize idiot, even if he is a duke.”
“For God’s sake, Helena, must you be so very dramatic?” droned her father. He squinted out the window at the bright stone facade of the duke’s townhome. Yellow-liveried servants scurried to greet the approaching carriages. “Marriage to anyone, even the very devil, need not be the end of the world. You will have the ceremony and accommodate the duke in a few small ways, and then your life will go on. Except that you will be a duchess. Every girl aspires to this, but it has beengivento you by birth. You are making a fuss over a minor detail, in the grand scheme.”
“My life as I’ve known it will not go on,” said Helena, thinking of the forest and her orchard. “And it is not a minor detail.”
She took another bite of apple, wondering why she bothered to object. They’d traveled from theirestate in Somerset for the sole purpose of marrying her off to the Duke of Lusk. The marriage joined two ancient families and (more importantly) tied the duke’s limestone mines to barges on her family’s stretch of the River Brue.
The wedding was an arranged match for which her parents had been waiting, immovably, unshakably, for five years. She’d fought the betrothal in every way imaginable, and they had been blind and deaf to it all. They had not punished or strong-armed or shamed. They had simply ignored her pleas and waited. Now some fluctuation in international markets caused a spike in the demand for limestone and, in their view, the wait was over.
Helena pressed her back into the carriage seat, refusing to moon out the window at the duke’s London mansion. She’d seen the hulking townhome, thank you very much. In the weeks before the wedding she would come to know it very well.
How suspicious it was, Helena thought, that their own London home was suddenly undergoing renovations. Now they were forced to live as guests of the duke and his tyrant uncle. Her mother expected her to smile about it.
She finished her apple, the very last of the harvest. This time next year, if she was married to the duke, the apples would be gone—destroyed by heavy limestone wagons trundling down the terraced orchard to the river.
The great irony was that the Duke of Lusk, a man who was as ridiculous as he was inane,couldn’t care less about the wedding. At best, he was wholly indifferent to her; at worst, he was openly bored. He was a thirty-year-old man-child controlled by his uncle.
But Helena would not be controlled, or lose her orchard, or leave the forest. And she would not smile.
But also, she reminded herself, she would not be difficult. The time for evasion had come and gone. The only solution now was to engineer somelastingmeans of escape—something that did not extract her so much as put an end to the betrothal once and for all.
Luckily, she had a plan.
If she could manage it.
If she could be pleasant enough, and forestall suspicion long enough, and be clever enough to pull together the necessary players.
Ifshe could get the duke to jilt her for some other girl.
That was her plan, plain and simple. Well, perhaps it was not entirely simple. Helena intended to find the most perfect, most provocative replacement fiancée for the duke, dangle this sparkling girl under his nose, and let love or passion or mutual ambition overtake them. When Lusk was entranced by someone else, he would finally stand up to his uncle and demand a wife he really wanted. And Helena would be free to slip away, back to the orchard and the forest that she loved.
The greatest challenge to her plan seemed to be finding the ideal girl to dazzle the duke. Forthis, Helena relied on Lusk’s open delight in traits like buxomness, shapely calves, and round bottoms. Also, his penchant for all-night parties, drunkenness in the middle of the day, and dancers. Never once had Helena chatted with Lusk when he did not broach these favorite topics. For years, she’d complained about his tedious vulgarity, but her mother dismissed it as boyish prattle. Helena knew better; it was a window to his soul. Now she planned to open that window and crawl out.
The line of carriages had scarcely stopped in front of Lusk House when her parents popped open the door to descend. They’d tried (and failed) to conceal their open delight at the prospect of having a duchess in the family, and they would be crushed when the betrothal fell apart. But if Helena’s plan succeeded, the duke’s change of heart would be his own choice. What could she do if he’d fallen under the voluptuous spell of some other girl?
What indeed?
Move on with a life on her own terms.
