"I think you have very little choice," Elizabeth said very gently. "You will need a place where you can come to terms with what is happening to you, and Hetherington is a very private place. You need not worry that you will be taking me away from the social whirl. London life is something I can take or leave with equal cheerfulness. I shall be happy to take John back to the country."

"I cannot impose upon you after the shabby way I have treated you," Helen said.

"Nonsense!" Elizabeth said briskly. "Now that I understand your behavior, I can quite easily forget it. I shall ask your mama if you may accompany me to the country for a visit. Will you tell her the truth before we leave, Helen? She will have to know soon, you know."

"I know." Helen's hand was over her mouth. "Oh, but I cannot. I cannot say it to her. I have imagined myself doing so many times in the last few months when I am in her presence. And I know I just cannot do it."

"Then you must write to her as soon as we reach Hetherington," Elizabeth said, "and then the worst will be over. You will be able to relax. It is important, you know, that you be as tranquil as possible during the next few months, and that you rest and eat well. Your child is in no way to blame for anything that has happened. He must be given a good start in life."

"Why are you willing to do this for me?" Helen asked. "I have done nothing to deserve your concern. Indeed, I would have thought you must dislike me intensely."

Elizabeth smiled. "I have recently become a mother myself," she said. "Perhaps it is just that my maternal instincts are working to excess at the present. Will you tell William too, Helen? He has a right to know."

"No!" Helen said sharply. "I do not wish him to know. He will be forever pestering me if he finds out the truth. He would not have cared that much"-she snapped her fingers in the air-"if I had been a mere tenant's daughter or a servant. For all I know, the country may be littered with his illegitimate offspring."

"I think you do him some injustice," Elizabeth said gently. "But, I know. Sometimes we are inclined to think far worse of those we love most than we are of anyone else. We expect perfection in our loved ones, I suppose."

Helen looked up. "He said that just now," she said.

"You do love him, do you not?"

"Yes."

"I shall leave you now," Elizabeth continued. "Will you be all right? Do try to rest. Tomorrow if all is well we shall set out for the country and there you will be able to relax and prepare for the future. You will be safe with me, Helen. I shall look after you."

"Only promise me one thing," Helen said as Elizabeth rose to leave. "Promise me that you will say nothing to him."

"Of course I will not," Elizabeth assured her. "That information must come from you when you are ready. But remember, Helen, that he should know. Your child is his too. Good night."

"Good night," Helen said. "Thank you, your ladyship."

" 'Elizabeth,' " that lady said, smiling warmly at the girl as she left the room.


***

"If you and John are going to Hetherington tomorrow, then of course I must come too," Robert Denning was saying an hour later when he and Elizabeth were in their room together.

"No," she said. "I think it is important that I be alone with her for a while. She is very frightened and very bewildered, Robert. I think your presence would merely distress her more."

He caught her arm and pulled her against him. "We have not been apart since last year," he said. "I am afraid to be without you again, Elizabeth."

She put her arms up around his neck. "You are being absurd," she said. "Do you imagine that if we part again, someone or something will keep us apart as they did seven years ago? It will not happen again, darling, you know that. I hate the thought of being away from you too. I am not even sure I shall be able to sleep without your shoulder to lay my head on. But that poor girl is in dreadful trouble, Robert. I cannot leave her to face it alone. You should have seen the look of utter desperation in her eyes just before she told me."

"Can it really be true?" he asked, frowning down into her upturned face. "It just does not seem like William at all. To tell you the truth, I thought he had never had anything to do with women. I am sure he had not when I knew him in London."

"I really do not know the full story," she said, "but I do know that those two love each other. And they are worlds apart, Robert. Sometimes one feels so helpless."

He hugged her to him and laid his cheek against hers. "It seems I have no choice but to let you go," he said. "But not for long, Elizabeth. A week is the longest I can give you. I shall come to you then. Will that be long enough?"

"Yes," she said. "John and I cannot possibly live without you any longer than that."

He moved his head back from hers and grinned down at her. "If this is to be our last night together for a whole week, darling," he said, "I do not know why we are wasting time standing here fully clothed. Do you?"

"I really cannot imagine," she agreed, "unless it is that you are remarkably slow." |

"Minx!" he said, his hands at her back. "I never have broken you of the habit of wearing these dresses with the scores of buttons down the back, have I?"

Chapter 14

Helen was gazing through the window of the Marquess of Hetherington's very comfortable traveling carriage. Although this was their second day of travel, she felt quite free of the aches and pains that had made the journey from Yorkshire a torment a few weeks before. She felt relaxed for the first time in several months. Not happy, it was true. But it was an enormous relief to be at least partly free of the burden of her secret.

She looked across to the seat opposite, where Elizabeth was smiling down at her baby. He was gazing back up at her, his eyes fixed and occasionally drooping. He would be asleep very soon. Helen could still not imagine why her companion had chosen to be so kind. They were barely acquainted and Helen had not done anything to endear herself to either of the Hetheringtons. Quite the opposite, in fact. Yet here she was on her way to a safe haven in Sussex, safe until after the birth of her child if she wished, Elizabeth had said.

She had seriously misjudged both husband and wife, Helen thought ruefully, returning her attention to the passing scenery. Elizabeth had mentioned the day before, laughingly, not at all in reproach, that she and the marquess had not been away from each other at all since their reunion the year before. Yet clearly he must have permitted her to leave, and she had chosen to do so, all for the sake of a stranger who had committed an unpardonable indiscretion and who had always treated them in an ill-mannered way.

It was just one more sin to add to the many. She really had made a terrible mess of her life, and there was no real chance that she would ever be able to live normally again. There was always the chance, of course, that she could find a foster-home for the child without anyone finding out what had happened. She was sure her father would be only too eager to pay for the child's keep. But she knew tbat she would not be able to turn to that solution. Despite everything, now that her pregnancy was an accomplished fact, she wanted the child. She felt a fierce love of it, a determination to devote her life to its upbringing. And heaven knew, the child would need as much love as she had to give. The stigma of bastardy was not easily shaken.

Helen put her head back against the soft velvet cushions of the coach and glanced at her companions again. The baby was sleeping; Elizabeth had closed her eyes. Helen did likewise.

She would not relive yesterday for all the money in the world. They had decided after all not to begin the journey to Sussex until the morning after their return from Richmond. But Mama had been very delighted by the invitation to her youngest daughter. Her trunk had been all packed by night.

So yesterday morning there had been little to do but to get ready and to wait for the arrival of the marchioness. Alone with her mother quite by chance in the morning room, Helen had taken her courage in both hands and blurted out the truth to her. For one moment she had expected her mother to faint-she certainly had paled and swayed on her feet. But the countess seemed to have felt that it was not the time for the vapors. The matter was too serious. Helen could not now remember what either of them had said. She knew only that she had refused to tell the name of the father, beyond denying that he was Oswald Pyke. Her mother had agreed, in a daze, to break the news to the earl.

It had been horrible, and more so when it came time to kiss everyone else good-bye in the hallway, as if she were on the way to a coveted holiday. Both she and her mother had done well, she thought. It was strange how one's own wrongdoing could reach out to hurt others. At first she had hardly admitted her own guilt. She was mostly the wronged party, she had convinced herself. When she had begun to suspect the presence of the child, she had felt a great bitterness against William for his betrayal. It was only recently that she had admitted again that she was at least equally guilty. And she had hurt not only herself, but her mother and doubtless her father and sisters too. Not to mention the poor innocent growing inside her.

Her upbringing, of course, had been largely to blame for it all. She had always been a dreamer, and despite their scolding and nagging, her parents had given in to her and allowed her to go her own way. They had certainly allowed her a great deal more freedom than Emmy or Melly had ever had, or than most other girls of her class had, she suspected. She had made a habit of being away from home for hours at a time, but they had never insisted that she take a groom or a chaperon with her. But she must not shift the blame to her parents; it would be unfair to do so. She knew that she had been a very difficult girl.

She had lived in a dream world. Because she could find little to satisfy her in the world where she actually lived, she had created her own, centered on the woods and the stream, and she had lived deeply in her imagination, losing herself in nature and books and in the creative process of painting, writing, and-at home-sewing and playing the pianoforte.

So it had happened that although she knew what was right and wrong, what was acceptable and unacceptable in her world, she had applied the standards of her own world in her relationship with William. He had seemed so much a part of that world, a man who liked solitude as she did, a man who liked reading and who seemed to understand her as no one else had ever done. It had been the most natural thing in the world to fall in love with him and to show that love in the ultimate physical way. She had known, of course, even at the time, that she was doing wrong, but she had known only with her head. With her heart, she had known that what she did was the only right thing to do.

Everyone had to grow up at some time in life, she supposed. It was just unfortunate for her that it had been such an abrupt and such a painful process. Finding William to be faithless and cruel had been the first step. It had jolted her out of her dream world. Acknowledging her own responsibility for what had happened had been the second. Discovering that she was with child had completed the process. Her thoughtlessness, her refusal to be realistic in her actions, had now involved an innocent person, who would suffer all his life from his illegitimacy. These weeks in London had served to make her realize that she herself had done very wrong. Now she knew that such behavior as hers was almost unheard of in a young girl, though older, married ladies often lived by an entirely different moral code. She was really very fortunate to have encountered someone as kind as the marchioness.

William. She was, she supposed, extremely foolish to have refused his offer of marriage. Perhaps her first refusal was understandable. It had happened only the morning after her meeting with him. She had been taken completely by surprise. But two days before, he had kissed her and asked if they might start again, if he might court her properly. His behavior had suggested that he really did wish to marry her, not just that he felt obliged to do so. Yet she had still rejected him. Marriage to him would be the answer to all her problems. She would be with the man she loved. Her child would have a name and a father. Both of them would have the security of a home.