CHAPTER FOUR #2
Eventually, James Wentworth arrived with a note from Gabe. Short, direct…I dearly regret that I cannot marry you. For the family and the dukedom, I have no choice but to…
She had been unable to read the rest of it. Her tear-filled eyes had blurred the words too much.
Later, when the guests had been informed that the ceremony would not take place, the breakfast foods given to the poor, and the house closed up as if in mourning, she’d sat on the floor in her bedroom and rocked back and forth as she read the note again, this time making it through to the end before breaking down in sobs…
For the family and the dukedom, I have no choice but to break off our engagement.
I accept full responsibility. She fell to the rug, wailing with pain as if her soul had shattered, and still wearing her wedding dress.
Two days later, Gabe married Clarissa Wentworth in a private ceremony by special license.
Blinking back the stinging in her eyes at that terrible memory, Helena pulled her favorite shawl out of the little bag and hugged it tightly to her bosom for just a moment before setting it aside on the bed.
“He will join us for dinner,” Verity added quietly, sensing Helena’s distress.
“Because he can’t avoid it.” Helena didn’t try to hide her grimace as she placed her sketchbook and pencil set on the bedside table next to a short vase of tea roses. “It’s his house. He has to be there.”
“He is a duke, my dear. He doesn’t have to do anything.
” Verity scooped up the shawl and shook it out.
“What he needs to do, however, is a completely different matter.” She draped the shawl over Helena’s shoulders and wrapped it securely around her in a warm, woolen hug, then looked straight into her eyes. “And my nephew needs you.”
Her shoulders sagged beneath the knit cashmere. “He didn’t need me five years ago.”
“You’re wrong.”
With a scoffing laugh, Helena shook her head and stepped away. Even the size of this grand room wasn’t enough space to keep her from feeling trapped, and she began to pace, like one of those caged lions in the Tower menagerie.
“He left me standing in the church.” At this rate, she suspected she’d wear a path through the cream and gold Aubusson rug by the time the first banns were read on Sunday. “Only to marry someone else two days later.”
“It was an unfortunate situation, I will admit.”
She choked back a bitter laugh. Unfortunate didn’t begin to describe what Helena had suffered. “All kinds of scandal, vicious rumors, endless gossip…”
All of it flowing through London in the days following the canceled wedding faster than the Thames at high tide—that Gabe didn’t want her because he had finally realized she wasn’t good enough to be Duchess of Thurston, and worse, the horrible lie that he had learned she wasn’t innocent and didn’t want to marry a tarnished woman.
Whispers rose like fog around her everywhere she went, which became fewer and fewer places as old invitations were rescinded and new ones dried up completely.
“And everyone believed the talk because the blame surely lay with me and not a man as honorable as Thurston, even though he was the one who broke off the engagement.” Helena busied her shaking hands with refolding the shawl and didn’t dare look at Verity for fear of seeing pity on his aunt’s face.
Or worse, acceptance of what her nephew had done.
“It started that morning.” Whispers and laughter began to rise even as she stood in the back of the church, gripping her bouquet so tightly her fingers ached.
“Over the next few weeks, it grew worse.”
By then Gabe had already left London, to bring Clarissa home to Grangely Park.
Helena had been devastated. She’d wanted to crawl into bed and never come out.
But her sisters insisted that she couldn’t let the gossips win.
That she deserved to find another husband as wonderful—or more so—than Gabe.
That she needed to return to society as soon as possible and encourage a slew of new suitors.
Reluctantly, she’d done as they’d advised and ventured out to Vauxhall, to picture galleries, to operas and the theatre—to all the places that didn’t require an invitation, as if her heart hadn’t been destroyed…
as if she hadn’t heard that Clarissa was already enceinte and remaining in the countryside for her confinement with a dedicated Gabe at her side.
None of Helena’s efforts had worked. Few of her previous acquaintances rekindled their friendships, and of the half-dozen men who had attempted to court her, none of them let her forget that they were doing her a favor by daring to dance attention on her, even as they were shamelessly forward to the point that she let them call only when at least two of her sisters were present.
The last bits of her pride—and her heart—were irreparably shredded when she learned that her would-be suitors had come calling only to win a bet in the book at White’s.
The first man to provide irrefutable proof that he had bedded the Sinful Sinfell would win a shilling.
“No matter that the rumors weren’t true,” Helena whispered.
No matter that not one shred of evidence existed to confirm what the sniping old harpies claimed about her in their drawing rooms and the gossipy men in their clubs…
I’d become a social outcast. A pariah. “I’d become completely unmarriable in the eyes of society. ”
“I am so sorry, my dear.” Verity’s voice emerged as a sorrowful murmur. “It…could not be helped.”
Helena gaped at her. Could not be… “Why not?” she demanded breathlessly.
Verity hesitated, then shook her head. “It isn’t my place to say.”
“And Gabriel?” She blinked furiously now to keep traitorous tears from falling. “Why won’t he tell me? I thought he loved me.”
“Very much.”
She managed to choke out past the knot in her throat, “Not enough.”
“He did love you, I promise.”
Past tense. The humiliation of her situation ripped through her with the force of an arctic wind. Helena sank into the bed and squeezed her eyes shut.
“But now, none of that matters.” Verity sat beside her and wrapped her arm around Helena’s shoulders. “Fate has given you a second chance.” She placed a motherly kiss to Helena’s temple. “If you could only find it in your heart to accept him as the man he is now, then…”
Helena finished quietly, “Then perhaps my marriage won’t be a completely miserable one?” She gazed at Verity through tear-blurred eyes and admitted the heart-wrenching truth, “He’s only marrying me out of pity.”
“That is not true.”
She shook her head. “All those rules and stipulations today at the solicitor’s…
He still thinks I’m not good enough to be a duchess.
All the gossips said so. So did his best friend and his own brother.
” Right to my face. All the years that followed had given her no reason to believe anything different.
“Gabriel paid no attention to any of them, and especially not to Adam.” Verity muttered his brother’s name beneath her breath and reached to squeeze Helena’s hands.
“He wants everything in writing between you simply because he does not want to repeat the same mistakes that happened with Clarissa.” Verity’s mouth pressed into an aggravated line.
“But the foolish man is going about it all wrong, I’ll grant you. ”
“What mistakes?”
Shaking her head, Verity rose from the bed and crossed the room to the mahogany dressing table with its large triptych of mirrors and mother-of-pearl inlay meant to resemble a continuation of the wisteria vine from the fireplace.
“You will have to speak to Gabriel yourself about that.” She focused her attention on straightening Helena’s toiletry set. “I cannot share anything more.”
Anything more? She’d shared practically nothing at all. “Please.” Helena followed after her. “I need to know—”
A movement in the doorway caught her attention. Alice.
A little girl stood in the hallway and peered into the room with all the lack of subtlety that only a snooping four-year-old could possess.
She stood half-hidden behind the door with one eye staring out from behind the frame, reminding Helena of an ostrich who thought its head in the sand meant no one could see the rest of it.
Despite her frustrations with Gabe, a laugh bubbled on Helena’s lips, and she smiled at the little girl.
“Hello, there,” she called out to her. “Please come in.”
The little girl hesitated, as if contemplating bolting at being caught, then stepped slowly into the room. Her eyes went immediately to her aunt, to judge if she truly had permission to interrupt, then darted back to Helena. She was too curious about her not to stare.
“I’m Helena,” she introduced, breaching all propriety with such informality. But what was the point of being formal? She was going to be the girl’s new mother soon enough. “And you must be…” When Alice said nothing, Helena playfully guessed, “Mrs. Brimley, the housekeeper!”
Alice’s eyes widened, uncertain how to take this strange woman in the midst of her home.