Page 49 of The Matrimonial Advertisement

His expression was grim. “I expect I can guess the rest.”

She lifted her gaze back to his. “You believe I inherited my mother’s melancholia.” There was a note of accusation in her voice. “It’s what he’ll have told you.”

“He did say that,” Justin acknowledged.

“It’s not true. I have a sadness in me, but I’m not melancholic. I’m not suffering from hysteria. I merely feel things deeply. I feel them here.” She pressed a hand to her breast. “And when I love someone—and when they’re taken away from me—I can’t just forget them as though they’d never been.”

“Helena…”

“So I grieved for my brother. But when they couldn’t find his body, I began to doubt. And then I began to hope. And when my uncle demanded I sign my inheritance over to him, I refused to do it. No amount of threats or violence could persuade me. It’s Giles’s money, don’t you see? If there’s even a small chance he’s still alive…that he might come back one day…”

She couldn’t go on. If she did, she feared she might start sobbing. And that would only make her look more unbalanced than she already did.

“How does Mr. Glyde fit into all of this?” Justin asked.

She folded her arms around herself to stave off a shiver. “He works for my uncle. He was sent to find me on the first occasion I ran away.”

Justin stared at her. He said nothing for a long moment. “The first occasion,” he repeated at length. “Exactly how many occasions were there?”

“Several. I lost count.”

“They weren’t all related to matrimonial advertisements, I trust.”

Helena couldn’t tell if his question was in earnest. His deep voice had no inflection at all. “No. Your advertisement was the first I answered. Jenny found it in the Times.”

His gaze sharpened. “Jenny?”

“My companion. She came to live with us shortly before my father died. She’s a distant relation. A second cousin four or five times removed. I’ve known her most of my life.”

Companion was an inadequate word to describe Jenny. She’d been a friend. A confidante. The only person to help her when events with her uncle had taken such a dark and frightening turn.

“It was Jenny who posted the letters I wrote to you. She made the travel arrangements with Mr. Finchley. If not for her, I would never have managed to get out of London.”

“And the other times you ran away?” he asked.

Helena inwardly winced. He made her sound like some variety of desperate criminal. A lunatic bent on escape. Well. And perhaps she was.

“In the beginning, I wasn’t running. If I left the house at all it was to pay calls on gentlemen who had been friends of my father. I needed an advocate. I was sure someone would help me. But my uncle is the earl now. No one wished to go against him. Not on my behalf, anyway. My mother’s illness looms rather large.”

“Your uncle appears to have exploited that fact.”

“He has. Quite ruthlessly. And when no gentleman of my acquaintance was willing to come to my aid, he felt quite at liberty to begin soliciting treatment for me. Some of the treatments were administered at a private asylum called Lowbridge House. The doctors, they—” She inhaled a tremulous breath. “Well. It makes no difference what they did, except that, after they’d done it, I hadn’t very many plans left. I simply ran.”

“Where did you run to?” Justin asked. “Where exactly were you going?”

“Away,” she said. “Just…away.”

He frowned, seeming to contemplate some facet of the matter with greater than usual attention.

Helena sank farther back into the pillows. The full effect of the day’s events was catching up with her. Her limbs were heavy and her eyes threatened to drift shut at any moment.

Was it really only this morning that she and Justin had been married? That he’d kissed her so passionately in their room at the Stanhope Hotel? And now, here she was telling him about her mother and her uncle and Mr. Glyde. All after having fallen over the edge of a cliff and—quite possibly—fainted from the shock of it.

“So,” Justin said at last. “Marrying me was a last resort.”

She turned her head to look at him. “It was my very last hope, yes.”

“And when you arrived at the King’s Arms—when you saw me—it didn’t matter that I was burned. Or that I was a bastard. You needed a husband to give you the protection of his name. Any man would have done.”