Page 13 of Letters to a Wallflower
His gaze hardened. “Helen, this . . . attack does affect me too. It’s made me a villain, in your eyes and in many others. My reputation suffered and it affected my mother, my family. Someone used my name to hurt you. I will find who it was.” His expression shifted to one of approval. “This is still new and fresh to me, but yes, I understand you have had time to adjust and get past it all—and you’ve done it beautifully. I’m so glad I got home in time to see it.”
His words struck a sudden dismay in her. She ran an eye over him. He had still walked with a slight limp. “Oh, yes. Goodness, I have not even asked how you came to be injured?—”
“No. Another time.” He glanced back toward the house. “I believe it’s time you went back. Before someone comes looking.”
“Oh, yes.” She didn’t want to leave. She wanted to stay and begin to sort through the onslaught of feelings he pulled from her.
“Before you go . . .” He handed her a small bundle.
It took a moment before the truth of it hit her, a shock like being swamped by an unexpected wave in the sea. She reached out to take it—but snatched her hands back at the final moment. Her letters. The source of so much pain.
“Take them,” he urged. “Hide them. Burn them. Whatever makes you at ease. But no one need ever read them again, against your will.”
Hands shaking, she took them. Gratitude spiraled through her, along with a storm of relief. “Thank you,” she whispered. She turned to hurry away before he could answer. He let her go.
But as she rounded the yew, she remembered. Taking off his coat, she went back and thrust it in his hands. “Thank you, again.”
“Take this as well,” he said quietly. “I think perhaps I owe you a few in return.”
It was another letter. Addressed to her, in his hand.
She looked up into his quiet, hopeful expression, then whirled and ran for the house.
Helen’s brother was on Ben’s mind as he watched her flee. Ben had already spoken to Will Crawford, even before he found a way to return Helen’s letters. Her brother had been frosty when he first approached him and Ben had been quick to anger. Terse words had led to shouting, which quickly turned to a short, fierce brawl. Twenty minutes later, bruised and calmer, they had drunk ale together and talked.
“I was just, bewildered,” Crawford confessed. “I could scarce believe you would do such a thing, but there it was, in black and white. I felt so betrayed.” Crawford had taken a long drink. “And Helen, she admitted she’d written the letters, but she’d hidden them away in a drawer in her room. She swore she never posted them—then she just stopped talking. To everyone. She stopped crying. She wouldn’t go to church or see her friends. She didn’t want to come down to meals. She stopped interacting with everyone.”
Ben had sat silent. It hurt, deep in his gut, to think of her suffering so much.
“We were at a loss as to what to do. She just sat in her room and made her lace. Reams of it. Even when Papa forced her to come down, she brought it with her and barely looked up.”
“What did you do?”
“Eventually, we called in Grandmama.”
“Heavy artillery,” Ben said with a nod.
“The old girl arrived and went straight to Helen’s room. The door was shut. They were quiet in there for hours, while we waited. Then Grandmama came out and ordered that all of Helen’s things be packed up. She was taking her to London. They kept a low profile in Town for a while, but when the next Season started, Helen was there, by the countess’s side.”
“And you never discovered how the letters got out of the house?”
“No. Not the truth of it, I don’t believe. Some suspected a new maid in the household. She’d behaved . . . less than ideally, in other ways. My mother was more than ready to believe her guilty, even though the girl stridently denied it. But she was fired, in any case.”
Ben noticed the hard set of Crawford’s jaw and the slight color that rose in his face and wondered at it. “What happened to her? The maid?”
“She left Hertfordshire. Came to London, I heard.”
“What was her name? Perhaps I will find her.”
“Maggie. Maggie Wilson. But how will you track her down now, when it all happened so long ago?”
Ben grinned. “Do you think I’ve learned nothing while in Spain? I have a few skills up my sleeve.”
Ben also had a hunch, a whisper of gossip and a memory of an uncomfortable moment’s encounter with that maid at the Crawford’s, when he’d walked past and seen her in a compromising position—in the young Baron Aker’s bedroom.
Will had only sighed. “Do what you will, Ben. Just leave Helen alone. She’s finally coming out of the shell she constructed around herself. Don’t derail that.”
Ben had nodded, and the recollection of that conversation was forefront in his mind as he left the ball. It led him to search out Elliot Ward, in hopes of confirming his suspicions. After several misses, he finally found him at the Horned Owl, a shabby tavern on Maiden Lane, where the sprigs and young bucks of the ton liked to congregate away from the eyes of matchmaking mamas and judgmental fathers. Ward was sprawled at a table before a game of cards, but he rose readily when Ben offered to buy him a pint at the bar.
