Once an Heiress (34 page)

“Very well,” she blurted before she could think better of it, “I’ll go.”

Not thirty minutes later, Lily stared out the window of the carriage Isabelle loaned her at a terrifyingly normal-looking house. Nothing about its stuccoed exterior hinted at the secrets within. It was situated on an alarmingly respectable street. Lily would have felt better had the address provided by Wickenworth led her to an obvious house of ill repute. She longed for some clue as to what she was stepping into. “Shouldn’t there be a shingle, at least?” she mused. “‘Here There Be A Mistress’ would suffice.”

She climbed the front steps like a convict approaching the gallows, and was given further pause by the fact that the knocker had been removed. The house was closed — or not receiving visitors, at the very least. Lily drew a deep breath. “Trust Aunt Janine,” she murmured, then felt an instant of panic at the idea of entrusting the matter of her husband and his mistress to a dear old woman who had never been involved in any relationship as complicated as marriage. “Oh, Lord,” she said, pressing her hand against her stomach. Reminding herself that while Aunt Janine might be a spinster, she was sharp as a tack. Lily could trust Janine’s intellect. She took a moment to steel her resolve. “What’s the worst that can happen?” she reasoned.

She pounded on the door with her fist, to no effect. A few minutes passed, and no one answered her summons. After another unanswered knock, Lily stepped back and regarded the silent portal. “Just like the first time.”

The door jerked inward and for a split-second, Lily half-expected to see her husband there, tousled and ornery, just as he’d been when they first met on his doorstep.

Rather than a handsome young man, she was greeted by a cantankerous butler. “What do you want?” he hissed. “Madam is not at home.”

Knowing “not at home” did not necessarily mean not in the house, Lily lifted her chin, disregarding the servant’s demeanor. “I’m here to see Lord Thorburn.”

“His lordship is not receiving anyone,” the butler snapped.

The bold frankness of the servant’s statement punched the air from Lily’s lungs. So Ethan was here — the butler freely admitted as much. And neither he nor Mrs. Myles were ‘at home?’ What could that mean, but a romantic assignation?
Oh, Aunt Janine, what have you done to me?
Lily had been sent on a fool’s errand, straight to the door of Ethan’s mistress. Could she truly pry him away and bring him home? Would she want to, if he preferred this other woman to her?

If that’s the case, so be it, she thought. Let me find them in the very worst situation imaginable — let me! Then I shall know for sure what I am up against.

“I am Viscountess Thorburn,” she declared, “and I have come to see my husband.”

The butler’s eyes went wide. “My-my lady,” he stammered, “forgive me, but his lordship has ordered that no one is to be admitted.”

Her nostrils flared. “So he gives orders here, does he?” Her voice brimmed with hauteur. “I’ll see about that.” Gritting her teeth, Lily pushed past the old man with minimal resistance and headed for the stairs. They would be in a bedchamber, doing the good Lord knew what.

The butler hurried to the bottom of the stairs. “My lady, please!” he called in a loud whisper. “I don’t think you should — ”

Lily ignored the man. He could issue no warning more dire than the vivid scenarios her imagination concocted. She knew she might find her husband in the arms of another woman. It would destroy her to know that her husband’s love was not hers, but this had to stop.

Lily stepped down a hallway, opening doors, looking for her husband. Here was a parlor with fanciful mythological scenes painted on the ceiling. And a light, airy library.

This kept woman’s house was as fine an establishment as any in Mayfair. It easily rivaled the homes of any but the greatest lords and ladies. Ethan and Lily’s house on Bird Street was a mean little hovel by comparison. “No wonder he’s desperate for the money,” she lamented. It would take nothing less than a fortune to maintain this luxurious household.

She climbed the stairs again to the third floor. The rustle of her skirts, the slide of her hand along the rail, each tiny sound of her movement seemed over-loud. It was then she discerned the heavy silence pervading the house. No maids whispered gossip as they worked; no ajar windows admitted the noise of the neighborhood. Besides the butler, Lily had met no other living soul. Her brow furrowed in a frown. “Where is everyone?” she muttered into the silence.

On the third floor, Lily tried a few doors again. The first was a guest room, closed; white sheets covered all the furnishings. Across the hall from that room was another closed bedchamber. Farther down the hall, she tried one more.

As she opened it, the air from the chamber rushed out to tease her, to mock her with his scent. The door swung inward to reveal Ethan’s belongings scattered around the room. Lily stepped inside and was enveloped by the lingering spice of his cologne. She ran a hand down the brocade cover of his bed — freshly made, she noted; not all the servants had vanished, after all. With a light touch, she examined his things on the vanity — comb, shaving implements, soap, and his hopeless collection of pomades. Lily lifted one of the tins and cradled it in her hands as though it were a priceless treasure. She bent her head over this tiny piece of Ethan’s existence — this ridiculous tin evidence of the domestic normalcy from which Lily was now excluded.

Reverently returning the tin to its place, she opened the armoire and pulled one of his shirts from a shelf. Though it was freshly laundered, a hint of his smell still clung to the collar. Lily stroked the white broadcloth. Tears choked her as she lifted the shirt to her face and pressed her cheek against it where she had grown to love resting against his chest. “I’ve missed you,” she breathed.

Clutching the shirt to her chest, she wiped her face and calmed herself. Her bottom lip quivered; she bit it to keep herself from crying again.
This isn’t right,
she decided. Ethan, her husband, must not continue to live with another woman. No matter what, Lily had to win him back. It was inconceivable to her that he might actually love this Vanessa woman. What was it Ethan had said to her on their wedding night?
“There’s no other in all the world, through all of time, who shall be my wife.”

Lily Helling, Viscountess Thorburn, was Ethan’s wife. Not Vanessa, or Ghita, or anyone else. No other woman on earth held her position; no other ever would. Just Lily. They would have to reunite eventually — heirs to produce, after all. But, oh, how she longed to bring children into a loving family, instead of this broken shambles.

With a resolute nod, Lily laid Ethan’s shirt at the foot of the bed and went to find her husband. “No matter what, you must remain calm,” she ordered herself. She walked out of the room and down the hall to the last door — the one she was certain had to be Vanessa’s. “No matter what, you can’t fly off the handle. You can talk it out. You can work it out. Be brave, just like Aunt Janine said.”

With her heart pounding and her palms cold with sweat, Lily reached for the bronze knob set in the white door. She turned the knob and pushed, bracing herself to behold a visceral betrayal of her marriage.

She sucked her breath at the scene before her, for which she was utterly unprepared.

Ethan glanced up at the sound of her intake of breath, his face somber and wary. He sat on a chair beside the bed, clutching the hand of its occupant, a slight, old woman.

“Oh!” Lily approached her husband, her gaze riveted on the slip of a figure beside him. The woman’s white hair was pulled back from her face; a neat braid rested on her shoulder. Beneath parchment-thin lids, her eyes darted back and forth, dreaming. Lily sank to her knees beside Ethan. When he did not say anything, she finally looked away from the ailing woman and turned to him.

Her heart lurched at the sight of red-rimmed eyes and several days’ worth of stubble on his jaw. He looked to her with such anguish, she wanted to throw her arms around him and take away his pain.

Still, she proceeded cautiously. “Who is she?”

“This is Vanessa, Lily — Vanessa Myles.”

She glanced back to the bed. Ethan still held Vanessa’s hand, and did not look as though he would relinquish it in the near future. “Yes, but who
is
she?” Lily pressed. “The letters — ”

“Vanessa was a celebrated courtesan in her youth — beautiful, enchanting, received everywhere. King Louis himself pursued her when she spent a year at the French court. She was my grandfather’s mistress,” Ethan concluded, “the love of his life.”

His eyes drifted to the bedside table, where a framed miniature portrait faced the bed. Lily turned it and startled. “You look just like him,” she murmured. But for the longer hair on the man in the portrait, the outmoded style of dress, and a subtle difference around the chin, it could have been Ethan’s framed visage.

“Vanessa’s been unwell for years, Lily.” Ethan’s voice was hollow as he spoke. “An aggressive dementia has taken away her mind, bit by bit.” She pulled the chair from the vanity to sit beside him. She laid her hand on his knee. Ethan exhaled and relaxed a fraction. He turned to her, sorrow etched in every line of his posture. “She always treated me like her own grandson. When Grandfather died, Nessa was the only family left to me, though we share no blood.”

Lily recalled Aunt Janine’s story about Ethan’s troubled childhood, and the grandfather who cared for him when no one else did. And there was a woman, too — this woman — who loved him. Lily felt a sudden wellspring of gratitude for Mrs. Myles. Lily knew what it was to be out of place, alone in the midst of a crowded ballroom. At least she had good friends like the Lockwoods, as well as her own parents, to stand beside her. Who did Ethan have? His grandfather’s mistress.

Before she realized it, she was huddled beside him with a hand at his neck, rubbing her fingers into the taut muscles. Ethan showed no response to her touch, but neither did he reject it. “May I ask you something?” she said, all the while reveling in the feel of him under her hands. “Mrs. Myles’s dementia. Did this cause her to … the letters.”

Vanessa whimpered and Ethan sprang to his feet, ripping himself out of Lily’s grasp. “I’m here, Nessa,” he said. “It’s all right, darling, I’m here.” With the gentlest touch imaginable, he smoothed a wayward strand of hair away from her face, endowing the gesture with such tender devotion, Lily’s heart constricted.

Ethan tugged the bell pull beside the bed, and when a maid answered the summons, he ordered a basin of clean water and some broth. The requested items came, carried by a stout nurse. Ethan led Lily from the room so the nurse could try to get Vanessa to take a little sustenance.

Ethan tucked Lily’s hand into his arm as they descended the stairs. Her husband was restless from inactivity, she could see, but loathe to stray far from Vanessa. “Perhaps we could stroll the halls a bit?” she suggested. “I feel in need of some exercise.”

Together they walked from room to room. They entered the airy library Lily had already discovered and Ethan crossed to the window, his hands clasped behind his back. “I didn’t answer you before, about her dementia and the letters.”

Lily joined him at the window. Side by side they stood, together but not touching, looking down on the quiet street but not seeing it.

“I’ve been Vanessa’s guardian for the last five years,” he said. “When the gravity of her condition evidenced itself, she entrusted her financial affairs to her solicitor, and the running of her household and her own care to me.”

Lily cast a sideways glance at his exquisite, strong profile. His throat moved down and up as he swallowed. “I’ve been the guard at the gate,” he continued, “shielding her from gossip, and those who would take advantage of a helpless old woman. She’s been forgotten, and I’ve allowed that — encouraged it, even. I spoke of her to no one, and after a while, people stopped asking.” He drew a deep breath and caught Lily in a pained expression. “Three years ago, her mind began to slip in earnest. Little by little, day by day, she forgot me. Have you ever been forgotten by someone you’ve known and loved all your life, someone you see almost daily?”

Lily’s face scrunched up as a bolt of sympathy shot through her. She couldn’t imagine such pain. “No,” she whispered, shaking her head.

“After a while, she’d forgotten nearly everyone and everything, except for the early years of her affair with my grandfather, Jophery Helling. She remembered him as he was in his youth, when
he
was Viscount Thorburn. She became trapped in that time.” He shrugged.

“Oh,” Lily said, understanding dawning. “So the letters weren’t written to you, at all, but to your grandfather.”

Ethan nodded. “Just so. And my resemblance to him has been a double-edged sword these past years. On the one hand, she’s trusted me and allowed me to care for her even in her worst states, when she was too confused and frightened to allow anyone else to come close. On the other hand — ” he sighed “ — I think it hastened her forgetting me for myself. She only saw Jophery when she looked at me.”

“I’m so sorry,” Lily whispered. It was a grief she couldn’t quite understand, but grief nonetheless.

“And now the end has come,” Ethan said flatly. “It hurts to watch her go, but I’m relieved her suffering will soon be over. The truth is, I lost Vanessa to her illness years ago. It’s a ghost that’s passing now.”

Lily looked out the window again, down to where the Monthwaite carriage stood at the curb, the driver awaiting her directions. “I’ll leave,” she said. “Now that I know, I beg your forgiveness for intruding. You rightly covet your remaining time with her; I shan’t take any more from you. I’ll … ” She looked up and met his intent gaze. Her mouth went dry and her stomach flipped. “I’ll be waiting at home,” she finished in a harsh whisper.

Ethan’s hands settled on her waist and he drew her close. “Please stay,” he said, resting his forehead against hers. Lily couldn’t stop herself from touching his face, from snaking her hands around his shoulders as he pulled her into an embrace. “Please stay, Lily,” he said again, burying his face against her neck. “I need you.”