Hopefully for the last time.
Lady Crewe
P.S. Artemis remains your horse, even if she’s been eating her head off in my stables for the last six months. I begin to think you sent her to me as an economy measure. The arrangements for breeding her are none of my concern.
***
London, 1st December 1820
West, old chum!
Congratulate the happiest man in England. Nay, the world. My glorious Caro has agreed to become my wife, and I’m ten miles high in the sky as a result.
Can you tear yourself away from the bears and the balalaikas and the Cossacks long enough to come home and stand up with me? Our plan is to have a quiet wedding at Woodley Park on Valentine’s Day. Forgive the sentimental choice of date, but I’ve become disgustingly sap-headed since my beloved consented to marry me. Then a short honeymoon before Caro and I leave with the Horticultural Society’s expedition to China.
The dates are fairly set in stone, so I’ll understand if noblesse obliges you to stay shivering in the snow and ice, running the Tsar’s errands.
But given you’ve been my best friend since I could walk, I’ll be dashed sorry if you can’t make it to Leicestershire to raise a glass in my honor and make an embarrassing speech at the wedding breakfast.
Anyway, let me know when you can. There’s nobody I’d rather have at my side when I pledge my life to the woman I love.
Yours, etc.
Stone
The Wooing
Chapter One
Woodley Park, Leicestershire, February 1821
Helena strolled out of her childhood home into a perfect winter morning. The air was cold enough to make her lungs ache, but the sky was pure blue and the light so clear that everything looked new minted. She stopped in the empty stable yard and sucked in a deep breath. The worries and stresses of city life drained away.
She was a countrywoman at heart. Always had been.
Instead of living in London most of the year, she should spend more time on her estate, Cranham. Especially with Caro and Silas traveling, and Fenella planning her wedding to Anthony Townsend.
How she’d miss having her friends close by. She didn’t exaggerate when she credited the other members of the dashingly named Dashing Widows with saving her life in those dark days after Crewe’s death in a hunting accident. Not that she’d missed the philandering bastard, but nine turbulent years as his wife had left her bitter and withdrawn. Caro and Fen had reminded her she was more than just a foolish girl who had wed a rake and lived to regret it.
Now Caro and Fenella looked forward to their own happiness, which was wonderful. Except…
Except Helena felt left behind, still mired in the past. Sighing, she tapped her crop against her thigh. Enough self-pity. She’d had a bellyful of that, married to Crewe. With her friends embarking on new lives, she needed a fresh purpose, something to carry her through the inevitable loneliness.
And she had plenty to be grateful for. She was her own woman with resources to take any path she chose.
Luckily by the time her father drew up the wedding settlements, he didn’t trust the man his daughter had chosen. The late Lord Stone had made provision for Helena to have exclusive use of a substantial portion of her dowry. Within the first few years of marriage, Crewe had gone through his own fortune, as well as every penny he’d gained in wedding her. Without her father’s foresight, she’d have been destitute. Then last year, an inheritance from a bluestocking aunt had turned her from comfortable to wealthy.
There was time enough to decide which worlds to conquer. Today she had a lovely morning, a fine horse waiting, and familiar haunts to revisit.
With a light step, she headed for the stables. “Good morning, Becket,” she said as the head groom appeared, pushing a laden wheelbarrow.
“Miss Helena,” he said, forgetting that she was no longer the family’s coddled daughter, but the much grander Countess of Crewe. If only she could forget, too. “We’ve missed you about the old place.”
His lined face creased in a greeting that reminded Helena how happy she’d been growing up at Woodley Park. The estate had been Eden until the arrival of a snake, in the form of Gerald Wade, Lord Crewe.
Becket had put her on her first pony before she could walk. He must be over eighty, but Silas couldn’t convince him to accept a comfortable retirement. Becket vowed that while the Nash horses needed care, he’d be on duty.
“Did Artemis settle overnight?”