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“Are not kisses intimacies?” she asked, her eyes searching his.

“Not inadvisable ones,” he managed. Now her small hands were wandering across his chest. “But you are touching me inappropriately, Lina.”

Her hands flew away, although she didn’t look chastised.

He nodded and put her away. She didn’t hear him say “God help me,” because he was already halfway down the corridor toward his bedchamber.

Nineteen

In Which the Household Gathers

Helene arrived at the house in a hackney. This time she didn’t even bother having her maid knock on the door; she simply told Saunders to push it open. Saunders had been dumbstruck from the moment Helene informed her that she intended to return to her husband’s house. Now she stared around the antechamber of the house as if she expected the devil himself to make his presence known by waving a forked tail around the corner.

“Where’s the butler?” she finally asked in a hushed tone, for all the world as if they were visiting the Regent himself. Helene had taken off her pelisse and was looking around for somewhere to put it that didn’t appear to be too dusty.

“Lord knows,” she said. “His name is Leke, and he’s not a bad sort. But I can’t imagine how he manages to run this house with virtually no staff.”

Saunders was beginning to see the dirt clinging to the corners of the entryway. Her lip curled. “Harries would keep the house clean, if he had to do it on his own hands and knees.”

“No doubt we’ll have to do a thorough cleaning of my room,” Helene said grimly, heading up the stairs.

When they reached the next floor, Saunders paused, but Helene turned without a word of explanation and kept climbing. She hadn’t told Saunders the unpleasant truth about Rees’s refusal to dislodge the strumpet. It caused enough commotion when she announced she was returning to her husband. The truth was demented. She was demented.

No one seemed to understand that she wanted a baby more than anything else, more than her dignity. If she had to trade a brief period of humiliation for a lifetime with a child, then so be it. Besides, she was hopeful that the presence of Rees’s brother—a vicar, after all!—would anoint the household with some level of dignity.

The chamber next to the nursery wasn’t terrible. It was large, with windows from which one could just glimpse the trees of St. James Park. “Look at this, Saunders!” Helene said, looking out, “I didn’t have this view on the second floor.”

“I don’t like it,” Saunders said, stumping around the room and looking with distaste at the furnishings. “I don’t understand why you’re not in the countess’s bedchamber, my lady.”

Leke had obviously made an effort to fit out the room as befits a countess; Helene recognized the beautiful Turkish rug that used to adorn the back sitting room. The bed had obviously belonged to the nanny, but he had found a dressing table and a rather motley collection of furniture and arranged them into a lady’s boudoir. Helene sat down on a velvet sofa. “There’s another lady in that chamber, Saunders.”

“Another lady?” she said. “Is it the earl’s mother, then?”

“No. She is a friend of Lord Godwin’s,” Helene replied.

Saunders generally offered any comments in a consciously genteel tone of voice. But shock brought out her Bankside origins directly. “He never has that singer here while you’re in residence!” she gasped. And when Helene nodded, she pulled open the door so violently that it slammed against the wall. “I’ll find a hackney on the corner, my lady!”

“I’m staying,” Helene said quietly.

“Never! You’re addled!” Saunders stared at her, eyes large. “Your mother doesn’t know of your husband’s depravity!”

“I trust you not to tell her.” Helene took a deep breath. “Saunders, I need to be here, and Rees’s mistress is really irrelevant. We will stay only until I find myself with child. Do you understand? Then we return to my mother’s, and no one the wiser. Remember, no one except my closest friends knows I’m in this house. Callers will be informed that I am indisposed.”

She looked directly at Saunders. “Obviously, the scandal that would ensue from people knowing of my presence here would be staggering.”

“I can’t even imagine,” the maid said, gasping a bit.

“I trust you. There’s no one else I could entrust with the truth.”

Saunders blinked rapidly and straightened her shoulders. “Well, my lady, of course I should never wish to fail your confidence in me. You can trust me, naturally, but—”

“I am counting on you,” Helene said earnestly.

“But it’s impossible!” she protested. “How on earth are you to speak to each other? How will you take meals?”

“I shall take most of my meals in my room,” Helene replied. “And since I have promised to help his lordship with his current opera, I doubt that I shall have much interaction with Miss McKenna at all.”

Saunders slowly closed the door. “Thank goodness we packed all those gowns from Madame Rocque.” Madame had delivered a season’s worth of gowns in the past two weeks, all constructed with the same principles in mind: weightlessness and a vivid display of Helene’s slender form.