My Pleasure (5 page)

“Do get up, Flora.”

“You are our only friend, and now you are abandoning us,” came the muffled reply.

“I am not abandoning you,” Helena answered with some heat. Tonight, she had nearly been impaled by a drunken boy. If Ramsey Munro had not made that bet—

With a dawning sense of dismay, Helena realized she owed him a hundred pounds and had made no attempt whatsoever to repay him.

“Helena?” The pretty, pale little face lifted from its wet muslin bed. “I am sorry. I am sure you would never abandon us. It is just that I am so…so…overwrought! Please, what happened?”

Flora. She would address the problem of her debt to Munro later. Right now, Flora and her problems took precedence.

“I followed Mr. Goodwin’s instructions to the letter,” she answered, “but he was not at the appointed meeting place, and in spite of my continued and best efforts to find him, I could not.”

“Then the worst has happened! He has been taken!” Once more, Flora flung herself facedown on Helena’s floor.

“Shhh. Your aunt may be back,” Helena said, dropping heavily down on the edge of her bed.

“I don’t care!” Flora wailed but, Helena noted, at half her previous volume.

“You ought to care,” Helena said sternly. “You won’t have a farthing from Lady Tilpot if she finds out what you’ve done, and it is four more years before you turn twenty-one and come into those farthings your father left in trust for you.

“So, until that time, unless Mr. Goodwin uncovers some extremely wealthy and—I am sorry to say this, Flora, but honesty compels me to do so—extremely undiscriminating person who fancies unburdening himself of great wealth by giving it to your young wastrel, you are obliged to live on her sufferance.”

Characteristically, Flora ignored everything but the least pertinent of Helena’s words. “You didn’t used to think Oswald was a wastrel!”

A lapse of judgment Helena regretted daily. “I admit that at one time I thought him charming.”

“He is charming.”

“He is also a scoundrel.”

The big brown eyes blinked in wounded wonder. “How can you say that, Helena?”

“Who else but a scoundrel would take advantage of a young girl and elope with her as soon as her guardian and her guardian’s extremely culpable companion leave for a week in Brighton?”

“He brought me back before anyone realized what we’d done,” Flora offered defensively. “Except you, Helena. You’re ever so clever.” She gazed at Helena with frank admiration. “But the rest of the world knows nothing of our elopement, and thus my reputation is intact.”

“Do not ascribe noble motives to what is in actuality very trite. The reason Mr. Goodwin returned you forthwith was because you screamed the inn roof down the first time you saw a bedbug,” Helena replied. “And do not deny it, Flora. You told me as much yourself.”

Flora did not try to deny it. She simply shuddered. “I discovered…we discovered that I am unsuited to a modest lifestyle.”

“Are not we all?” Helena asked dryly, rising and going to the table upon which stood a ewer and a basin. “Now, sit up and wipe your face. Besides, if Mr. Goodwin is not an out-and-out scoundrel, at the very least he’s an opportunist.”

She splashed a little water into the basin and dabbed the edge of a facecloth into it before wringing it out and handing it to the girl.

Flora pushed herself to a sitting position, accepted the towel, and began dutifully cleaning her face. That was the thing about Flora, she was so easy to distract and so malleable—except for this unexpected backbone where Oswald Goodwin was concerned.

When Helena had first taken the post as Lady Alfreda Tilpot’s companion, it had been a good ten days before she even realized that another female resided in the huge, fashionable townhouse. In the face of Lady Tilpot’s overwhelming and prodigious domination, far more vibrant personalities than Flora’s had wilted and faded. It was a miracle that Flora had any spine at all.

It had been precisely to bolster Flora’s self-esteem that Helena had encouraged the harmless flirtation between Flora and Oswald Goodwin. He’d arrived one afternoon with a group of other eligible young bloods and rooted himself in a settee, clearly as terrified of Lady Tilpot as he was smitten with Flora. Flora had noted his poet’s eyes and sweet smile, and Helena had noted Flora noting him.

Flawless antecedents, empty purse, as threatening as a lapdog, he was the perfect candidate to encourage a very young, very sheltered girl’s belief in her worth—beyond the 20,000 pounds Lady Tilpot dangled shamelessly in front of a seemingly endless parade of marriageable young men.

When had the lapdog become the fox in the hen-house? Helena would never have imagined Oswald Goodwin would take advantage of a young girl. Indeed, she had been so confident in his guilelessness that she’d facilitated a few meetings between Flora and him, even allowing them a few moments of private conversation—with herself seated within a decent thirty yards, of course. He had never even touched Flora’s hand!

He most certainly hadn’t kissed her like Ram had—no, no,no, Helena told herself firmly. She was not going to think of that. That had been a chance moment of madness, a never-to-be-repeated excursion into a world of earthy sensuality. That was his world;this was hers. The two would never overlap again.

Unless she found she had no recourse but to hand-deliver the hundred pounds….

“Why do you accuse dear Ossie of being an opportunist?” Flora’s voice broke through Helena’s erstwhile thoughts. She’d finished with the towel and was folding it neatly.

“Well, unless your aunt can affect an annulment, he looks to be wed to a very rich wife, doesn’t he?” At the scowl darkening Flora’s little face, she hurried on. “And if you manage to keep your marriage secret until after you come into your inheritance, then he has the benefits of being assured a wealthy future while being able to enjoy an irresponsible present, doesn’t he?”

“That,” Flora said, “is a horrid thing to say! What has come over you, Helena? This is so unlike you!” Flora exclaimed. “Where is my angel? My dear, beautiful friend? I can scarce credit such unkindness has come from one so lovely! So angelic!”

“Flora—”

“Yes,” Flora insisted. “Angel! How else could you be so serene despite all the hardships life has dealt you? How could you put up with my aunt if you were not a virtual saint? And you are so beautiful.” The girl gazed at her adoringly, and Helena sighed.

The beauty that everyone so often remarked upon had seemed to Helena to appear overnight in her sixteenth year. Then, as now, her “beauty” had never felt…well, real. Unprepared for the sudden and overstated attention, she had retreated behind her natural composure. People, she had discovered, loved aligning themselves with pretty things—too often without thought or concern for what the veneer they idolized might shelter.

Even her sister Kate seemed to consider Helena’s poise an indication of a dearth of inner resources. She had certainly never asked Helena’s aid or opinion after their parents’ deaths but had simply assumed command of their remaining family. And Helena, unwilling to further burden her already overextended sister, had unhappily let her life be directed by her. Until Lady Tilpot. Until she had found an opportunity to put to good use years of perfecting a graceful reticence.

“I want to be just like you, Helena,” Flora was saying, her big eyes wide and earnest. “I want to be admired and respected and—”

“Flora!” Helena broke in sharply. “I am not respected. I am fashionable. It is not the same thing. Not at all.”

Flora’s brow puckered in consternation.

Helena had little hope Flora would understand. Security, family, her station in life, her celebrated beauty, all of the things that Flora had and that at one time Helena had possessed, too, had proven illusory.

Her much-vaunted beauty? After her mother’s death she had grown so gaunt only pitying gazes followed her. Her status? Vanished with the entailed estate. Security? Died with her father. Her family? Scattered to the winds, Kate following the drum on the Continent with her new husband, Colonel Christian MacNeill, and Charlotte unofficially adopted into a family of scapegraces and rattle-pates.

Helena had no control over the vagaries that had molded her life, but she did control how she reacted to them. An impecunious orphan could find a good deal of satisfaction in that. Still, she must try to discourage Flora from the course she had followed.

“When one has a certain degree of beauty, little else is expected of one. And even only a moderately pleasant disposition, which would normally not draw any attention at all, in a pleasing-looking person is given the status of a virtue. Which is hardly wise, is it?”

Flora regarded her blankly. Subtlety had never worked with her.

“Flora, people expect little of a pretty girl. But that does not really matter. What matters is this: When there are few expectations made of one, one begins to have few expectations of oneself. Therein lies the danger. One might settle for being less than one might otherwise be.”

“But you are perfect!” Flora declared, and then her gaze fell and her lower lip extended in a pout. “Or you used to be.”

“Hardly.”

“But lately,” Flora continued as if Helena had not spoken, “well, it grieves me to have to say this, but you have become positively hardhearted!”

At this Helena nearly laughed. If she had been hard-hearted, she would have flown from this house a month ago on the prospects of the portion Kate intended to give her of the huge treasure she and her husband had found in Scotland. Only two things kept Helena from going to the bank, arranging a loan—which she had been told by her brother-in-law’s representative would prove no problem—buying her own house, and retiring to live in a modest but extremely comfortable style.

The first was that the last four years had taught her to be wary of anticipated windfalls. Her only current income was from Lady Tilpot, and as miserable as she was, she paid well for the privilege of tormenting her staff. The second and more important reason was that she felt responsible in part for Flora’s current predicament, she felt she owed it to the girl to stay and try and rectify the situation.

So she had not investigated getting a loan. Indeed, she hadn’t even told Lady Tilpot about her unforeseen wind-fall, because if the old despot suspected that anyone in her employ did not live in constant fear of dismissal, she threw them out. And once dismissed, Helena did not fool herself into thinking that she would ever be welcomed back as Flora’s friend. She wouldn’t even be allowed through the door, and the underlings that Lady Tilpot employed were not likely to risk their positions by aiding a one-time companion.

Flora, Helena thought, was as well guarded as a princess in a tower. Except for one notable lapse that had occurred a month ago, when, Helena had arrived back from a short stay in Brighton with Lady Tilpot to discover Flora in her room, much as tonight. First glowing, then crumpling, and finally confessing her marriage to Oswald.

“You know Ossie is doing everything in his power to be reunited with me!” Flora insisted.

“Oh, yes,” Helena said dryly. “His efforts have been truly noteworthy—for being disastrously wrongheaded. Whatever gave Mr. Goodwin the notion that he could win a fortune at the gaming tables?”

“He has had a bit of bad luck, is all—”

“No, Flora.” Helena cut off her excuses. “He has been criminally foolish!”

She ignored Flora’s gasp and plowed on, striving to make Flora understand the character of the man with whom she’d eloped. “He converted everything of value he owned into cash and frittered away the profit in the lowest sorts of gaming hells. Then, not content simply to be insolvent, he willingly placed himself in the clutches of not one but two different cent-per-centers, the money which he borrowed going the same way as his other funds.

“Only a fool does not learn from his mistakes, Flora, and I see no evidence that Mr. Goodwin has learned anything from his current troubles but how to dodge dunners!”

“That is so unfair!” Flora intoned, her voice wobbling. “He is only trying to accumulate enough of the ready that we might live together, independently and…and…comfortably!”

“I will tell you what is unfair,” Helena said firmly. “What is unfair is the risks he allows his friends to take in hiding him from his creditors and helping him evade moneylenders.

“My word, Flora, the man darts about from hidey-hole to attic closet like a thief! We can’t ever contact him because no one knows who’ll put him up for a night or lend him the money to rent a room.”

Flora, seeing that Helena wasn’t about to take back her harsh words regarding the light of her life, once more flung herself on the floor. “You hate him!”

Helena felt her anger slipping away. She never had been able to maintain a decent fume. She reached down and touched the girl lightly on the shoulder. “I do not hate him. I am, er, troubled by his lack of resources.”

“He’s spent his resources!”

Helena briefly closed her eyes, once more asking herself what momentary aberration of sanity had led her to agree to being party to such nonsense. But even as she questioned her sanity, she knew there really hadn’t been any alternative.

She didn’t trust any of Lady Tilpot’s servants to keep mum about Flora and Oswald’s marriage, let alone act as their messenger. They stood too much in terror of their mistress. And it was out of the question for Flora to risk her reputation and her aunt’s wrath by going abroad at night. Besides which, Helena had serious doubts that Flora could navigate her way across the street without an escort, much less find her way to Vauxhall Garden.

Which left Helena. And Helena, having finally had a taste of taking action rather than simply responding to another’s actions, found it a heady and powerful sensation. And addictive.

In order to evade the eyes of those looking for young Goodwin, Helena had hit upon the plan of meeting at crowded public masquerades. Happily, this season the ton had developed a positive passion for costume balls and masques. Opportunities to dress up in a domino or mask were plentiful.

This was the third time she had slipped unnoticed among a festive throng to meet with Mr. Goodwin. Those prior meetings had been uneventful. But tonight things had changed.