Page 91 of The Matrimonial Advertisement

Peregrine Trowbridge, Viscount Wexford was a fair-haired rake with a penchant for loud waistcoats and fast horses. Helena had been acquainted with his younger sister in the years before Giles left for India.

“Lady Helena,” he said, bowing. “I knew I recognized you from across the theatre.”

“Lord Wexford, may I present my husband, Captain Justin Thornhill.”

Justin had risen when Lord Wexford entered. He stood beside her chair, somewhat protectively, or so she imagined. “Wexford,” he said.

“Thornhill.” Lord Wexford shook Justin’s hand. “Lately of Her Majesty’s army in India, is that right? I’ve been hearing about your marriage to Lady Helena. What a march you’ve stolen on the rest of us, sir. I daresay it was Giles’s doing. He always did like to joke that he’d see his sister married to an officer before he’d consent to giving her to one of us.”

Helena’s heart contracted at the mention of her brother, but she managed to keep her face impassive. Justin’s hand came to rest lightly on her shoulder.

“Where are you residing in London?” Lord Wexford asked. “Not with Castleton, I presume, else you’d be sitting in his box across the way.”

“We’ve taken a house in Half Moon Street,” Justin said.

“Fancy that. Lady Poole, the widow of old Lord Eustace Poole, resides in Half Moon Street. I was calling on her only last week.” Lord Wexford paused to summon someone else into the box. “Letty? Come and meet Lady Helena’s new husband.”

Lady Leticia Staverley entered their theatre box in an abundance of lace skirts caught up in a spray of wax roses. “Helena, my darling!” she cried.

Helena stood to greet her, receiving Letty’s kiss on the cheek with a smile that was only partially forced. She’d known Letty in her youth, but the two of them had never been particularly close. After Giles’s disappearance, Helena had heard from her only once.

“I haven’t seen you in ages!” she said, clutching Helena’s hand. “You haven’t been at a single event I’ve attended since last autumn.”

“Letty, this is Lady Helena’s new husband, Captain Justin Thornhill,” Lord Wexford said. “He served with Giles in India, don’t you know?”

Helena exchanged a fleeting glance with Justin. Neither corrected Lord Wexford’s misapprehension and, in seconds, the moment in which they might have done so passed into oblivion.

It was a strange and rather fortuitous thing, she reflected as a procession of old acquaintances entered and exited their box. Soon, everyone assumed she’d met Justin through the auspices of her brother. They believed Giles had encouraged a correspondence between the two of them. After his disappearance the previous year, and following her period of mourning, they seemed to think it only natural that she and Justin would wed.

“Your uncle must have been furious,” Lady Elmira Yardley said. She was an elderly woman, thrice widowed, and perpetually garbed in layers of black crepe and jet. Her canny gaze flitted from Justin to Helena and back again. “Is that why you’re not wearing your jewels, my dear? Has Castleton kept them from you?”

“Indeed, ma’am,” Helena said. “My uncle has behaved rather badly since my brother’s disappearance in India.”

“Has he?” Lady Elmira edged closer, her eyes glinting and her face flushed with ill-disguised anticipation. She had a notorious thirst for gossip. “In what manner, my dear?”

“In an ungentlemanly manner,” Helena replied. “As I’m sure you can imagine.”

Lady Elmira brows lowered. “Yes, yes. I know too well of what you speak. Castleton has ever been a villain. Haven’t I said so these twenty years and more?”

After she departed from the box, Helena turned to Justin to explain. “My uncle courted Lady Elmira after her first husband died. She thought he would propose, but when the moment arrived, he couldn’t be brought to the point. She’s never forgiven him for the humiliation.”

“What do you suppose she’ll tell everyone he’s done to you?” Justin asked.

Helena shrugged. “I can’t guess. Though I doubt it could be anything worse than the truth.”

They didn’t stay to finish the play. They’d already achieved their purpose. People had seen Helena and talked to her. They could attest that she both looked and sounded perfectly well. As an added bonus, Justin had somehow managed to find himself elevated to the position of best friend to Helena’s late brother. He supposed it was the only way all the toplofty lords and ladies they’d conversed with could reconcile his marriage to her.

It bothered him more than a little. He didn’t like to be made to feel as if he were lacking somehow. But after the parade of Lord So-and-Sos and Lady Whatsits, how could he feel anything else?

He was naught but the bastard son of a baronet. And not even a fashionable one. Indeed, next to glittering society figures like Lord Wexford and Lady Staverley, Sir Oswald seemed a veritable country bumpkin.

And if Sir Oswald wasn’t good enough, then Justin himself was positively unacceptable. Even owning the Abbey couldn’t make him so.

He hailed a hansom for them from one of the many idling about outside the theatre and assisted Helena in. Her skirts filled the cab in a frothy sea of lustrous blue silk and lace. When he climbed in after her, he was obliged to carefully move them out of the way lest he crush them under his legs.

As the hansom sprang into motion, rolling swiftly down the busy West End street, Helena leaned back against the seat with a weary sigh. The curving, creamy expanse of her bosom—the sight of which had rendered him speechless when she’d come down the stairs in Half Moon Street—was now concealed by an opera cloak, an expensive-looking affair of white cashmere trimmed in swansdown. She held it around herself like a warm, luxurious blanket.

“Cold?” he asked.