The Secret Wallflower Society - Jillian Eaton Page 0,6
Helena pursed her lips. “Or was it from Lord Barto? I’ve forgotten. Not that it matters, as I would never take either of their suits seriously.” Holding the turban in place, she performed a quick spin. “What do you think of it?”
Calliope studied the large cluster of peacock feathers sprouting from the top, then the enormous star-shaped jewel stitched to the center. “It’s very…memorable,” she decided.
Grinning, Helena sat down and helped herself to a ginger biscuit from the platter of sweets Emmie had brought in along with the tea. “I thought so too. Pity I cannot wear it out of the house.”
Calliope sipped her tea. “Why not?”
“Well I wouldn’t want to encourage their affections, now would I?”
“You did accept the gift,” Calliope pointed out. “Isn’t that encouragement in and of itself?”
“Absolutely not,” Helena scoffed. “It would have been rude not to accept it.” Her eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “Perhaps I should give it to you. Maybe if Lord Barto – I’m almost certain it was him – sees you wearing it he will be overcome with emotion and ask you for your hand then and there. Problem solved. What do you think?”
Calliope eyed the hat. “I think any man who wants his future wife to wear a scarlet turban with teal feathers really isn’t my sort.”
“You’re probably right. I’ll give it to my sister,” Helena decided. “Her two little girls will love to use it for dress up. They’re twins, you know. Three years old. Absolutely adorable. And do you know the cutest part about them?”
“They look alike?” Calliope ventured.
“I can fill them up with sugar and send them home when they begin to bounce off my silk damask walls.”
The corners of Calliope’s mouth twitched. “You sound like a very good aunt.”
“The absolute best, or so those little miscreants tell me. Now.” Discarding her half eaten biscuit and wiping the crumbs from her hands with a napkin, Helena straightened in her chair and adopted a businesslike air. “Let’s discuss the matter of your inheritance. You simply cannot allow Beatrice to receive a penny of it. After all those awful things she’s done to you, I’ll see to it that house is burned to the ground before she gets her greedy little paws on it.”
“That’s a bit extreme,” Calliope said cautiously.
Helena shrugged. “I’m an extreme sort of person.”
Yes, she was.
There was still the occasional rumor that swirled concerning the suspicious death of Helena’s husband. Not that any conjecture could be believed, of course. The Earl of Cambridge had been in poor health long before he married Helena, and four times her age besides.
It was a match wholly contrived by her parents. Helena had been against it from the start, but she’d had little to say in the matter. Especially when it was made clear that if she did not accept Cambridge’s offer her sister Dahlia would be forced to stand in her place. So she’d married the earl, and was a bride for less than twelve hours before she became a widow.
‘The fat old bastard climbed on top of me like a rutting boar, grunted, clutched his chest, and fell to the floor dead as a doornail,’ Helena had told Calliope flatly, her jade green eyes flashing with disgust.
It would have been wonderful news, if not for the fact that Cambridge hadn’t yet changed his will and Helena was left with nothing, not even the clothes on her back. Everything went to the earl’s son, a mysterious figure traveling abroad whom had directed, via letter, that his dead father’s wife was to vacate the family property at once.
It was during that brief period of homelessness that Helena and Calliope first met. Their paths crossed quite by happenstance at a local tea shop. There’d been only one table left, and they’d both gone to sit down at the exact same time. After an awkward exchange they decided to share the table, and although it was clear from the first that the two women couldn’t have been more different, they quickly discovered they did have one thing in common: a desperate yearning for a real family.
Helena’s mother and father may have been alive, but after what they’d done they were as dead to her as Calliope’s parents were. She still had her sister, Dahlia, but one of her conditions before she agreed to marry the earl was that Dahlia be sent away to boarding school. Which meant she was completely on her own and in even more dire straits than Calliope, as she hadn’t