“But why? Whose child is this?” Helena asked. “Why did you have to pose as his wife? I do not understand.”
Clara took a deep breath and finished telling her the story she’d heard regarding Arabella and her misadventure in Italy. This time, when she was done, she sat back and looked at her friend, who sat there looking as though she had just been told that a woman was to be pope.
“Pray, say something,” Clara said.
“I am trying,” Helena said, “to decide which part to address first because there are a very great number of parts.”
“Start anywhere.”
“Arabella,” Helena said. “You are certain the child is hers.”
“Julian is certain, and he saw her a month ago. The baby has her eyes. And there is no other explanation for why a terrified Italian servant would bring a child to me, specifically, in the middle of a ball and invoke her name.”
Helena absorbed this. “And Arabella herself—nobody knows where she is.”
“Not yet. Julian is already making inquiries. He has men looking.” Clara paused. “He is frightened for her. He does not show it, but he is.”
“No,” Helena said, “he wouldn’t show it.” She was quiet for a moment. “Julian has spent years keeping the ton at arm’s length. Gideon says he has been keeping a solitary watch ever since he lost Arabella’s parents, and now, she is gone too. And things only got worse when Lady Josephine treated him as she did. He is holding the line where he stands because he knows no other way to survive.” She said it plainly as a simple observation.
“You sound as though you know him rather well,” Clara said.
“I know Gideon, and Gideon has known Julian since they were young men together. You hear things.” Helena reached for the teapot on the table beside her and poured without being asked, which was also very much like her. “What I will say is that whatever you may think of his methods, the fact that he stepped forward the way he did is not a small gesture. He put himself directly in the path of the scandal to pull you out of it.”
“I know it is not a small thing,” Clara said. “I have thanked him for it. Though I do wish he had not simply decided we had to act as husband and wife. I wish he had asked me first.”
“If he had presented the idea to you first, would you have agreed?”
She thought about that for a moment. She’d have declared him utterly befogged, but then, upon hearing his reasoning, she still supposed she would have.
“I imagine I would have.”
Helena handed her the cup.
“Well then, there you are. The truth is that people have been talking about you all day. I have heard the servants whispering already. I think, given the circumstances, he did the right thing. You both did. And he is a man you can truly trust.”
Clara drank her tea.
“You are talking about him as though you think I ought to value and trust him.”
“You should, but I think you already know that. He has been a friend after all.”
“I would not call him a friend as such. He was my friend’s cousin. That is all. But he is not a stranger; that is true. You need not try to paint him in bright colors for me.”
“I am telling you the truth about him which happens to reflect well on him. That is not the same thing.” Helena set down her cup. “Clara. In my opinion, you could not have found a steadier man to stand beside you in this. Whatever his faults, and he has them, Julian is not the sort of man who abandons people for whom he has taken responsibility. You are safe with him. So is the baby. And should the worst happen and Arabella isn’t found, you and the baby would have a good life with him. Even if she is found, you may yet find a good life with him. A happy one.”
Clara looked at her hands around the cup.
“That is exactly the sort of thing,” she said, “that I knew you were going to say. That I might yet find happiness with him.”
“Is it wrong?”
“No,” Clara said. “But it is not the point.” She set the cup down on the table beside her. “Helena. Listen to me carefully because I want you to hear what I am actually saying and not what you want to hear.” She looked at her friend directly. “This is not a romantic match. It is not something I secretly wished for. I did not go to that ball hoping for a husband, and I did not come away with one because fate intervened in my favor. I came away with one because the alternative was ruin, and Julian is nothing if not a practical man who understood that faster than I did.”
“I know that,” Helena said.
“We agreed,” Clara said. “Both of us. Clearly. The marriage is what it is—a protection for the baby and a means of finding Arabella. Once she is safe and the danger is gone, we will find a way to end it. He told me so himself and I was grateful that he did because it means there are no misunderstandings between us.”
“And what did you feel,” Helena asked, “when he told you that?”
