Marrying Winterborne (The Ravenels #2) - Lisa Kleypas Page 0,54

the cold and damp. Edmund had gone into a rapid decline despite the doctor’s efforts to heal him. As the earl sank into a half-delirium, Helen had taken turns with Quincy, his trusted valet, to sit at his bedside. They had administered tonic and sage tea to soothe his sore throat, and applied poultices to his chest.

“The doctor will return soon,” Helen had murmured to her father, gently wiping traces of saliva from his chin after he’d suffered a coughing fit. “He was called away to see a patient in the village, but he said it wouldn’t take long.”

Opening his rheumy eyes, the earl had said in a dry, scoured voice, “I want one of my children . . . with me . . . at the end. Not you.”

Thinking that he hadn’t recognized her, she had replied gently, “It’s Helen, Papa. I’m your daughter.”

“You’re not mine . . . never were. Your mother . . . took a lover . . .” The exertion of talking had provoked more coughing. When the throat spasms had calmed, he had rested silently with his eyes closed, refusing to look at her.

“There’s no truth to it,” Quincy had told Helen later. “The poor master is raving mad from fever. And your mother, God bless her, was admired by so many men that it poisoned his lordship with jealousy. You’re every spit a Ravenel, my lady. Never doubt it.”

Helen had pretended to believe Quincy. But she had known that the earl had told her the truth. It explained why she had neither the temperament nor the looks of the Ravenels. No wonder her parents had despised her—she was a child born of sin.

During the earl’s last lucid moments, Helen had brought the twins to his bedside to say good-bye. Although she had sent for Theo, he hadn’t been able to arrive from London in time. After their father had fallen insensate, Helen hadn’t been able to find it in her heart to make the twins attend his deathwatch.

“Do we have to stay?” Cassandra had whispered, swabbing her red eyes with a handkerchief as she sat with Pandora on a little bench by the window. They had no affectionate memories of him to share, no advice or stories they could reminisce over. All they could do was sit silently and listen to his faint rattling breaths, and wait miserably for him to pass.

“He wouldn’t want us here anyway,” Pandora had said in a monotone. “He’s never cared beans for either of us.”

Taking pity on her young sisters, Helen had gone to embrace and kiss them both. “I’ll stay with him,” she had promised. “Go say a prayer for him, and find something quiet to do.”

They had left gratefully. Cassandra had paused at the threshold to steal one last glance at her father, while Pandora had walked out in a brisk stride without looking back.

Going to the bedside, Helen had looked down at the earl, a tall, lean man who appeared shrunken in the vast bed. His complexion was gray-tinged and waxen, his swollen neck obscuring the shape of his jaw. All his great will had burned down to the frailest flicker of life. Helen had reflected that the earl seemed to have faded slowly in the two years after Jane had died. Perhaps he had been grieving for her. Theirs had been a complex relationship, two people who had been bound by disappointments and resentments the way others were bound by love.

Helen had dared to take the earl’s lax hand, a collection of veins and bones contained in a loose envelope of skin. “I’m sorry Theo isn’t here,” she had said humbly. “I know I’m not the one wanted with you at the end. I’m sorry for that, too. But I can’t let you face this alone.”

As she had finished, Quincy had entered the room, his deep-set black eyes gleaming with tears that slipped down to his white-whiskered jowls. Without a word, he had gone to occupy the bench at the window, determined to wait with her.

For an hour, they had watched over the earl as each strained breath grew softer than the last. Until finally Edmund, Lord Trenear, had passed away in the company of a servant and a daughter who possessed not a drop of his blood.

After the earl’s passing, Helen had never dared to talk to Theo about her parentage. She felt certain that he must have known. It was why he had never wanted to bring her out in society,