AN: Thank you SO MUCH to all of my reviewers! I was worried that people had given up on me. You are all wonderful. You're better than wonderful. You're fantabulous. You're scrumdiddlyumptious. Enjoy the new chapter, my loves!
HELENA
Lena had always looked forward to the Season when she was younger. Especially two years ago, the year she had made her come out. She'd been eighteen, dazzled by the decadence of night life in the beau monde. Her mother had spent frightening amounts of money on her, and paraded her about in demure white dresses accented with delicate, silky French lace.
It had been a wonderful year, filled with giggling and flirting and making friends, and dancing with young, handsome bachelors.
One young, handsome bachelor in particular.
Lena smiled wanly at the memory of dark, seductive Jacob, keeping her head turned towards the window of the carriage to avoid any pestering questions from her brother, who was all too eager to ask after her well-being at any random moment.
That disaster was in the past. Jacob was surely married by now, or shot dead in a duel, and good riddance, too. Lena didn't want him anymore. She knew exactly who she wanted.
He just wouldn't have her.
She watched as lampposts slid by the carriage window, and followed strangers with her eyes. There were so many of them, of all age and size and color. Did they ever wake up screaming in the middle of the night, hallucinating about strange men in their bedrooms?
The carriage rocked to a gentle halt, and the door opened to reveal the bright façade of the Covent Garden Royal Opera House. Her father stepped out, and then handed her mother down onto the sidewalk. Gregoire followed, and offered his hand to Lena. She straightened as she stepped down from the carriage, glancing around her with an arrogant little smile on her face.
"Ah, so la masque begins," Gregoire noted as he saw her expression. Lena gave him a quick wink, and he laughed.
They followed their parents up the stairs towards the opera house, and Lena allowed herself a quick glance up and down the street. People were everywhere, unloading from their carriages, walking along the sidewalks, lingering at the street corners.
Out of the corner of her eye, quick movement caught her attention. She turned her head just slightly and glanced towards the movement. She saw a shadow in the crowd, the silhouette of a tall man with broad shoulders, moving away from her. She whipped her head around to follow him, but he was gone. Disappeared. A ghost.
A figment of her imagination.
But she would know that silhouette anywhere.
"Mon dieu," she whispered, letting out a shaky breath.
"Ça va?" Came Gregoire's quiet voice. You okay?
"I'm fine," Lena replied instantly, drawing herself up to her full height and plastering an elegant smile on her face. "Just get me to the box. I need to sit down."
Of course, it would not be that easy. Two steps inside the front door, a voice rang out ahead of them.
"Greg! I say, Gregoire!" A young man, perhaps in his mid-twenties, appeared in front of them, and shook hands with Gregoire as if they were lifelong friends. He was handsome, Lena gave him that much. His dark brown hair was longer than was fashionable, and tied back at his neck with a blue ribbon. Gregoire grinned.
"Hello, Monty," he said in a warm, low voice. "Good to see you again. May I introduce my sister, Helena?"
Lena offered her hand, and the young man instantly bowed low over it, placing a kiss on her gloved fingers.
"The Earl of Montford, at your service, mademoiselle," he said, in a completely different voice than the one with which he had greeted Greg. This voice was lower, softer, and almost too seductive for propriety. Then he glanced up, and his laughing brown eyes met hers, and Lena couldn't help herself. She smiled.
"A pleasure to meet you, my lord," she said with a nod. If he was surprised by her perfectly cultured accent, he did not show it. Most French nobility took great care to keep their accented English as a point of pride, but the Dubois children were direct descendents of the Duke of Adinborough through their mother. And they did not let anyone forget it.
"Excuse us, Monty," Greg said with a charming smile. "I must get my sister to safety before more of my friends make an appearance."
Monty threw back his head and laughed, drawing several pairs of eyes towards them.
"Alas, I cannot make excuses for them. Nor shall I try. It was lovely meeting you, my lady." Lena smiled and nodded her farewell to the earl, and allowed Greg to escort her through the reception hall and up the grand staircase. Eyes followed them everywhere, the golden Dubois children. They had inherited their mother's fair hair, though Lena's was more of a pale brown. Really, the only thing that kept her hair from being downright drab was the white-gold highlights she had inherited from her mother.
Greg, on the other hand, was quite the angel. He had their father's elegant, masculine face, and their mother's blonde hair, which had lightened to pale gold thanks to the bright Italian sun.
"I wonder, how many hearts have you and I broken during our time in London?" Greg mused, leading her through the velvet-draped hallways to Aunt Samantha's box.
"I doubt you could count that high," Lena replied, flashing a cheeky grin up at her brother. "But I have broken none."
"You lie, dear sister. You lie," Greg murmured, ushering her into the box.
"Helena! Gregoire! Oh, it is so wonderful to see you!" Their Aunt Samantha, the Duchess of Bromleigh, came forward, positively dripping with diamonds and swathed in shimmering crimson silk. She pulled Lena into a quick hug, placing delicate kisses on her cheeks. She let Gregoire kiss her hand, and then she turned and pulled Lena to her seat. "I was sure that your mother would cry off coming to the Opera on your first night home. I'm so glad you decided to come!"
Lena grinned. She couldn't help herself. Aunt Samantha had always been the most gregarious of the Adinborough sisters. She was afraid of nothing, and she always dressed in the very height of fashion, to the point of being almost risqué.
But there was something in her smile, something brittle, that made Lena's hair stand on end. Something unpleasant was about to happen.
"Benjamin, say hello to your niece and nephew," Aunt Samantha commanded of Lena's uncle, who was in deep conversation with another man near the back of the box. Lena turned to greet her uncle, and stopped short when she saw who he was with. Every muscle in her body tensed, and her heart leapt into her throat.
She managed a nod to her uncle, who kissed her hand affectionately.
"Ah, Helena, wonderful to see you, my dear," Benjamin, the Duke of Bromleigh, said with a smile. Lena did not respond; her eyes were locked on the stranger.
"Uncle Ben," she said quietly. Instantly, he picked up on the strain in her voice, and his eyes flickered to the man he was standing with. Benjamin had the grace to blush.
"Stanford, I believe you have already met my niece." He kept his voice neutral, completely void of inflection.
Jacob, Viscount Stanford, nodded, and when Lena did not offer him her hand, he simply bowed. A lock of curly black hair fell across his forehead, and he reached up and thoughtlessly flicked it out of his eyes. She watched him make that gesture, so habitual, the same way he always had, and she noted to herself, with some triumph, that it no longer made her heart flutter in her chest.
"I have had the honor, your grace," Jacob said, keeping his piercing blue gaze trained directly on her. He leaned closer to her. "You look lovely, Lena," he said in a quiet voice.
Lena blinked, and raised both of her arrogant little eyebrows at him.
"I'm terribly sorry, but I cannot seem to recall your name," Lena admitted with a small smile, and a perfect tilt of her head. Jacob's lips thinned, and he nodded, acknowledging the hit.
Lena turned her back to him and moved to her seat. It had taken everything she had just to restrain herself from grabbing Jacob by his perfectly tied cravat and shaking him violently, demanding to know why he had abandoned her. Her hands were trembling as she sat down next to her brother.
Greg put his hand on hers. "Je suis tres desolee, Lena. Je ne savais pas."
I'm so sorry, Lena. I didn't know.
"It's alright. I'm fine."
But that was a lie. She wasn't fine. She really wasn't. She kept her eyes trained on the stage as the curtains were drawn and the lights fell, and anyone who was watching her would simply assume that she was completely enraptured with the Opera. But that wasn't true.
She was saying a prayer to God that she would wake up and this would all be one big, terrible nightmare. This was worse even than her night terrors. She was praying that she would wake up and find herself in her own bed, back in France, and he would be there, teasing her with a sprig of lavender and a brush of his hand on hers.
She wanted nothing more than to hear his voice again.
But Jacob was sitting behind her, and it was his voice she heard.
"May I escort you to get some refreshments, my lady?" he asked. Lena blinked, glanced around to find people moving about in their seats, getting up to have a stroll and mingle during the intermission. Then she looked up at him. He was holding his hand out to her, in plain view of every single human being in the entire theatre. If she snubbed him now, everyone would know there was still bad blood between them.
"I'm afraid my sister has already promised to accompany me for a stroll, Stanford," Greg said from beside them. Jacob glanced over at Greg, and for a moment, Lena thought the two of them might fall upon each other in blind, animal rage. The hatred that sparked between them was tangible, a solid physical presence.
"Greg," Lena said quietly, drawing their attention back to her. "It's alright." If I can handle a strange man in my bedchamber, I can handle this bastard.
She lifted her hand and placed it in Jacob's, and with a practiced gesture, Jacob effortlessly pulled her to his side and escorted her out of the box.
He kept a slow pace, nodding and smiling to passersby, and they walked in silence for several minutes.
"Well, Helena," he said in his characteristic wry, quiet voice.
"You will address me properly, my lord," Lena replied in an icy voice. "I must commend you on such expert manipulation. If I did not dislike you so much, I would have been impressed."
Jacob chuckled. "I see you have not warmed to me in my absence."
Lena clenched her fist tightly around her reticule, so tightly that she could feel the stitches straining in her glove. It took every ounce of willpower in her tiny frame to keep her voice under control, to keep herself from flying at him and ripping out that perfectly curled hair of his and strangling him with his cravat. She turned to face him, and when she spoke, her voice was calm, and soft, and terrifying.
"I will never warm to the man who abandoned me at the altar."