Page 9 of The Matrimonial Advertisement

And Mr. Thornhill was handsome.

Though not in the urbane, sophisticated manner of her elder brother and his friends or any of the other gentlemen Helena had met and admired during the course of her five-and-twenty years. Instead, with his rumpled black hair, sun-bronzed skin, and altogether too penetrating gaze, Mr. Thornhill rather resembled a swashbuckling pirate or one of the roguish antiheroes in the penny novels she’d been so fond of reading as a girl.

A woman could easily become infatuated with such a man.

Especially as Mr. Thornhill was not merely handsome. He was tall and powerfully made. Indeed, Helena couldn’t remember having ever encountered a gentleman of such majestic proportions. He was all broad shoulders and lean, masculine strength. She felt small and fragile by comparison. If he were to hurt her—to throttle her or shake her violently by the arms—she didn’t think she could survive it. He was far too strong. He could snap her neck as easily as breathing.

She swallowed back a rising swell of panic. It wouldn’t do to succumb to her fears. Not after having come so far and risked so much.

Yet how could she help but be uneasy after the vulgar things he’d said to her?

She was almost too mortified to recall them. What sort of man spoke of covering a lady in their marriage bed? Not a gentleman, surely. And then to accuse her of being with child! As if she were some sort of deceitful wanton. She whose entire knowledge of the marital act consisted of passages read in medical manuals and a few scraps of overheard masculine conversation.

Righteous indignation rose in her breast. It was a wonderful tonic for the nerves.

Lifting her head from the mirror, she refilled the basin and proceeded to wash her face and body as thoroughly as she could.

Her journey, though not terribly long, had been dusty and dirty. She could still feel the grit in her hair from when the wind had kicked up as she stood on the train platform at Barnstaple. She wished there was time to wash it. Instead, she unpinned it, brushed it out, and twisted it into fresh plaits that she secured at the base of her neck in a large chignon. She was fixing the last hairpin when someone scratched softly at the door.

“Your pardon, ma’am,” a maidservant’s voice rang out. “The gentleman says to tell you they’ll be leaving in half an hour.”

Helena’s pulse quickened. Mr. Thornhill and Mr. Boothroyd were taking her to see the Abbey. They had even engaged a serving girl to act as her maid during the journey. It was all perfectly proper and aboveboard—facts which did absolutely nothing to calm her quaking heart. “I’ll be down directly!”

“Very good, ma’am. Shall I leave your boots at the door?”

“Yes, thank you.” At least she’d have clean shoes, Helena thought as she began to dress. Earlier, she’d performed a quick spot clean on her traveling gown, but it still looked as if she’d been wearing it for two days straight. It needed to be properly sponged and pressed. But she couldn’t worry about any of that now.

She fastened the final button at the neck of her gown and gave her voluminous skirts one last shake so that they fell gracefully over her crinoline. Her bonnet, gloves, and carpetbag were on the bed. As she moved to retrieve them, her eyes fell on the tea tray. There were three cakes remaining. She swiftly collected them and, after wrapping them in a clean handkerchief, thrust them into her carpetbag with the rest of her worldly belongings.

If things didn’t work out with Justin Thornhill, she would need food for the final leg of her journey.

Wherever that journey might take her.

The antiquated coach gave a shuddering jolt as it ascended the cliff road. Bess, the young maidservant in the seat across from Helena, moaned low in her throat. Helena eyed her with concern. The girl’s face had gone from stark white to pea green in an astonishingly short span of time. “We’re quite safe, Bess,” she said again. “Truly.”

Her words were instantly contradicted by an ominous rattle. It shook the carriage, causing them both to sway in their seats.

She cast a quick glance out of the window. The carriage wheels were rolling along at the very edge of the cliff road. She could see stones crumbling and falling down to the foaming surf below. Beginning to feel a bit white about the mouth herself, she leaned back in her seat and offered Bess a bracing smile. “If you’re afraid, only imagine how poor Mr. Boothroyd feels riding up top with the coachman.”

“Lord bless him, miss.” Bess pressed a hand to her mouth. Helena couldn’t tell if she was stifling a giggle or about to be sick. “If one of the horses loses its footing, he’ll be flung off into the sea.”

“What a shame that would be,” Helena said dryly. A gurgle of laughter escaped from behind Bess’s hand.

Mr. Boothroyd had done nothing to endear himself to either of them. From the moment Helena had come down the stairs at the inn, he’d been impatient, irritable, and—when compensating Bess for her time—he’d revealed himself to be surprisingly cheap.

Helena wasn’t sure what she’d done to offend him. She knew she wasn’t what he’d expected, but she was beginning to think Mr. Boothroyd was somehow opposed to her marrying Mr. Thornhill. Even worse, she suspected that Mr. Thornhill was not entirely agreeable himself.

And yet, despite his vulgar words and his gruff manner, Justin Thornhill had behaved with the utmost propriety since they left the inn. He’d even taken steps to safeguard her reputation during their visit to the Abbey. Not only had he arranged for Bess to accompany her, but neither he nor Mr. Boothroyd had ridden with them inside the carriage.

“Reckon Mr. Thornhill’s safer than all of us on that horse of his,” Bess said.

“Undoubtedly.” Helena looked out the window once more. There was no sign of Mr. Thornhill. He was likely far ahead of them by now, a single horse and rider being much better suited to the treacherous road than a carriage.

Greyfriar’s Abbey was a good three miles from the King’s Arms and, as Mr. Thornhill had explained when handing her up into the carriage, the cliff road was the only point of access. It ascended along a track just wide enough for a coach and four, curving as it went beneath the branches of trees that seemed to grow at all angles from the cliff face.

It took nearly half an hour to reach even ground. When they did, the horses picked up the pace, the poorly sprung carriage bouncing along behind them. It veered to the left through a sparse woodland and finally slowed to a rattling halt.

Peering out the window, Helena saw that they had come to rest on a small plateau. The sky was thick and gray above, the rocky landscape equally as gray below. In the distance, with only a crumbling stone wall protecting it from the cliffside and the sheer drop down to the open sea, stood Greyfriar’s Abbey.