Lucy sighed. “Nothing.”
“Do you think he will still come back?”
“No.”
“So you will continue to stay here, waiting for a man you are certain will never return?”
If Helena knew she’d only agreed to the arranged marriage for her sake, Helena would make them leave this instant. But she couldn’t leave—not until Helena had a chance to secure her own future with the benefit of the Bridgewater family connection. If Lucy broke her engagement, Mama and Papa would be searching for any eligible titled gentleman for either one of them, and Lucy would not put Helena through that.
She also wouldn’t risk her hand at another arranged marriage. As strangely as her situation had turned out, it could have been much worse. It was infinitely better to spend years engaged without a marriage, than to have her parents choosea new and possibly unkind titled man for her to marry. Mr. Harrison had been young and not boorish, at least. If he kept a position as delivery driver, he most likely didn’t drink and gamble his days away. She’d been fortunate in the man her parents had chosen for her the first time, but she might not be so again.
“A little longer, at least. I want to come with you to your first balls without the threat of Mama and Papa arranging a different marriage for me. Lord and Lady Bridgewater’s position in society will make certain your first Season is filled with invitations. After that, we shall see.”
“He might come back in that year.”
“If he does, I will deal with it then. But I don’t think he will.”
“Why are you so certain? Do you think he married someone else?”
Lucy’s stomach knotted. She had no answer for that. “He definitely wasn’t married to the shopkeeper. Women don’t blush at their husbands like she did.”
“Well, you have to find out. I just cannot believe you know where he is and you are going to do nothing about it.”
Lucy turned around in her seat, then stood and pushed Helena down into it. Switching their positions, Lucy removed the first of many of Helena’s hair pins. “What can I do, Helena? I won’t force the man to return home.”
Helena put a hand on Lucy’s and stopped her work. “But you could go speak to him, at least.”
“He would run away the second he found out who I was.”
“If he did, he would be a fool.”
“He is a future baron working as a delivery man. He is handsome, titled, and being forced into a marriage for money. Perhaps the reason he couldn’t procure a marriage on his own is because he is, in fact, a fool. But even if that were the case, I can’tjust march up to him, introduce myself, and expect everything to stay the same for your first Season.”
Helena pursed her lips. “I don’t care about my first Season half as much as you do. And if you are so worried about it, then the answer is obvious. Don’t tell him who you are. It wasn’t you that he saw in the churchyard. It was me. Go meet him. Speak to him. Decide if he is a man worthy of marrying you, andthendrag him home.”
Lucy laughed at the sudden image of her taking the man with the broad shoulders by the wrist, pulling him through the streets and into the Bridgewater carriage. “I’m not certain I could drag him. Didn’t you hear me say he’d gotten larger since we last saw him?”
“Then make him fall in love with you.”
Love. Lucy’s fingers stopped as if of their own accord. Love was a concept she’d given up on long ago. Her parents had made a point of showcasing example after example of couples who had married for love and ended up in poverty, or worse, hating each other in the long run. Ever since Papa signed his first large contract for a London shoemaker, they had impressed upon her that wealth, station, and position in society brought the most solid form of happiness. While she’d harbored hopes that Helena might have all of thatandlove, she’d never given herself the hope of anything more than compatibility with a man whose position in society would ensure a life of comfort for her. Marrying for love was as foreign to her as the Indian spices she’d tasted in the market. More foreign, even, for at least she’d had a sample of those.
“Don’t be ridiculous, Helena. He is a working man. How would I even have the chance to speak to him?”
“You’ll think of something. You always do.”
But in this case? There was nothing to think of. It was impossible. And yet… “My ideas are what got us into this troublein the first place. I wanted to get to know my future husband on my own terms, and look where it took us.”
“But maybe your plan is better than you gave it credit for. Has it taken three years longer than you expected? Certainly. But if you now have the chance to get to know Mr. Harrison, without any sort of pressure, without feeling as though youhaveto marry him, your little trick in the churchyard might actually have been a blessing.”
“Stop it. It wasn’t.”
“You can flirt with him.”
“I don’t even know how.”
“Get to know his interests, and find out if he truly is kind.”
“You’re being preposterous.”
