Page 28 of The Matrimonial Advertisement

He thought of their conversation on the beach. Their discussion of Charles Dickens and the Great Exhibition. He remembered the way she’d smiled at him in commiseration over the watery tea Neville had served. And the way she’d responded to the revelation that he’d been a parish orphan in Abbot’s Holcombe.

“Is that why we loathe the place?” she’d asked.

His chest infused with warmth at the memory. It was equal parts unnerving and…quite wonderful.

“Yes,” he said. “I do like her. Very much.” He cast aside his brushes and went to untie Hiran’s halter. “What about you, Neville?” he asked as he led him to his loose box. “What do you think of Miss Reynolds?”

Neville followed after him. “She’s prettier than Miss Bray.”

Justin frowned. “Miss Bray?” That was a name he hadn’t heard in a long while. He released Hiran and withdrew from the box, shutting the door behind him. Hiran immediately thrust his nose into his bucket of mash. “What makes you think of her?”

Neville shrugged.

“You admired her once, I believe.”

Neville dropped his gaze and shrugged again.

“It was a lifetime ago,” Justin said. They had been orphan boys. Shabby and ignorant. He supposed all of them had fancied Cecilia Bray at one time or another. She was of an age with them and had been reckoned a burgeoning beauty in those days. She’d also been thoroughly unpleasant, never missing a chance to tell them how common they were and how it was no wonder their parents had abandoned them.

Justin had had to bear the brunt of it. When he’d been apprenticed to her father, she’d taken great pleasure in subjecting him to her acid tongue. By the time he left to join the army, he’d long forgotten what it was about her he’d ever imagined to be pleasing.

Mr. Bray had died ten years ago. Justin heard about it in a letter from Finchley. As for Cecilia, Justin supposed she was still living somewhere in Abbot’s Holcombe, along with her mother and younger sisters. No doubt she was married by now with half a dozen children. He neither knew nor cared. He wished he could say the same for Neville.

Helena drew her knees up to her chest and wrapped her cashmere shawl tighter around her shoulders. Her flannel nightgown was long-sleeved and covered her from her chin to her toes, but it did absolutely nothing to keep her warm. The King’s Arms was no modern London hotel. Her room was damp and drafty, with a fire that produced more smoke than heat.

She glanced over at Bess. The young maidservant was huddled on her cot by the door, looking frozen through and utterly miserable.

“I wish you’d come up and share the bed,” Helena said. “You’ll catch your death on the floor.”

“Oh no, miss. Mrs. Blevins says I’m to stay right here.”

“Surely the inn can’t be that unsafe.”

“Indeed, miss. A gentleman in his cups had a mind to try the doors once. He scared an old lady something fierce.”

“Hmm.” Helena was skeptical. If a wandering drunkard decided to force his way into her bedchamber, she didn’t see how Bess’s presence in front of the door would prevent him. The young maidservant couldn’t weigh much more than seven stone. “At least let us build up the fire, then. There’s no reason you must freeze to death in service to my safety.”

She turned up the oil lamp at her bedside, illuminating the room in a soft yellow glow. When Bess made no move to get up, Helena did so herself. The wooden slats of the floor were ice cold beneath her bare feet. They creaked in protest as she padded across the room to the fireplace. She picked up a poker and jabbed at the struggling flames in the grate.

“Aren’t you afraid, miss?”

“Of what?”

“Going to live at the Abbey. What with all them monks and things.”

Helena was tempted to smile. She had many things to fear, but spectral monks were not among them, thank goodness. There was enough to trouble her in this world without contemplating the vagaries of the spirit realm. “I don’t believe in ghosts.”

“Why not?”

“I simply don’t.” She bent to put another log on the fire. “They’re not real. You can’t see them or touch them.”

Bess turned over in her cot to watch as the flames sprung to life. “I’ve never seen one,” she said. “But my friend Martha…”

Helena rose and returned to her bed. She climbed in, settling herself beneath the blankets. “What about your friend?”

“Martha walks out with Bill, the fishmonger’s son. And he told her—” Bess broke off. “But Mrs. Blevins says I’m not to gossip.”

Helena reached to turn down the lamp. “That’s a shame. How else am I to learn about the village?”