me alone. You’ve said quite enough.”
CHAPTER 13
Hastings had feared that Helena’s displeasure would spill over into her meeting with Bea. He needed not have worried. Until they came to stand before the nursery door, she’d been coolly aloof. But once the door opened, she was nothing if not warm and smiling.
Bea, however, was more sensitive than most children to tension—perhaps she sensed that Helena’s friendly cheer was forced, or that her father was completely distraught. She was never fond of meeting strangers, but today she was twice as frozen. Her motion, as she curtsied to Helena, was badly uncoordinated. Hastings, afraid she’d lose her balance, had his hand held out at the ready.
“I am your stepmother.” Helena knelt down on one knee—she had a natural, easy way with children. “May I call you Bea?”
Bea nodded jerkily, as if someone had yanked on a string to move her head.
“I am a publisher of books. Do you like to read?”
Bea nodded again.
“But you don’t like to speak?”
Bea looked down and gripped Hastings’s hand.
“She is shy,” he said.
Shy and afraid, his poor child.
Helena did not acknowledge him. “I am very glad to meet you, Bea. I hope we will become good friends, as we will”—her voice faltered for a moment—“be spending a great deal of time together.”
Had she been unable to speak because the thought of marriage to him was a spike through her lungs? His own lungs burned with a futile misery.
Helena straightened. “I’ve heard it said that children should be seen and not heard. I’ve never believed it myself. It has been lovely to see you, Bea. I hope someday I will hear your voice.”
She smiled again at Bea, but it was a wan smile. It startled Hastings to realize that she was disappointed. Without quite thinking about it, he said, “Remember what Papa told you, poppet? Lady Hastings was badly injured only recently, but she has come all this way to see you. Can you wave at her? Your special wave?”
He realized his mistake as soon as he’d finished speaking. Even normal children often responded unpredictably to sudden demands made upon them. Bea, who was piously devoted to her routine and already nervous at the introduction of a stranger, would be entirely paralyzed by his unexpected request.
And she was. She sucked in her cheeks, pressed her lips together, and stared down at the tips of her small boots. Like a tortoise pulling its head and limbs into its shell when faced with danger and uncertainties, Bea, too, had withdrawn into her shell.
Helena bit the inside of her lips. She would have been fine taking her leave of Bea without any special gesture from the child. She did not need Hastings to apply pressure to the girl—or the scene that was likely to result.
Hastings already looked defeated, as if he were about to tell Bea to pay no mind to what he’d just said and go back to what she was doing. But in the next moment, he took a deep breath and lowered himself so that his eyes were level with his daughter’s.
“I don’t mean to make things difficult for you, poppet, and I apologize if I have. But you see, it is a very special day for Papa to bring Lady Hastings home. And I am so happy and excited.”
That voice of his—he could have requested women to remove their corsets in public and some would have agreed. And his profile, that amazingly perfect profile, reminding her of an old-master painting of an archangel at prayer, wholehearted and…
Humble.
She was not accustomed to seeing him humble. Her mind could not recognize him as the same nasty boy she’d known in her adolescence, and therefore failed to superimpose the boy’s repellent sneers upon his features.
All she could see was the young father of a child who must be handled with delicacy, treating that child with great care and respect.
Bea kept rigidly still, giving no indication she’d heard her father at all. She was not an unlovely child. Her straight, fine hair was an almost icy blond. She had wide, blue eyes, a soft pink mouth, and a rather darling overbite to her teeth. But she lacked entirely the charm and vibrancy that one often encountered in pretty young girls who were much adored by their parents.
“This is Lady Hastings’s first visit to the house, poppet. And Papa is thrilled she is here,” said Hastings quietly.
Helena felt a hard twist of pain in her heart. Had it been only last evening that