“My schedule has gone to the devil with this illness.” Ash coughed again, but it didn’t hurt as much this time. “Pardon my language.”
“Well, the devil can enjoy it.” Helena busied herself at the table, and Ash heard another clink of glass and trickling liquid.
“There is nothing wrong with a timetable,” he argued. “I prefer it to chaos.”
Helena brought the refilled glass to the bed. “A little chaos now and then is not a bad thing. I admit I have a timetable as well, my dear Ash. During the Season, I must remember what invitations I have accepted and to what place I am going and when. But constant rigidness is not good for you. You’d never have taken sick if you were less unbending.”
Ash listened to the last in incredulity. “I am in this bed because I did not adhere to my schedule. I let my aunt talk me into hosting a ball, at which I grew frustrated and tramped about the garden in the freezing cold. This weakened my constitution so that when I went about without my coat the next day, I had no defenses. I’d have noticed it was cold in the garden and gone back inside if you hadn’t followed me …”
He trailed off. He knew good and well he’d not noticed the icy air because he’d taken Helena into his arms and kissed her.
Helena flushed. “I worried about you wandering in the dark …”
She too trailed off, her cheeks pretty with her rosy blush. Ash found himself reaching to stroke one.
Helena jumped. She mistook the reason he’d lifted his hand and pushed the glass into it. “This will ease your stuffed nose.”
She turned quickly away, agitation in every line.
Should Ash speak of the kiss? Or continue to pretend it hadn’t happened? That he hadn’t realized what a beautiful woman she was?
Helena, at the table, moved glasses and bottles purposefully, her movements graceful. The tapes on her cap caught in her golden curls.
Ash closed his eyes and sipped the next concoction. This one was not as sweet, but pleasantly mellow. Again, it soothed his throat, and its aroma drifted into his nose, clearing it a bit.
“What is in this?” he asked.
“Nothing exotic. Drink it all.”
Ash complied. He swallowed the final drops and thumped the glass to the bedside table. “I am not cured yet.”
Helena gave him an exasperated look over her shoulder. “Of course not, silly. You must take all my doses over the course of several days. Then you’ll be fine.”
She returned to the bed, more composed after this exchange, and set a plate of grapes next to the empty glass. “These will fill your stomach and lighten the humors.”
Ash ate a few grapes after she turned away, depositing the seeds on a clean dish she’d left for the purpose.
“I’ll not marry any of those ladies, Helena,” he said quietly. His voice sounded almost normal, without the scratch of the last two days.
Helena continued to fuss about the table. “We’ll talk of that when you’re well.”
“It is unfair to the young ladies. From the looks I caught, everyone at that ball believed I’d hosted it to search for my next duchess.”
Helena faced him, resting her hands on the table behind her. “Because everyone knows you need a wife. Including your children, which was why they went to such lengths to compose that letter to you.”
“Lewis’s doing.” Ash couldn’t help a surge of pride. “He is growing up faster than I realize.”
“That is why this time with them is so precious. Lewis will go to school soon, and find his own friends, his own interests. Gracious, my husband barely knew his father and mother, only seeing them from afar until he was quite grown up.”
Helena rarely spoke of her husband, a good-for-nothing fop. If Courtland hadn’t managed to break his neck, he’d have broken her heart with mistresses, gambling debts, and duels.
“He was never good enough for you,” Ash heard himself say.
She stilled. “Pardon?”
“I know I should not speak ill of the dead, but your husband was not a good match for you. You need someone who will listen when you rattle on, who will match you in wits and sense.” And passion, he added silently. He’d sensed much of it in her when he’d kissed her.
Helena moved her gaze to the window, sunlight catching in her dark eyes. “Many felt he was the perfect match for my wit—as in, between the two of us, we had little.”
Ash grew indignant. “They were wrong. You can certainly talk, but you aren’t a featherhead. You have much good sense, which you disguise by hedging around it. You hide your intelligence, though I cannot fathom why.”
“No one wants a clever lady,” Helena said. “Quite irritating, is a woman who claims to be intelligent.”
“Well, it does not irritate me.”
The smile she gave him lit fires in his heart. “How kind of you. But I’ve always said you were kind.”
Kind? The formidable Duke of Ashford, who demanded perfection of the entire world, was kind?
He wasn’t. He knew full well that Merrivale had suggested Ash retreat to Somerset because he was making everyone in the ministry spare with his meticulousness. His expectations were high, his disapproval swift.
“Very good of you to say so,” Ash said stiffly.
“You do not believe me, I see, but it is true. You adore your children and take every sort of care for them. Your servants are well treated and paid a good wage. You indulge your friend, Mr. Lovell, though he is as unlike you as another gentleman can be. And you’ve allowed me to come and nurse you without bodily showing me the door.”
“I couldn’t at the moment if I wanted to.” Ash cleared his throat. “I’m pathetically weak.”
“Indeed, no. Laid up, yes, but weak, never. You are the strongest man I know.”
They shared another look, Helena’s deep brown eyes lightened with flecks of gold. If Ash had been well, he’d have already pulled
