Page 68

“It’s a good thing you’re doing, Miss Templeton, teaching those boys how to be kind to animals. I don’t know that they ever would have learned such a thing, if not for you.” Mrs. Norris sighed, shaking her head.
“I’m not so certain. Are you aware, Mrs. Norris, that Lord Hawke has risen before daybreak every morning this week to check on Hecate? He even changed the hay in her pen, and brought her a flannel.”
Mrs. Norris gaped at her over the edge of her teacup. “Did he, now? Well, I’ll be.”
“I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen the evidence myself.” Helena shook her head. Her heart was crumbling in her chest, yet a smile rose to her lips, all the same. Adrian and Hecate were quite a pair. “He, ah…he doesn’t seem to care much for cats.”
“Mayhap not, but he does care for his boys, and make no mistake.” Mrs. Norris set her teacup in its saucer with a click. “He loves them something fierce, for all that it may seem as though he doesn’t.”
“I don’t question Lord Hawke’s devotion to his sons, Mrs. Norris. I confess I did so, at first, but Lord Hawke is…nothing at all like the man I thought he was.” Oh, dear, perhaps that was just a bit too frank. She raised her teacup hastily to her lips to keep any more revealing words from escaping. “Er, where’s Abby this morning?”
“I sent her off to scrub the staircase and polish the banisters. We’re to have the ladies from the Benevolent Society over today to decorate for the Christmas fete, you know, and I don’t want them looking askance at my banisters.”
“No, indeed not. I beg your pardon, Mrs. Norris, for all the extra work the fete has caused you. I was the one who suggested we have it here once we discovered Goodall Abbey had flooded.”
“Nonsense, Miss Templeton. It’s for the Poor Fund, and I don’t mind telling you I quite like that we’re to have it here, despite the fuss. It reminds me of happier times at Hawke’s Run. Lady Hawke did love a party, you know, and she adored Christmas.”
There was a portrait of the late Countess of Hawke in the second-floor portrait gallery. Helena had spent hours gazing at it since she’d come to Hawke’s Run, fascinated by that arresting face, the laughing blue eyes. Lady Sophie had been a beauty, with dark, lustrous hair, and a mouth so like a rosebud one would imagine she only ever uttered the sweetest words, if it hadn’t been for the impudent curve at the corners of her lips. “She looks like the sort of lady who would.”
“I don’t excuse his lordship’s shortcomings, but anyone who’d met Lady Sophie can’t help but understand how sharply he feels her loss. I’ve never seen a man more in love with a woman than Lord Hawke was with Lady Sophie.”
Helena hesitated, but it wasn’t often she had a chance to speak to Mrs. Norris privately, and she wasn’t going to get an opening better than this one. She waited for the kettle to boil, then prepared a tea tray and joined the housekeeper at the table. “What was Lady Hawke like, Mrs. Norris?”
“Oh, she was the prettiest little thing you ever saw, Miss Templeton. She had a sharp tongue about her, though, for all that you wouldn’t guess it to look at her, with those big blue eyesof hers. The boys look rather like her, you know. Well, except for their green eyes. Those are pure Lord Hawke, those eyes.”
Helena smiled. “Yes, I noticed that about him right away.”
Mrs. Norris stirred her tea, but she seemed miles away. “Lord Hawke has always tried to do right by his boys,” she said at last. “He didn’t leave Hawke’s Run for an entire year after Lady Hawke passed, but perhaps he should have done.”
“What do you mean?”
“It was dreadfully difficult for him to be here once Lady Hawke was gone, with the boys asking for her every day. By the time his year of mourning was over, he was desperate to get away.” Mrs. Norris turned her teacup in the saucer. “It started with a business trip to London, but then…ah, well, grief is a strange thing. I think he wanted to lose himself, and sure enough, he found a way to do it. He’s been trying to find his way back ever since, but he hasn’t been able to quite see his way clear.”
“I—I see.” God in heaven, how dreadfully unfair to Adrian she’d been! She hadn’t thought it her place to pry into his personal life, but she should have done, because all these months she’d assumed he was another selfish aristocrat, when really, he was just a man with a broken heart. “Thank you for telling me this, Mrs. Norris.”
“I expect you’ve a right to know, being the boys’ governess. There’s plenty as haven’t a kind word to say about Lord Hawke, claiming he’s a rake, and such. His lordship hasn’t confided in me, mind you, but he never ran off to London to become a rake. He went to escape Hawke’s Run.”
“But not the boys, surely? I can’t imagine he wished to escape them.”
“No.” Mrs. Norris took a thoughtful sip of her tea as she considered the question. “It’s not the boys he’s running from, Miss Templeton, it’s the memories of what Hawke’s Run oncewas to him. The worst of it is, he can’t escape them that way, any more than anyone else can. Anyone who’s ever suffered a loss knows that, but Lord Hawke, well…he’s struggled to accept what is.”
Helena stared down at her hands. Mrs. Norris was right, of course. She’d spent many months raging at her mother for abandoning their family, and many more mourning her father’s heartbreaking decline and death. Even now, more than a year later, her fingers had gone tight around the handle of her teacup just thinking about it.
“I don’t deny his lordship can be a bit trying at times, but don’t you get discouraged, Miss Templeton.” Mrs. Norris patted her hand. “You’ve done those boys a world of good at a time when they desperately needed a friend, and that’s something, it is. It matters.”
Now was the moment to tell Mrs. Norris the truth, to confess that she’d soon have to leave Hawke’s Run and return to Herefordshire, but Helena’s throat was too tight to speak.
“And now we’re to have a Christmas party! I don’t say it’ll be like old times again—one can’t go back to the past, Miss Templeton, nor should one wish to—but Lord Hawke’s been different since he came home, a bit more like himself. I have hopes he may be able to see his way forward, at last. I’m rather glad Goodall Abbey flooded, if you want the truth.”
Goodall Abbey. Helena bit her lip. Did she dare ask? “Lord Hawke seems to be well-acquainted with Lady Goodall and…and Lady Anne.” She stumbled a little over the name, and her cheeks flooded with heat. “I gather they’ve known each other for some time?”
“Oh, yes. Lady Anne has spent a good deal of time at Goodall Abbey over the years. She and Lord Hawke grew up together, and they’ve always been fond of each other. Lady Goodall and Lord Hawke’s mother were great friends, you know. It was theirdearest wish that Lady Anne and Lord Hawke would marry one day, but fate has her way in the end, doesn’t she?”
“Yes, I suppose she does.” But then perhaps fate wasn’t quite finished with Adrian and Lady Anne? Perhaps she’d been biding her time, waiting for her moment. There must be a reason why it all fit together so neatly now, mustn’t there?
Like a puzzle finally coming together, all its pieces in the proper place.
“Well, I’d best go and find out what Abby’s getting up to, and tell her I’ve got some of the village girls coming today to help her clean. That’ll cheer her up.” Mrs. Norris chuckled as she got to her feet. “That girl’s never happier than when she has someone to order about.”