For the first time in seven days, the sun was shining. Well, why shouldn’t it? Now she’d been taught her lesson, there was no longer any need for warnings and ill omens, or portents of impending doom. The thought should have comforted her—no more fretting about an angry universe —and no doubt it would comfort her, eventually.
But not yet.
Still, Oxfordshire was beautiful. Now the raging storm had passed, and she no longer felt as if she were perched on the verge of an apocalyptic flood, she could see it was all gentle rolling hills and swathes of verdant green, with picturesque white cottages scattered about that looked like fluffy, low-hanging clouds from a distance.
And sheep, of course. There were always sheep in the English countryside.
It was something, anyway. Perhaps the beauty would comfort Miles in his isolation, unless he went the way of her father, and never again set foot outside the doors of Steeple Cross.
But even that fleeting thought of him made an ominous pressure start to build behind her eyes, so she pushed it aside. It wouldn’t do to appear on Helena’s doorstep all red-eyed and weepy.
Or, rather, Lord Hawke’s doorstep. Dear God, how did she intend to explain her sudden presence tohim? Helena was his governess, not his countess, and it wasn’t the thing for governesses to entertain their family members at their employer’s estates.
Perhaps he wasn’t at home. She was due for some luck, surely?
As if she’d conjured it into existence from her thoughts, a massive structure of pale gray stone appeared over the next rise. She stared at it through the window, her mouth falling open.
It wasn’t a manor house, or one of the usual handsome estates so many aristocratic gentlemen claimed as their country seats. It was… well, there was no other word for it butcastle. It was a castle, complete with rounded turrets on either end, and chimney stacks rising to such majestic heights it looked as if they were tickling the chin of the sky itself.
Helena had never said a word aboutthis, but then it would be like Helena not to have noticed it. The faintest hint of a fond laugh escaped her throat. Oh, it was nothing more than a sickly echo of what it used to be, but it was a relief to discover she was still capable of any sort of laugh, poor, limp thing that it was.
She leaned forward in her seat, nose still pressed to the window, and silently urged the coachman to go faster, to get there sooner. How she’d missed her blunt, practical sister! If anyone could talk some sense into her, it would be Helena.
Oh, why wouldn’t the coachman hurry?
At last, he turned onto the long drive that led up to a comparably modest, single-arched doorway, and hurried down from the box to set the step and assist her down.
Before her foot even touched the graveled courtyard, she heard voices. Children’s voices, shouting and laughing.
That would be Adrian and Etienne, Helena’s charges, the six-year-old twin boys she’d described in her letters. Both of them were terribly naughty—utter savages, or so Helena said—but her tender fondness for them was woven into every line of her letters.
The shouts grew louder, then louder still, the sort of joyful shrieks one only ever heard from energetic children, and a moment later a slender lady with a mop of caramel brown hair darted out from around the side of one of the turrets.
It was Helena, laughing at the two little boys chasing her, their ear-splitting screams threatening to rent a hole in the sky.
“Egads,” the coachman muttered. “That’s two little imps if I ever saw them.” But he was smiling, because it was impossible not to smile in the presence of such wild exuberance. “You’re sure you want me to leave you here with them, miss?”
“Oh, yes.” She surprised herself by returning his smile. “My sister is their governess, and she knows how to manage boys.”
How Helena had learned that particular skill was a mystery, given there wasn’t a single little boy within ten miles of Hambleden House, but there was no time to ponder it. Helena had seen the carriage, and was making her way toward the drive with purposeful steps, her two charges scampering at her heels.
“Right then, miss.” The coachman handed her valise to her, then touched his hat and climbed back onto the box.
She gave him a grateful wave, but she hardly noticed as he tapped the horse’s backs with the ribbons, and the carriage rattled from the courtyard back down the drive.
Helena’s steps had slowed as she drew closer, and now she came to an abrupt stop, her mouth dropping open. “Juliet?My goodness, is thatyou?”
She opened her mouth to reply, to tell her sister it was indeed her, but the words froze on her tongue.Wasit her? She hardly knew. She didn’t feel like the same Juliet she’d once been, and this new Juliet was… well, she wasn’t an improvement on the old one.
This Juliet was weepy, and morose, and no longer believed in love.
“Why, how wonderful, Juliet!” Helena rushed forward and caught Juliet in her arms. “Where in the world did you come from?”
Juliet let herself sink into her sister’s embrace, a foolish, familiar sting pressing behind her eyes. Itwaspossible, then, to be in the presence of two adorable and wonderfully naughty little boys, both of whom were now watching her with wide-eyed interest, and not be able to find a smile anywhere inside her.
This time, there was no fighting the hitching in her chest, the burning in her nose. It was coming on like a storm, her eyes growing damp, tears catching in her eyelashes.
“Juliet? Whatever is the matter? Oh, dear, something’s happened, hasn’t it? Tell me!”
