The Sleeping Beauty

But there was a cunning here as well. And something else, something more…urgent. With his chin resting on his thumb and his forefinger caressing his top lip, Adam waited.

“The first,” Rathford began, “is that you must not abandon Helena here. You will swear to visit at least twice a year, before and after the illustrious season, if you wish, so that your enjoyment of high society is not interrupted. You will stay for two months each visit.”

Adam frowned. He hadn’t counted on so frequent a journey up to these cold climes. He hadn’t necessarily intended to return at all.

“You will not leave her all alone—” Rathford broke off, his voice choking a bit. “You will come. The second promise is to be that you will do what you must as a husband to provide my daughter with a child. As many children as she desires. During these visits, you and she will be man and wife in all senses of the term.”

What it cost him to say this was evident in the rapid blinking of his eyes, in the way his jaw worked. His jowls began to tremble, so that his next words warbled more noticeably. “The final promise is that you will always treat her with kindness. Never speak to her in anger, never raise a hand. I will have you not only cut off without a ha’penny to comfort you, but thrown in the darkest of cells in a place where no one will find you. And I’m not talking through legal means, boy. I will—” His voice finally gave way.

This, at least, Adam had no compunctions about. “My lord, I assure you your daughter will be met with kindness. Never will I do a thing to harm her, body or spirit. I am not a cruel or unkind man.”

“Money changes men,” Rathford said prophetically. Bowing his head, he nodded, however, accepting Adam’s vow. “And the rest?”

Shifting in his chair, Adam admitted, “I do not care for so frequent journeying. But I will do it. Twice a year, just as you request. I suppose.” His lack of enthusiasm he didn’t bother to hide. “As for the other…I will provide my duty as husband as long as the girl is well. Her thinness may prevent—”

“No!” Rathford slashed a hand through the air. “No qualifications on it. You will…bed…her. You will give her children.”

Adam would have furthered the argument that the girl’s health might make pregnancy a danger, but the man’s countenance forbade it. Rathford’s eyes blazed; his quivering lips were nearly palsied. “I promise,” Adam said.

Rathford froze for a moment, then like a wax doll held too close to a fire, he melted back into his chair. “Very well. The bargain is done, pup. You shall have Helena as wife, and the bloody money, too.”

In the quiet of her bedchamber, Helena craned her neck to view the pattern of cards laid out before her. “What do you see?” she asked.

“Silence.” Kimberly bowed her head. “Don’t ye be feelin’ it? Yer mother, she’s here.”

Helena froze. The mention of her mother brought an instant chill.

Kimberly opened her eyes and studied the three cards already laid out in front of Helena. “Choose another.”

Helena obeyed, her icy fingers trembling as they selected from the deck. She placed the card where Kimberly indicated.

The servant frowned. “Darkness. Very bad.” She closed her eyes as she concentrated on communing with the long-dead Althea Rathford. “She is very angry. Do ye not feel her anger?”

Helena had always been terrified of her mother, but Althea’s rage when alive was nothing as terrible as the thought of her venom coming from beyond the grave.

Kimberly held her hands over the cards, palms down. Her body stiffened and her head fell back. She was in communion with the other world. She moaned, then said, “Retribution.”

Helena’s breath accelerated, coming in rapid pants, her heart ready to tear out of her chest. Long, elegant fingers clung to the table.

Kimberly went limp. Helena waited with the dull echo of her heartbeat pounding in her ears.

Opening her eyes, Kimberly drilled Helena with her gaze. “This man is yer destiny.”

“No! It can’t be.”

“Yer mother has called him here from across leagues of space.”

“Does she wish to punish me? Is that why you said, ‘Retribution’? Does she hate me?”

“A mother can never hate her child.” Kimberly scooped the cards up, her crafty eyes staring into Helena’s anxious ones. “She has great love for ye, just as she always did.”

That was hardly reassuring. Helena had known all too well the yoke of her mother’s love. She wrung her hands anxiously. “But he is a commoner. And…” She remembered his eyes. Dark, unfathomable and unforgiving. “And he seems so harsh.”

Kimberly didn’t argue further. Pressing her lips together—a sign that she had said all she was going to—she rose to place the cards back in their cupboard. Rising on shaky legs, Helena retreated to the other end of the room. She slid onto the window seat, her little corner where she always went to think.

Helena put no stock in Kimberly’s predictions. She wasn’t a believer. Not exactly. But guilt was a powerful thing. And the servant was clever, if nothing else. Kimberly’s knowledge of the spirit world might or might not be accurate, but she certainly knew her way around the human soul.

How could Helena be expected to marry that arrogant peacock, a virtual stranger who was obviously seeking nothing but a nice fat purse? He did not hold any caring for her—how could he be her destiny?

Helena wrapped her arms around her chest and closed her eyes. She heard Kimberly leave.

Retribution.

It was time to pay for what she had done.

When she received a message from her father to change her dress, brush her hair and come to the conservatory, Helena was shocked. She had held out hope that her father had wished to annoy the man—this Adam Mannion—by playing along with his “suit” for a while. She couldn’t believe that he would actually be interested in speaking to the man genuinely about the prospect of marriage.

But there was Kimberly’s prophesy. And now this summons.

Going to the pier glass by her dressing table, she stared at her reflection as her numb brain assimilated the incredible events of this afternoon.

She had bathed as soon as she had come into her room, fetching the water herself and making do with a hip bath. Long soaks in the tub were a luxury of the past. Her hair was freshly washed, still damp, her face scrubbed clean.

Leaning forward, she concentrated on the stranger whose image she faced. Her hair, a wheat color, had once gleamed with rich luster, falling in a cascade of perfect curls. Each one had seemed to be made of pale ecru satin. Now it hung rather dry and dull, with only the tepid undulations of its natural wave to give it any style. Her skin was still good, but pale. No longer did the blush of roses flame in her cheeks. Her lips looked bloodless.

She was no longer a beauty. Which was how she liked it. She had never wanted to look in the mirror and see that other Helena, her mother’s Helena, again. And yet this drab creature seemed a stranger. Perhaps a reflection of the true Helena she had never bothered to know.

For the first time since she’d pushed herself away from the strictures of beauty and grace that had been drilled into her as a child, she wanted something of her old self back. The thought of going to the conservatory and…and seeing him again was too daunting without it. Her mother had taught her how to use her looks to command attention, admiration. Power. She needed something of that skill now.

She took up her brush and began to pull it through her hair. Years of neglect weren’t going to be cured in one sitting, but the slight sheen that came into the tresses gave her confidence. Pinning it up as best she could, she surveyed the effect. Not bad, she decided. Biting her lips and pinching her cheeks, she went to the wardrobe to inspect its contents.

The dresses were all heavy with dust, dull and limp with age, and in some places, moth-eaten. Even had they been in excellent condition, they were outdated. A yellow muslin wasn’t too bad, she thought, pulling it out and brushing it off. The lace was still good and the stomacher in front boasted beautiful gold embroidery on ivory satin.

She flung it out before her, raising a cloud of dust. Then again and again. Each time it was as if she was shedding more than dirt. She was shedding the years. Her heart quickened. Destiny or not, she was going to give Mr. Adam Mannion a thing or two to reckon with. Namely, that she wasn’t a treasure-laden galleon ripe for a pirate’s plucking.

Her spirits lifted as she rushed about the rest of her toilette.

Chapter Three

The conservatory was magnificent. Adam looked around him, bouncing on his heels.

He wondered what his father would have thought to see him here, poised to marry an heiress. Not yet, he cautioned, checking the dangerous direction of his thoughts. The belle had yet to be won.

Lord Rathford, who had been nursing a drink while slumped in an old wicker settee, stood up when the sharp click of heeled slippers tapped upon the floor tiles. Adam looked over, mastering the sublime excitement that had stolen over him, and donned a sober mask.

The sight of Helena caused his jaw to drop. It gaped open for a moment before he recalled that it should be shut. He did so with such haste his teeth clicked together.

She was…incredibly different. Her hair was brushed and fixed into a neat twist. The simple style flattered her, revealing a face that was well-proportioned and delicate boned, with a pale complexion that needed no powder to enhance it. Her eyes were as vivid as a southern sea, her brow fair and arched, her mouth nicely pinked and prettily formed into a broad curve in the shape of a longbow laid on its side.