Page 57 of The Matrimonial Advertisement

Realization dawned slowly in Justin’s brain. “Ah,” he said. “You must be Jenny.”

North Devon, England

September, 1859

Helena spent the next two days inside the Abbey with Mr. Boothroyd, Neville, and the housekeeper and cook. She had little to occupy herself with.

Each morning, Mrs. Standish brought breakfast to her room on a tray. She built up the fire and drew the curtains.

“This is a maidservant’s job,” she grumbled.

Midmornings were spent pacing the house. Walking from stone-framed window to stone-framed window and gazing out across the drive, the stables, and the sea. She spent so much time walking the upper floors she felt as if she’d been transformed into one of the Abbey’s ghosts. A colorless wraith, silently roaming the halls.

She wasn’t alone in her wanderings. Indeed, since Justin’s departure, she’d scarcely been alone for five minutes outside of her bedroom. Neville and the dogs followed after her wherever she went.

On the second day, her impatience with the situation finally got the better of her. She stopped in the long gallery and turned to face Neville. “You needn’t stay with me,” she said. “I’m more than content to be on my own.”

Neville reddened with embarrassment. “I have to. I promised Justin.”

“That you would watch me?”

He nodded. “Me, Paul, and Jonesy.”

Helena cast a dubious glance at the two giant black dogs. They strolled along lazily in Neville’s wake, their tongues lolling out of their mouths. She wasn’t deceived by their languor. She’d seen them explode with energy on her first visit to the Abbey. And she knew firsthand how fearless they could be. The younger one—Paul—hadn’t hesitated to leap after her when she’d tumbled over the side of the cliff. The elder dog had followed, the two of them guarding her as intently as a marrowbone.

“If that’s the case,” she said, “you’d better walk alongside me.”

Neville looked vaguely startled by the suggestion. “Ma’am?”

“There’s no need for you and the dogs to trail behind me like a royal retinue. I’d rather see you and talk to you. Come. Tell me about the animals at the Abbey.”

“The dogs?”

“And the horses. You tend to them, don’t you?”

As a question designed to loosen Neville’s tongue, it succeeded admirably. He gradually began to relax his guard and, with occasional prompting, told her about Jonesy’s appearance at the Abbey as a starving stray and about Paul’s arrival a year later, an exuberant puppy Justin had found wandering the back alleys of King’s Abbot.

He told her about Justin’s horse, Hiran. About Mr. Boothroyd, Mrs. Whitlock, and—rather reluctantly—about himself and how he’d come to live at the Abbey when Justin acquired it nearly three year before.

Their conversation was slow and halting. Necessarily so. Whatever damage Neville had incurred during his childhood fall from the cliffs at Abbot’s Holcombe had made formulating complex sentences an ordeal. It was as if his words were submerged in a deep London fog. He visibly struggled to find each one and draw it out. It was a painstaking process that seemed to both embarrass and frustrate him.

But Helena never doubted his intelligence. Indeed, the more they talked, the more she came to regret her first impression of him. He was slow, and perhaps a bit childlike in some respects, but he was no halfwit. He comprehended everything she said.

He also took Justin’s directive to watch over her very much to heart.

Though why Justin had given such an order, she didn’t know. Was he worried she would escape again? Fling herself from the cliffs or otherwise disappear without a trace? Or was he afraid someone would come for her?

But how could they? He’d said when the cliff road washed out there was no way a carriage or a horse and rider could get through. And yet…

And yet, Justin had managed to find his way through without difficulty.

Then again, comparing the abilities of other men to those of Justin Thornhill seemed unfair at best. All she had to do was recollect how he’d rescued her—and the dogs—from the ledge of the cliff during the thunderstorm. After that, a walk from the Abbey to the village was surely child’s play.

“Will he be back today, do you think?” she asked.

But Neville didn’t know anything more than she did. He only reiterated that Justin had gone to see Mr. Finchley and would return in two days.

That afternoon, she sat at the window in the library, her cashmere shawl wrapped tight around her shoulders. Raindrops slid down the glass, one after the other in quick succession. The sight only served to further depress her spirits. Along with the gray skies, the cold, and the damp, it made her feel isolated and alone. It should have made her happy. The poor weather guaranteed that the cliff road wouldn’t be drying out any time soon. Which meant that no one would come to the Abbey.