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“Iam!”
“Only if you push me away. But I’m quite determined not to let you. I’m no fool, Helen. I see how you look at my son. My family. Don’t run away from us. We don’t want you to.”
“I lost your silver.”
“Youdid not. Yes, the silver is lost. That changes nothing. Especially not for Nicholas. That’s what you’re worried about it, isn’t it?”
“Doesn’t it change everything? For him? For you?”
Sirena’s arms tightened around her. “Not in the way that matters.”
∞∞∞
Over the next two weeks, a soul-deep weariness swallowed Helen. For the first time in her life, she barely functioned. Too worn down to refuse the help—or battle her own desire not to be alone—she accepted visits from Nicholas, Sirena, and Pen.
By the end of Sirena’s first visit, Helen’s pride was cast fully aside. She’d sat propped up in bed while Sirena brushed her hair, and she ate and drank when prompted. Sirena and the maid, Alice, had changed her shift, and she sat in a chair for a short while before returning to bed.
Nicholas arrived by nightfall. Starting that night, he spent every evening and night with her. Once again, she slept in his arms; when she couldn’t sleep and could only stare sightlessly into the dark, he held her then, too.
Pen and Sirena took turns throughout the day, sitting with her, caring for her. After a few days, they urged her downstairs for the first time, where she’d sat weeping in the drawing room.
After a week producing an ocean of tears, she felt as though she was drowning in sorrow. She cried more than she ever had, mourning not just Elijah but Robbie and her parents. She felt abandoned. One night passed screaming incoherently into her pillow, a single phrase repeating in her mind as she thought of them all.
You left me!
At other times, Helen was beset by heart-wrenchingly warm memories she hadn’t thought of in so long, she was surprised to find them again. Every spring until she was sixteen, her father had tied dandelions into a crown and set it atop her head, saying she looked just like her mother. When she returned home with scrapes, her mother had held her and sang to her in Irish. Before they were married and Robbie lost hope, they used to laugh together until he honked like a goose.
Before Elijah had sailed away at sixteen, he served as her defender. When she was six and ate the family’s last jar of mulberry jam, saved for winter, he’d found her in the corner with it—then smeared the last remnants onto his lips and taken the blame. Even after she fessed, their father had insisted on punishing Elijah, first for the infraction and then for his lies. He hadn’t been allowed to eat jam, his favorite treat, for a year.
The first time Nicholas convinced Helen to walk to Connaught Square, everything about it felt amiss. She wanted to scream at bystanders that it was wrong to walk around as if all was well, as ifAlacrityand the sixty-three souls aboard hadn’t died. The grass growing in the square was too green, the birds’s tweets too cheerful, and she decried the breeze that provided relief to her skin from the late August heat.
But she stifled her protests and placed one foot in front of the other. If nothing else, resuming the constitutionals, like eating and drinking, meant that everyone stopped hassling her.
Day by day, life didn’t perhaps feel right, but it became less wrong. Soon she saw the beauty in the trees and the summer blooms again.
While Sirena and Nicholas could tolerate her silence, Pen filled it by reading aloud, taking no offense, however, when Helen showed no sign of following the story. Only during their constitutionals was her friend content not to speak.
She surprised Pen and herself one day by noticing and asking after the new pendant the young woman had taken to wearing of late.
Lifting the green-and-gold enameled ornament from her chest, Pen gave the first full smile Helen had seen in weeks. “It’s a betrothal artichoke, of course!”
With genuine merriment, albeit a bit muted, Helen embraced her friend. “Betrothal? Oh, Pen! Congratulations!”
Pen hugged her tightly. “Thank you.”
“I’d no idea! I’m so sorry that I’ve been—”
“No apologies are necessary, Helen!”
“Mr. Macalester has even spoken to your father?”
“He has! And Papa consented. I don’t mean to make light of the current situation, not at all. But the silver lining of Adrian being gone and Nicholas’s strained relations with Papa is that he didn’t dare send Adam away!”
“Oh?” She swallowed. “Strained?”
“I’ve spoken out of turn. Ask Nicholas about it; I’m certain he’ll tell you. But ever since, well…I shall still my tongue now. Suffice it to say, Papa is afraid of losing yet another of his children. He’s inclined to do whatever it takes to make me happy. Only because I’m not completely devious have I not taken terrible advantage!”
Suddenly, Helen realized that whileherexistence had frozen since receiving the bad news, everyone else had continued living. She couldn’t remain ignorant of what was going on any longer.
