several Eton and Harrow matches with him, but she had no recollection of ever meeting this Millie. “I’m sorry. I must have forgotten. I imagine we have not seen much of each other since?”
Millie looked aghast. Helena felt her heart sink—she wasn’t sure she wanted to hear what Millie might say. Millie, it seemed, shared her reluctance. She looked at Fitz, who looked thunderstruck, before turning her gaze back to Helena.
“We have seen a great deal of each other since, Helena. I am your sister-in-law.”
Helena gripped the sheets. But this was preposterous. “You are married, Fitz? When did you marry?”
“Eight years ago.” Fitz’s words were almost ghostly in their feebleness.
“Eight years ago? What year is it now?”
“Eighteen ninety-six,” said Millie.
Eighteen ninety-six? No wonder Fitz looked like a man well into his twenties—he was a man well into his twenties. And Helena, born on the same day as he, a woman well into her twenties.
She shook her head, trying to settle her careening, incoherent thoughts. But the movement instead caused a sharp thrust of nausea. She gritted her teeth and turned to Venetia. “Is the gentleman next to you your husband?”
“Yes,” said Venetia quietly.
“And have you also been married a long time?”
“No, we married only this Season.”
An uneasy silence descended. Helena’s agitation began to scale dizzying new heights as, one by one, her siblings and their spouses looked toward David, who appeared, if possible, even more stunned than they were.
“What about David?” Fitz sounded as if he were pleading. “Surely you remember him—you’ve known him half your life.”
She stared at this David, a tall man with elegant bone structure: etched cheekbones, a sharp jawline, and a nose that would have been almost too perfectly straight if it hadn’t been broken a time or two—a face she would not mind looking at had she encountered it at a gathering. But she didn’t want him here, a stranger granted intimacy, a man who expected her to know him.
“And how are we related, sir?”
Her stomach churned as she braced herself for the answer.
He glanced toward Fitz. An unspoken message passed between them. He looked back at Helena, inhaled deeply, and spoke with the sort of care one might use to inform a child that her puppy was no more. “The world knows me as your husband.”
Precisely the answer she was hoping not to hear. Her stomach churned even more violently. She clamped down on her lower lip, willing her body to settle down and leave her alone. But the nausea only surged.
She yanked aside her bedcover. “Gentlemen, please clear the room. I’m going to be quite sick.”
With her sister and sister-in-law supporting her, and the nurse trailing behind, Helena made it to the water closet barely in time.
“Sorry,” she mumbled, when she’d finished ejecting the contents of her stomach. She hadn’t felt so physically miserable since the bout of scarlet fever she’d suffered when she was nine. And she hadn’t felt so emotionally miserable since—
She didn’t know what to compare her experience to. It had been terrible losing her parents, but at least she had been able to share her grief with her siblings. But this…this waking up to find that half of her life had been wiped from her mind and that she was now saddled with a husband she could not remember meeting, let alone choosing—she felt utterly rudderless.
“My poor darling,” said Millie as she placed the cover on the blue-enameled commode and pulled the cord to flush.
Venetia was already escorting Helena to the washstand. “Miss Redmayne had said that you might experience nausea and vomiting when you awakened—those are common enough symptoms for people who’ve suffered a con-cussion.”
“Miss Redmayne is our physician,” added Millie helpfully. “She is on her way as we speak.”
A woman physician? Helena certainly approved, but she’d had no idea that there were now enough women physicians for the Fitzhugh ladies to have one.
A mirror hung above the washstand. She recoiled at her appearance: Half of her face was bruised, the discoloration almost greenish in color. Still she couldn’t help staring: She didn’t in the very least feel like a child, but how strange—and thrilling, in a way—to suddenly see her own grown-up face.
She covered her mouth. In a gap between the bandaging, she could clearly see her scalp. “What happened to my hair?”
“Miss Redmayne had to shave it in order to stitch the wound on your head,” answered Millie.
“All of it?” Her question was a whimper. Fate seemed needlessly cruel.
“Your hair will grow back.” Venetia’s eyes reddened.