“Perhaps we can continue it later,” she suggested gently. “Over supper?”
Adelaide smiled. “I will make sure we are seated next to each other. Perhaps Emma could make a third near us. I would enjoy that very much. I shall go talk to Charlotte and make the arrangements right now.”
Helena nodded and Adelaide squeezed her hand before she smiled tightly at Charity and Uncle Peter. She left the room.
The moment she did, Helena’s uncle reached behind and shut the door with a loud swish.
“Just what do you think you’re doing?” he asked, his rage barely contained. She felt it bubbling below the surface and saw it in the snap of his gaze.
“Doing?” she repeated as she backed up a step from him out of pure instinct.
“We saw you…hugging the Duchess of Northfield,” Charity spat out. “Completely out of your place.”
Helena shook her head. “The duchess was offering a friendly ear,” she said. “I did not cross a line.”
“Of course you did,” her uncle blustered. “You did, and it isn’t the first time since our arrival in London that you’ve done so.”
Helena caught her breath. Uncle Peter and Charity didn’t know the half of the lines she’d crossed…or did they? She and Baldwin had been careful the night before, but anything was possible.
Charity stepped toward her. “This trip is supposed to be about me, Helena! When I suggested you come along, I never thought that you’d ingratiate yourself to the most important people in England. That you’d wheedle your way into their hearts and push me out into the cold.”
Helena’s lips parted. She heard hurt in Charity’s tone, not just anger and it set her on her heels. “I never intended to do that. Oh, Charity, my friendships with these people are totally separate from your own. They have no impact on you, I assure you.”
“Don’t they?” Charity snapped. “Since we came here, and especially since we came out to the Sheffield estate, you have gotten all the attention. You’ve been danced with more than I have, talked to more than I have, consoled more than I have.” Charity’s voice caught and she folded her arms. “And—and you shirk your duties, too.”
Helena shook her head. “I’ve been available every time you sought me out.”
Charity placed her hands on her hips. “Last night I came looking for you and you weren’t in your part of the chamber.”
Helena’s heart stopped. Oh God, this was about Baldwin. They knew. They knew and everything was about to be shattered.
“Charity told me about your absence this afternoon,” her uncle said. “And it was the last straw. Where were you?”
“I was not tired,” she said carefully. “I didn’t want to disturb you by tossing and turning on the settee in the attached room, so I got up to walk around a bit. Hoping it would make me tired.”
Charity and Uncle Peter exchanged a look, and then Charity shrugged. “Still,” she said. “You are crossing the line.”
“You were brought here on the sole balance of my benevolence, girl, don’t you forget it. If Charity hadn’t insisted and I hadn’t agreed, you would have been out on the street in Boston. Your family knew you were a whore who’d worn out whatever purpose you had left. You owe me everything.”
Helena flinched, but before she could respond, the door to the parlor opened and Baldwin stepped in. But it wasn’t a Baldwin she’d ever seen before. Gone was her gentle lover. Gone was the careful duke.
Standing before her was a raging bull, his face red and his eyes narrowed. And all that anger was focused squarely on her uncle.
Baldwin could hardly breathe as he burst into the parlor and came face-to-face with Helena and her family. What he’d overheard in the hallway, Shephard’s sharp and cruel berating, that was bad enough. But coming into the room and seeing Helena’s pale and pained face and the way she was edged up into a corner, trying to make herself as small as possible…
It was enough. He forgot prudence. He forgot propriety. He forgot that she was not his.
He forgot it all and strode into the room in three long strides. “Just what the hell is going on in here?” he growled, pleased he had found enough control to make coherent words.
Shephard jolted in surprise, and Charity took a step back. Helena remained in place, her shoulders still hunched. She glanced at him, her expression a combination of shock and relief and also stark terror.
And he wanted to sweep her up and ride away with her. Ride away from everything that kept them apart. Ride away and never, never come back.
“This is a family matter, Your Grace,” Shephard said with another glare for Helena. “I suggest you stay out of it.”
“When you are talking to one of my house guests in such a tone in my parlor, I will not stay out of it,” Baldwin said. He moved forward a few more steps. “Miss Monroe is a lady, sir. I suggest you keep that in mind.”
Somehow he had expected that Shephard would step down at that admonishment. That he would show a little decency. He was to be disappointed. Instead, Shephard leaned in and laughed. “A lady! Is that what Helena has convinced you that she is? Well, let me disabuse you of that notion, Your Grace. My niece is anything but a lady.”
Charity gasped and Helena turned her head, her cheeks flush with humiliation. Baldwin lunged forward, and now he was towering over Shephard, ready to swing if need be. Barely containing himself from doing just that.
“Don’t test me, Shephard,” he said softly.
Shephard was not unaffected. Baldwin swelled with pride at the way the other man trembled ever so slightly. The way a thin sheen of sweat broke out on his upper lip as he stared up into Baldwin’s face.
But then something shifted. The fear ebbed, replaced with a nasty smugness that turned Baldwin’s stomach.
“No, boy,” the other man said, poking his finger into Baldwin’s chest. “Don’t you test me.”
They held their stare for a moment, for too long. Then Baldwin pointed to the door. “Get out of this room, sir. Or I shall have you removed.”
Shephard chuckled as he motioned to Charity. “Come along, dear. And you, Helena.”
“She stays,” Baldwin snapped. “There is no way she will go anywhere with you until you think about your behavior toward her.”
Shephard sent her a nasty look, then caught Charity’s arm and all but dragged her from the room, leaving Baldwin alone with Helena.
He spun on her, but she was not looking at him with gratitude. She didn’t look happy at what he’d done. She was shaking her head, over and over, and her face was pale and sick.
“Helena,” he said softly.
She caught her breath on a sob and said, “You shouldn’t have done that, Baldwin.”
Chapter Eighteen